Dan Ariely, professor of psychology and behavioral economics at Duke University, set up an experiment to measure dishonesty using a coin and a six-sided die. Conclusion: "if the person running the system is telling us corruption or dishonesty is allowed, our understanding of what is acceptable changes instantly."

On the occasion of the publication of a new book, behavioral economics writer Dan Ariely (a great favorite of mine) answers questions with Wired about the underlying causes of lying and cheating, and the huge gap between what the evidence tells us and what be intuitively believe. — Read the rest

A couple of great videos from BigThink. First, Penn Jillette on how reading the great religious texts will make you into an atheist, the future of magic, and how he and Teller work together.

Next, behavioral economist Dan Ariely covers a lot of material from his new book, The Upside of Irrationality, including the irrational math of online dating sites; the Ikea Effect (overvaluing things we make); and the irrationality of many businesses. — Read the rest

Behavioral economist Dan Ariely's The Upside of Irrationality is the followup to his wildly successful (and wonderful) Predictably Irrational, a book summarizing his many years of ground-breaking research on the ways in which people reliably behave in ways that run contrary to their best interests (something that flies in the face of neoclassical economic orthodoxy). — Read the rest

Predictably Irrational author Dan Ariely used to enjoy taking Airborne, until he read reports that it didn't prevent colds. Before he read the reports, he was "97.5% sure" Airborne didn't work, but that tiny bit of doubt was enough for the placebo effect kick in. — Read the rest

The Decoy Effect is a simple but powerful trick that marketers use to influence you to buy something that is bigger or more expensive than you need or want. I fall for this every time I go to the movies and think I'm going to buy the medium popcorn but end up getting the large because it costs just a few cents more. — Read the rest

I first started writing about the remarkable Joi Ito in 2002, and over the decade and a half since, I've marvelled at his polymath abilities -- running international Creative Commons, starting and investing in remarkable tech businesses, getting Timothy Leary's ashes shot into space, backing Mondo 2000, using a sprawling Warcraft raiding guild to experiment with leadership and team structures, and now, running MIT's storied Media Lab -- and I've watched with excitement as he's distilled his seemingly impossible-to-characterize approach to life in a set of 9 compact principles, which he and Jeff Howe have turned into Whiplash, a voraciously readable, extremely exciting, and eminently sensible book.

At $700, the beautiful Iikone single-cup coffee brewer is quite an extravagance, albeit one made of precision-milled, polished surgical steel. The coffee it produces will doubtless be delicious, because, assuming you start with good beans and carefully measure your water temperature and ingredients quantities, this is a very good coffee-production method.

Dispassionately, we know that cheating on our diets or procrastinating on our stupid deadlines isn't worth it, but our stupid brains treat most future consequences as if they're worth nothing, while treating any present-moment benefits as though they were precious beyond riches — so how do you get the "hyperbolic discounting" part of your brain to shut up and listen to reason?

Books like Predictably Irrational (and its sequel, Upside of Irrationality) painstaking document the ways that we fall victim to our own cognitive biases, tripping over our own brains.

Welcome to the second half of the 2010 Boing Boing Gift Guide, where we pick out some of our favorite books from the last year (and beyond) to help you find inexpensive holiday gifts for friends and family. Can you guess who chose a Sarah Palin book?

Here's a fun and revealing interview with Penn Jillette (of Penn and Teller), talking about the artistic satisfaction he gets from doing the kind of magic he does, and the working relationship he has with his longtime business and performance partner, Teller. — Read the rest

I just finished William Poundstone's Priceless: The Myth of Fair Value (and How to Take Advantage of It), a popular book on the history and present state of the art in analyzing how people arrive at prices (Poundstone's publisher, Hill and Wang, were kind enough to send this along). — Read the rest

Over the weekend, I finally picked up and read Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions, an accessible intro to the subject of behavioral economics — that is, the study of how people behave in the real world and why that varies from the predictions made by classical economic theory (which predicts that people behave rationally and in their own interests). — Read the rest

From Dan Ariely's "Predictably Irrational" blog:

This shows Google's remarkable power as a source of data on a range of human behaviors, emotions, and opinions. It gives us insights into what people might care the most about concerning a given topic.

Bad Science Begets Ridiculous Results: A professor at Middle Tennessee State University thought his MBA students were cheaters. So, to deal with the problem, he had them sign a pledge…wherein they agreed that their immortal souls would go to hell if they'd ever cheated in his class. — Read the rest

Here are some of my recent posts about money for Credit.com.

Credit Report Card: A Truly Free Look at Your Credit Record (left): "Credit.com launched a new, truly free online tool called Credit Report Card, which gives you an easy-to-understand snapshot of your credit report, along with estimated scores from the different reporting agencies." — Read the rest

Inspired by Dan Ariely's book Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Lives, Jeff Atwood used its list of cognitive blind-spots endemic to our species and produced a list of nine ways to avoid making decisions that will make you unhappy later. — Read the rest

Here are some of my recent posts about money for credit.com.

A Look at Amish Finances: Amanda Grossman was interested in finding out how it was possible that the Amish, who don't use electricity and shun many modern conveniences, are able to own large, well maintained houses surrounded by plenty of farmland. — Read the rest

I've been having a lot of fun writing for CreditBloggers. My most recent entry is about Predictably Irrational author Dan Ariely's recent TED talk about his experiments to learn more about the psychology of cheating.

Ariely decided to conduct a series of experiments to understand cheating.