Dan Ariely was burned all over his body. He lived in the hospital for years. He grew up there. Now he writes about pain. And irrationality. And meaning. He had nerve damage from the burns. And no skin to protect himself from pain. The nurses slowly...
Dan Ariely was burned all over his body. He lived in the hospital for years. He grew up there. Now he writes about pain. And irrationality. And meaning.
He had nerve damage from the burns. And no skin to protect himself from pain. The nurses slowly peeled back his bandages.
He begged them to rip them off.
They wouldn’t.
He wanted quick pain and fast relief. They did it slowly for peace of mind. Not his.
Theirs.
Dan calls this “irrational behavior.” He says, “being irrational are the cases where we think we will behave in one way, but we actually don’t. And the reason I care about this is because those are the cases in which people are likely to make decisions.”
He helps predict behavior. So you can respond the way you’d expect you would… not the way you actually do.
“It's an interesting conflict,” he says.
We talked about his new TED book, “Payoff: The Hidden Logic That Shapes Our Motivations.”