NPR interviews Duke Professor Dan Ariely on Money, Morality and Decision-Making

Professor Ariely's new book about human fallibility in decision-making is called "Predictably Irrational."

NPR has made a transcript of the interview available and an mp3 file so you can listen to it online.

NewsHour economics correspondent Paul Solman recently sat down with behavioral economist Dan Ariely, who studies irrationality in economic decision making, to discuss why people cheat, the media's influence on markets and whether the public needs to see remorse on Wall Street.

Ariely: "In the media, there's this slogan that says, 'If it bleeds, it leads,' with the idea that if something is emotionally capturing, then we want to emphasize that. And because of this there's a bias both in the media and in ourselves as human beings to overemphasize things that are emotionally grabbing." [...]

Ariely: "So if you think to yourself: What's more important? To have a report about one unfortunate individual who lost their job and has very difficult life circumstances, or something that helps us understand more generally what is going on in AIG, how is the bailout going, what is the future of this company?" [...]

Ariely: "So it's the news feeding our psychology of caring more about emotional things, and because of that much of the news is not really that educational and informative in terms of helping us understand what is going on, instead of just kind of tapping our emotion over and over and over. And I think because of that people also get more fearful. If all the news is focusing on these terrible pieces of information about how frightening this is, and this is, and gloom here, and gloom there, we're going to be much more fearful."