Reading Assignments for

A Beginners Guide to Irrational

Behavior

by Dan Ariely

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Pre-course Recommended Reading
Kahneman, D. (2003). Maps of Bounded Rationality: Psychology for
Behavioral Economics. The American Economic Review, 93(5), 1449-1475.
Camerer, C. (1999). Behavioral Economics: Reunifying Psychology and
Economics. PNAS, 96, 10575-1057.
Kenrick, D. T., Griskevicius, V., Sundie, J. M., Li, N. P., Li, Y. J., & Neuberg,
S. L. (2009). Deep Rationality: The Evolutionary Economics of Decision
Making. Social Cognition, 27(5), 764-785.
Sunstein, C. (2012, in press). The Storrs Lectures: Behavioral Economics and
Paternalism. Yale Law Journal.
Ashraf, N., Camerer, C. F., & Loewenstein, G (2005). Adam Smith,
Behavioral Economist. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 19 (3), 131145.
Uchitelle, L. (2001, February 11). Following the Money, But also the Mind.
The New York Times.
Belluck, P. (2011, January 20). To Really Learn, Quit Studying and Take a
Test. The New York Times.


Week 1: Irrationality



Week 1 "Required" Reading
Ariely, D. & Norton, M. I. (2008). How actions createnot just reveal
preferences. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 12(1). (Working paper version.)
Ariely, D., Loewenstein, G., & Prelec, D. (2005). Tom Sawyer and the
construction of value. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 60(1).
(Working paper version.)
Tetlock, P. E., & Mellers, B. A. (2002). The great rationality debate.
Psychological Science, 13(1), 94-99. Copyright is by permission of the
American Psychological Society.
Johnson, E., & Goldstein, D. (2003). Do defaults save lives? Science,
302(5649), 1338-1339.
Davidai, S., Gilovich, T., & Ross, L.D. (2012). The meaning of default options
for potential organ donors. PNAS, 109(38), 15201-15205.



Week 1 Recommended Reading
Rabin, M. (1998). Psychology and Economics. Journal of economic literature,
36(1), 11-46.
Brenner, L., Rottenstreich, Y., & Sood, S. (1999). Comparison, Grouping, and
Preference. Psychological Science, 10(3), 225-229. Copyright is by
permission of the American Psychological Society.
Johansson, P., Hall, L., Sikstrm, S., & Olsson, A. (2005). Failure to Detect
Mismatches Between Intention and Outcome in a Simple Decision Task.
Science, 310(5745), 116-119.
Simon, D., Krawczyk, D. C., & Holyoak, K. J. (2004). Construction of
Preferences by Constraint Satisfaction. Psychological Science, 15(5), 331-
336. Copyright is by permission of the American Psychological Society.
Amir, O. & Levav, J. (2008). Choice Construction versus Preference
Construction: the Instability of Preferences Learned in Context. Journal of
Marketing Research, 45(2). (Working paper version.)
Ariely, D., Loewenstein, G.F. & Prelec, D. (2003) Coherent Arbitrariness:
Stable Demand Curves without Stable Preferences. The Quarterly Journal of
Economics, 118(1), 73-106.
Pope, D., & Simonsohn, U. (2011). Round Numbers as Goals: Evidence from
Baseball, SAT takers, and the Lab. Psychological Science, 22(1), 71-79.
Copyright is by permission of the American Psychological Society.
Gottlieb, D. A., Weiss, T., & Chapman, G. B. (2007). The Format in which
Uncertainty Information is Presented Affects Decision Biases. Psychological
Science, 18(3), 240-246. Copyright is by permission of the American
Psychological Society.
Levav, J., & Fitzsimons, G. J. (2006). When Questions Change Behavior: the
Role of Ease of Representation. Psychological Science, 17(3), 207-213.
Copyright is by permission of the American Psychological Society.
Peder, Z. (2013, February 11). In Pursuit of Taste, en Masse. The New York
Times.


