It is very difficult to make really big, important, life-changing decisions because we are all susceptible to a formidable array of decision biases. There are more of them than we realize, and they come to visit us more often than we like to admit.
Dan ArielyThe companies that provide debt, what do you think their goal is? Is their goal for you to fully understand the cost of your debt? No. So they're basically creating these approaches to make you feel like it is incredibly cheap or just to think about the cost per day rather the cost per year or cost for a lifetime. So debt is very simple mistake.
Dan ArielyDishonesty is all about the small acts we can take and then think, 'No, this not real cheating.' So if you think that the main mechanism is rationalization, then what you come up with, and that's what we find, is that we're basically trying to balance feeling good about ourselves.
Dan ArielyWhen it comes to the mental world, when we design things like health care and retirement and stock markets, we somehow forget the idea that we are limited. I think that if we understood our cognitive limitations in the same way that we understand our physical limitations โฆ we could design a better world.
Dan ArielyI think we could get people to both be more productive and happier. We're less productive as individuals. We're less productive as companies, and we're more miserable.
Dan ArielyWho would you trust right now? Which bank would you trust? Which investment would you trust? Do you really want to put your money; do you want to suffer more of these losses that we just had? You know, these volatility that we see is just unexplainable by any rational standards. Nobody has any clue about how to explain this, and nobody wants to experience that. So, we hold more money back, we don't necessarily want to invest in the market and by default, people are saving more.
Dan Ariely