In behavioural economics, we don’t assume anything instead we put people in different situations and then we see how they behave. So, in standard economics, we assume that people are all capable people can make the right decisions, that they compute everything, that they think long term, and they always, always, always make the right decisions. Maybe we can start with the question of what Behavioural Economics is.

For someone who might not be familiar with your work or the idea of behavioural economics, what is The Irrational Game? Is there a simple elevator pitch-style description you might give? We caught up with Dan a few weeks ago in preparation for the worldwide launch of the game, and asked him what it’s all about. Think of it like Top Trumps crossed with Monopoly, with a sprinkling of Rebus brain puzzles on top, and you won’t go far wrong.

But this is a card game with a difference, one with a pedigree, and one which is intended to leave you better informed and more interested in the world than you were before you started playing. The one strand that links all his work, though, is the idea that we are not the homo economicus of rational utility-maximisation that mainstream economic models assume we are.Īnd his latest chosen vehicle to get the message across? A card game, like the ones you played as a child. He’s even given TED talks on how humanity’s moral code is “buggy”, and whether or not we are even in control ourselves of our own decisions.

He runs the Center for Advanced Hindsight and a consultancy, BEworks Inc, that applies his academic interests to business and policy challenges. His bestselling books include Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape our Decisions, and The Honest Truth about Dishonesty. Luckily, there are few proponents of the discipline more capable of making the case to the ordinary person in the street than Duke University’s Professor of Psychology and Behavioural Economics, Dan Ariely.ĭan Ariely has history in the public understanding of behaviour and its impact on the real world activities of tech start-ups and community improvement. The more you dive into the theories behind it, the more there is to discover, like some sort of fractal Alice in Wonderland. And it’s an argument that people are irrational, which relies for its success on the irrationality of people.īut that’s the thing about behavioural economics. It’s a Kickstarter campaign for a product that discusses how traditional financial models are broken. It’s a game which gamifies academic courses, teaching you about how you can gamify everyday life. The latest craze in behavioural economics is all a bit meta when you think about it.

Dan ariely irrational game