Week 2: Psychology of Money


Week 2 "Required" Reading
Shah, A. M., & Wolford, G. (2007). Buying Behavior. Psychological Science,
18(5), 369-370.
Frederick, S., Novemsky, N., Wang, J., Dhar, R., & Nowlis, S. (2009).
Opportunity Cost Neglect. Journal of Consumer Research, 36(4), 553-561.
Vohs, K. D., Mead, N. L., & Goode, M. R. (2006). The Psychological
Consequences of Money. Science, 314(5802), 1154-1156.





Week 2 Recommended Reading
Spiller, S. A. (2011). Opportunity Cost Consideration. Journal of Consumer
Research, 38(4), 595-610.
Magen, E., Dweck, C. S., & Gross, J. J. (2008). The Hidden-Zero Effect:
Representing a Single Choice as an Extended Sequence Reduces Impulsive
Choice. Psychological Science, 19(7), 648-649.
Mogilner, C. (2010). The Pursuit of Happiness: Time, Money, and Social
Connection. Psychological Science, 21(9), 1348-1354.
Boyce, C. J., Brown, G. D., & Moore, S. C. (2010). Money and Happiness:
Rank of Income, not Income, Affects Life Satisfaction. Psychological Science,
21(4), 471-475.
Quoidbach, J., Dunn, E. W., Petrides, K. V., & Mikolajczak, M. (2010). Money
Giveth, Money Taketh Away: The Dual Effect of Wealth on Happiness.
Psychological Science, 21(6), 759-763.
Maddux, W. W., Yang, H., Falk, C., Adam, H., Adair, W., Endo, Y., Carmon,
Z., & Heine, S. J. (2010). For Whom is Parting with Possessions more
Painful? Cultural Differences in the Endowment Effect. Psychological Science,
21(12), 1910-1917.
Iyengar, S.S., Wells, R.E., & Schwartz, B. (2006). Doing Better but Feeling
Worse: Looking for the Best Job Undermines Satisfaction. Psychological
Science, 17(2), 143150.
Weber, B., Rangel, A., Wibral, M., Falk, A., & Akerlof, G. A. (2009). The
Medial Prefrontal Cortex Exhibits Money Illusion. PNAS, 106(13), 5025-5028.
Frank, R. (2011, May 14). Why Worry? Its Good for You. The New York
Times.
Nocera, J. (2012, April 27). My Faith-based Retirement. The New York Times.
Surowiecki, J. (2012, June 4). The Fairness Trap. The New Yorker.




Week 3: Dishonesty


Week 3 "Required" Reading
Mazar, N., Amir, O., & Ariely, D. (2008). The Dishonesty of Honest People: A
Theory of Self-concept Maintenance. Journal of marketing research, 45(6),
633-644.
Gino, F., Ayal, S., & Ariely, D. (2009). Contagion and Differentiation in
Unethical Behavior: The Effect of One Bad Apple on the Barrel. Psychological
Science, 20(3), 393-398. Copyright is by permission of the American
Psychological Society.
Yang, Y., Raine, A., Lencz, T., Bihrle, S., LaCasse, L., & Colletti, P. (2005).
Prefrontal White Matter in Pathological Liars. British Journal of Psychiatry,
187, 320-325. Copyright is by permission of the British Psychological
Society.
Zhong, C. & Liljenquist, K. (2006). Washing away your sins: Threatened
morality and physical cleansing. Science, 313(5792), 1451-1452.
Shalvi, S., Dana, J., Handgraaf, M., & De Dreu, C. (2011). Justified Ethicality:
Observing Desired Counterfactuals Modifies Ethical Perceptions and Behavior.
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 115(2), 181-190.


