Dan Ariely on the Irrationality of Bonuses

You’ve per­haps heard the buzz around Dan Ariely’s new book, The Upside of Irra­tional­i­ty: The Unex­pect­ed Ben­e­fits of Defy­ing Log­ic at Work and at Home. (If not, read this review in the NY Times.) Appear­ing at PopTech! last year, Ariely spent 20 min­utes flesh­ing out an argu­ment in his book. A pro­fes­sor of behav­ioral eco­nom­ics at Duke Uni­ver­si­ty, Ariely turns some basic assump­tions about work­place com­pen­sa­tion right on their head … and even explains why, in some strange way, it makes sense that high­ly com­pen­sat­ed Wall Street bankers could do so much dam­age to our finan­cial sys­tem.

Note: You can lis­ten to Ariely get­ting inter­viewed ear­li­er this week on my favorite San Fran­cis­co talk show. The con­ver­sa­tion revolves around The Upside of Irra­tional­i­ty.