Bestselling Author and TED Talks Presenter Dan Ariely: "Free Beer"
Venue: Moss Arts Center at Virginia Tech, Blacksburg
Date: Wednesday, February 20, 2019
Time: 5:00 - 7:00 PM
Event Types: Speaking Engagements
Cost: Free
Description:
Virginia Tech’s Program in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE) presents Bestselling Author and TED Talks Presenter Dan Ariely and his talk titled "Free Beer" as the annual PPE Distinguished Public Lecture on Wednesday, February 20, 2019 at the Moss Arts Center at Virginia Tech.

Dan Ariely will share his research on irrationality during the annual PPE Distinguished Public Lecture which he is titling "Free Beer". Spoiler alert: there is no free beer, ever, because all freebies have a hidden cost.

A New York Times–bestselling author, Ariely has published six books: “Predictably Irrational,” “The Upside of Irrationality,” “The (Honest) Truth about Dishonesty,” “Irrationally Yours,” “Payoff,” and “Dollars and Sense.” He is also a TED Talks speaker with more than 10 million video views.

At Duke University, Ariely is the James B. Duke Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics and a founding member of the Center for Advanced Hindsight. The organization’s tagline is “Making people happier, healthier, and wealthier with behavioral science, at home and abroad.”

Ariely first became interested in what motivates human behavior when he was a teenager recovering from an accident that left 70 percent of his body covered in third-degree burns. For the course of his three-year recuperation, nurses often had to change his bandages. And this seemingly simple process had a profound effect on the one-day-famous psychologist and economist.

The nurses, in an effort to minimize the duration of his discomfort, quickly ripped the dressings from his wounds. Yet that caused him excruciating pain. When the bandages were removed slowly, however, the pain became bearable, which caused him to wonder why people misunderstand the consequences of their behaviors and make poor decisions. In this case, it was the nurses’ misguided notion that it was better to limit the duration of the pain than the intensity of it.

And these observations inspired Ariely to complete two doctoral degrees — one in business administration from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and one in cognitive psychology from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He now focuses his research on the reasons people make repeated and predictable wrong decisions and what they can do to change these patterns.

Members of the university community and the public are invited to the free lecture at the Moss Arts Center followed by a reception.

For more information, visit: https://vtnews.vt.edu/articles/2019/02/clashs-dan-ariely.html.