Week 3 Recommended Reading
Gino, F. & Galinsky, A. (2012). Vicarious dishonesty: When psychological
closeness creates distance from ones moral compass. Organizational
Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 119, (1), 1526.
Vohs, K. D. & Schooler, J. W. (2008). The Value of Believing in Free Will:
Encouraging a Belief in Determinism Increases Cheating. Psychological
Science, 19(1), 49-54. Copyright is by permission of the American
Psychological Society.
Dijksterhuis, A., Preston, J., Wegner, D. M., & Aarts, H. (2008). Effects of
Subliminal Priming of Self and God on Self-attribution of Authorship for
Events. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 44(1), 2-9.
Wang, C. S., Galinsky, A. D., & Murnighan, J. K. (2009). Bad Drives
Psychological Reactions, but Good Propels Behavior Responses to Honesty
and Deception. Psychological Science, 20(5), 634-644. Copyright is by
permission of the American Psychological Society.
Mazar, N., & Zhong, C. B. (2010). Do Green Products Make us Better People?
Psychological Science, 21(4), 494-498. Copyright is by permission of the
American Psychological Society.
Gino, F., Norton, M. I., & Ariely, D. (2010). The Counterfeit Self: The
Deceptive Costs of Faking It. Psychological Science, 21(5), 712-720.
Copyright is by permission of the American Psychological Society.
Chance, Z., Norton, M. I., Gino, F., & Ariely, D. (2011). Temporal View of the
Costs and Benefits of Self-deception. PNAS, 15655-15659.
Brooks, D. (2012, June 12). The Moral Diet. The New York Times.
Surowiecki, J. (2012, July 30). Bankers Gone Wild. The New Yorker.
Pearlstein, J. (2012, June 22). Why we Lie, Go to Prison, and Eat Cake: 10
Questions with Dan Ariely. Wired.


Week 4: Labor and Motivation


Week 4 "Required" Reading
Anik, L., Aknin, L., Norton, M., & Dunn, E. (Working Paper). Feeling Good
about Giving: The Benefits (and Costs) of Self-interested Charitable
Behavior. Harvard Business School Marketing Unit Working Paper, (10-012).
Mochon, D., Norton, M. I., & Ariely, D. (2012). Bolstering and Restoring
Feelings of Competence via the IKEA Effect. Intern. J. of Research in
Marketing, 29, 363369.
Ariely, D., Gneezy, U., Loewenstein, G., & Mazar, N. (2009). Large Stakes
and Big Mistakes. Review of Economic Studies, 76, 451-469.
Heyman, J., & Ariely, D. (2004). Effort for Payment: A Tale of Two Markets.
Psychological Science, 15(11), 787-793. Copyright is by permission of the
American Psychological Society.
Ariely, D., Kamenica, E. & Prelec, D. (2008). Mans Search for Meaning: The
Case of Legos. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 67, 671-677.


Week 4 Recommended Reading
DeVoe, S. E. & Iyengar, S. S. (2010). Medium of Exchange Matters: Whats
Fair for Goods is Unfair for Money. Psychological Science, 21(2), 159-162.
Copyright is by permission of the American Psychological Society.
Haisley, E., & Loewenstein, G. (2011). It's not what you get but when you
get it: The effect of gift sequence on deposit balances and customer
sentiment in a commercial bank. Journal of Marketing Research, 48(1), 103-
115.
Ariely, D., Bracha, A., & Meier, S. (2009). Doing Good or Doing Well? Image
Motivation and Monetary Incentives in Behaving Prosocially. The American
Economic Review, 99(1), 544-555.
Woolhandler, S., Ariely, D., & Himmelstein, D. U. (2012). Why Pay for
Performance may be Incompatible with Quality Improvement. BMJ: British
Medical Journal, 345.
Beilock, S. L. & Carr, T. H. (2005). When High-powered People Fail: Working
Memory and Choking Under Pressure in Math. Psychological Science, 16(2),
101-105. Copyright is by permission of the American Psychological
Society.
Porter, E. (2005, April 12). Can Shortcuts be a Force for Thrift? The New York
Times.
Ariely, D. (2008, November 19). Whats the Value of a Big Bonus? The New
York Times.









Week 5: Self-control


Week 5 "Required" Reading
Ariely, D., & Wertenbroch, K. (2002). Procrastination, Deadlines, and
Performance: Self-control by Precommitment. Psychological Science, 13(3),
219-224. Copyright is by permission of the American Psychological
Society.
Moffitt, T. E., Arseneault, L., Belsky, D., Dickson, N., Hancox, R. J.,
Harrington, H., ... & Caspi, A. (2011). A Gradient of Childhood Self-control
Predicts Health, Wealth, and Public Safety. PNAS, 108(7), 2693-2698.
McClure, S. M., Laibson, D. I., Loewenstein, G., & Cohen, J. D. (2004).
Separate Neural Systems Value Immediate and Delayed Monetary Rewards.
Science, 306(5695), 503-507.
Trope, Y., & Fishbach, A. (2000). Counteractive Self-control in Overcoming
Temptation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79(4), 493-506.
Copyright is by permission of the American Psychological Society.
Keeney, R. L. (2008). Personal Decisions are the Leading Cause of Death.
Operations Research, 56(6), 1335-1347. Copyright is by permission of the
Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences.


Week 5 Recommended Reading
Papies, E. K. (2012). Goal Priming in Dieters: Recent Insights and
Applications. Current Obesity Reports, 1, 99-105.
Myrseth, K. O.R., Fishbach, A., & Trope, Y. (2009). Counteractive Self-
Control. Psychological Science, 20, 159-163. Copyright is by permission of
the American Psychological Society.
Patrick, V., Chun, H. E., & MacInnis, D. (2009). Affective Forecasting and
Self-control: When Anticipating Pride Wins over Anticipating Shame in a Self-
regulation Context. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 19(3)
Erskine, J. A., Georgiou, G. J., & Kvavilashvili, L. (2010). I Suppress,
therefore I Smoke: Effects of Thought Suppression on Smoking Behavior.
Psychological Science, 21(9), 1225-1230. Copyright is by permission of the
American Psychological Society.
Wansink, B., Painter, J. E., & North, J. (2005). Bottomless Bowls: Why Visual
Cues of Portion Size may Influence Intake. Obesity Research, 13(1), 93-100.
Danziger, S. Levav, J. Avnaim-Pesso. L. (2011). Extraneous Factors in
Judicial Decisions. PNAS 108(17), 6889-6892.
Nordgren, L. F., & Chou, E. Y. (2011). The Push and Pull of Temptation: The
Bidirectional Influence of Temptation on Self-control. Psychological Science,
22(11), 1386-1390. Copyright is by permission of the American
Psychological Society.
Ackerman, J. M., Goldstein, N. J., Shapiro, J. R., & Bargh, J. A. (2009). You
wear me out: The vicarious depletion of self-control. Psychological Science,
20(3), 326-332. Copyright is by permission of the American Psychological
Society.
Rachlin, H. (1990). Why do People Gamble and Keep Gambling Despite
Heavy Losses? Psychological Science, 1(5), 294-297. Copyright is by
permission of the American Psychological Society.
Eigsti, I. M., Zayas, V., Mischel, W., Shoda, Y., Ayduk, O., Dadlani, M. B., ...
& Casey, B. J. (2006). Predicting Cognitive Control from Preschool to Late


Adolescence and Young Adulthood. Psychological Science, 17(6), 478-484.
Copyright is by permission of the American Psychological Society.
Kober, H., Mende-Siedlecki, P., Kross, E. F., Weber, J., Mischel, W., Hart, C.
L., & Ochsner, K. N. (2010). Prefrontalstriatal Pathway Underlies Cognitive
Regulation of Craving. PNAS, 107(33), 14811-14816.
Caldwell, C. (2004, March 1). Select All: Can you have too many choices?
The New Yorker.
Pinker, S. (2011, September 4). The Sugary Secret of Self Control. The New
York Times.
Bakalar, N. (2012, February 13). Options Play a Role in Healthier Choices.
The New York Times.


Week 6: Emotion


Week 6 "Required" Reading
Slovic, P., Zionts, D., Woods, A., Goodman, R., & Jinks, D. (2011). Psychic
Numbing and Mass Atrocity. In Shafir, E. (ed.), The Behavioral Foundations
Of Policy (11-56).
Gigerenzer, G. (2004). Dread Risk, September 11, and Fatal Traffic
Accidents. Psychological Science, 15(4), 286-287. Copyright is by permission
of the American Psychological Society.
Gilbert, D. T., Lieberman, M. D., Morewedge, C. K., & Wilson, T. D. (2004).
The Peculiar Longevity of Things Not So Bad. Psychological Science, 15(1),
14-19. Copyright is by permission of the American Psychological Society.
Loewenstein, G. (2000). Emotions in Economic Theory and Economic
Behavior. The American Economic Review, 90(2), 426-432.




Week 6 Recommended Reading
Inbar, Y., Pizarro, D., Gilovich, T. & Ariely, D. (2013). Moral Masochism: On
the Connection Between Guilt and Self-Punishment. Emotion, 13(1).
Andrade, E. B., & Ariely, D. (2009). The Enduring Impact of Transient
Emotions on Decision Making. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision
Processes, 109(1), 1-8.
Gilbert, D. T., Morewedge, C. K., Risen, J. L., & Wilson, T. D. (2004). Looking
Forward to Looking Backward: The Misprediction of Regret. Psychological
Science, 15(5), 346-350. Copyright is by permission of the American
Psychological Society.
Cryder, C. E., Lerner, J. S., Gross, J. J., & Dahl, R. E. (2008). Misery is not
Miserly: Sad and Self-focused Individuals Spend More. Psychological Science,
19(6), 525-530. Copyright is by permission of the American Psychological
Society.
McGraw, A. P., & Warren, C. (2010). Benign Violations: Making Immoral
Behavior Funny. Psychological Science, 21(8), 1141-1149. Copyright is by
permission of the American Psychological Society.
Helzer, E. G., & Pizarro, D. A. (2011). Dirty Liberals! Reminders of Physical
Cleanliness Influence Moral and Political Attitudes. Psychological Science,
22(4), 517-522. Copyright is by permission of the American Psychological
Society.
Cohen, J. D. (2005). The Vulcanization of the Human Brain: A Neural
Perspective on Interactions Between Cognition and Emotion. The Journal of
Economic Perspectives, 19(4), 3-24.
Levav, J., & McGraw, A. P. (2009). Emotional Accounting: How Feelings
about Money Influence Consumer Choice. Journal of Marketing Research, 46,
66-80
Coates, John (2012, June 10). The Biology of Bubble and Crash. The New
York Times.



Post-course
Recommended Reading

Amir, O., Ariely, D., Cooke, A., Dunning, D., Epley,
N., Gneezy, U., Koszegi, B., Lichtenstein, B., Mazar,
N., Mullainathan, S., Prelec, D., Shafir, E. & Silva, J.
(2005). Psychology, Behavioral Economics, and Public
Policy. Marketing Letters, 16(3). (Working Paper
version.)
Ariely, D. & Grneisen, A. (2013). How To Turn Consumers Green. McKinsey
on Society, Vol. 4.
Just, D., Mancino, L., & Wansink, B. (2007). Could Behavioral Economics
Help Improve Diet Quality for Nutrition Assistance Program Participants?
USDA-ERS Economic Research Report, 43.
Camerer, C., Issacharoff, S., Loewenstein, G., O'donoghue, T., & Rabin, M.
(2003). Regulation for Conservatives: Behavioral Economics and the Case for
'Asymmetric Paternalism. University of Pennsylvania Law Review, 151(3),
1211-1254.
McKenzie, C. R., Liersch, M. J., & Finkelstein, S. R. (2006).
Recommendations Implicit in Policy Defaults. Psychological Science, 17(5),
414-420. Copyright is by permission of the American Psychological
Society.
Timmer, C. P. (2010). Behavioral Dimensions of Food Security. PNAS,
109(31), 12315-12320.
Loewenstein, G., Ubel, P (2010, July 14). Economics Behaving Badly. The
New York Times.
Tritch, T. (2007, February 14). Helping People Help Themselves. The New
York Times.