杜克大學行為經濟學教授丹·阿雷利一直努力研究人們做決策的過程和原因，多年研究下來在學術上有不少有趣的發現。他發表了幾十篇論文，研究領域非常廣泛，例如發現關系親密容易“導致鄙視”；放棄后人們才會更珍視某樣東西，擁有時卻不覺得；研究自私型利他主義等。最近，他突然進入公眾視野。

十年來，阿雷利逐漸學會將艱深的學術成果轉化為易于公眾理解的內容。通過寫書和在非營利機構TED組織的大會上演講，他將復雜且晦澀的研究結果簡化為容易理解證據充分的要點，解釋一些生活中常見的問題，比如為何我們愛給自己的錯誤行動找理由，利益沖突如何影響實現個人目標。他希望通過科普決策的過程，幫助大家做決定時更理性也明智。

阿雷利還采取了更直接的方式——涉及財務的手段。現在他加入了一些初創公司，創業項目都是幫助人們在財富、健康和保險等重要方面做出更好的選擇（起碼少做些錯誤決策）。

2015年，阿雷利加盟面向80、90后的數字理財創業公司Qapital，擔任“首席行為經濟學家”。他根據研究成果與合作推出一些特色功能，例如利用“愧疚的快樂”功能，用戶在星巴克買一杯拿鐵咖啡或者網購一次就自動存下一小筆錢。另一款“零錢隨手存”則顧名思義，會將所有零錢都轉為儲蓄。產品設計的總體目標是讓存錢和消費一樣輕松方便。

阿雷利還在紐約一家初創公司Lemonade擔任顧問。該公司剛完成規模3400萬美元的B輪融資。2014年第一次見到Lemonade的創始人丹尼爾·薛伯和塞伊·威靈格，阿雷利就覺得他們的技術非常先進，但對于是否加入公司比較猶疑。后來他聽到兩位創始者講述創業目標：打造讓客戶信任不猜疑的保險系統，阿雷利才決定加入。

作為行為經濟學家，阿雷利覺得打造理想的保險系統非常有意思，很想努力解決。他說：“遇到這種挑戰我很激動。我研究利益沖突和欺詐15年，了解危害有多大。”

傳統保險模式下，保險公司和顧客的動機并不一致。每宗成功的理賠都要消耗保險公司的資金，因此想讓保險公司接受理賠有點困難（這也變相鼓動了客戶采取欺詐手段，因為客戶總覺得被保險公司騙了）。為了扭轉現狀，Lemonade統一收取20%的保費，保單到期后，所有未領取的保險金都會捐贈給非營利機構或者慈善組織，這樣就消除了錢財方面的利益沖突，比傳統模式容易讓人接受。

除了在Lemonade和Qapital任職（他持有兩家公司的股權），阿雷利還聯合創立了兩家公司Genie和Shapa。Genie研發的廚房家電不到兩分鐘就能 “烹飪”有營養的盒飯（可選套餐包括庫斯庫斯粉配蔬菜、雞肉飯、味噌拉面等）。Shapa推出一款智能體重秤，按滿分五分給身體打分顯示健康狀況，代替了傳統的按磅計算體重。

阿雷利的這兩個創業項目都滿足了日常生活需求。廚房工具解決了烹飪難題。智能秤則解決了發現體重增加時“厭惡減重失敗”的心理，心情變差往往會妨礙努力維持健康的決心。通過一系列溫和的改動調整行為是阿雷利創業的終極目標：“先研究人們常犯哪些錯誤，再想辦法幫人們改善。”

科技也讓阿雷利的工作更輕松了。他指出：“行為經濟學有一條原則是，環境很重要。”沒有數字技術的年代難以大規模應用。現在人人基本上都有智能手機，“我們可以變成環境的一部分。”在手機上花的時間越多，阿雷利等人就可以越方便地通過各種應用，各種追蹤器和提醒技術方便地管理個人行為。

當然，數字時代也有負面影響。我們越黏著手機，就越容易適得其反受其所控——注意力分散，花錢無節制，還容易因為沉迷上網忽略身體健康。（財富中文網）

作者：Laura Entis

譯者：Pessy

審稿：夏林

Duke University behavioral economics professor Dan Ariely has dedicated much of his career to understanding how—and why—we make decisions. It’s a question that’s led him down some interesting roads academically: He’s authored dozens of studies on examining everything from familiarity can “breed contempt”, why we attach more value to something when we give it up versus when we acquire it, and the effects of self-serving altruism. More recently, it’s catapulted him into the public sphere.

Over the past decade, Ariely has mastered the art of making intimidating academic results more accessible. Through his books and TED talks, he turns his complex, often ambiguous research into digestible, evidence-backed takeaways on topics such as why we tend to justify our own bad behavior, or how conflicts of interest affect our personal goals. By popularizing the science driving our decision-making, he wants to help us make better ones.

He’s also taking a more direct approach—one that comes with a financial incentive. Today, Ariely is involved with a handful of startups that help us make better (or less stupid) decisions on important stuff, including money, health, and insurance.

Ariely joined Qapital, a digital financial planning startup aimed at millennials, as a “chief behavioral economist” in 2015. Drawing on his research, he worked with the company to design features such as ‘the guilty pleasure rule,’ which automatically saves a small amount each time a user orders a latte from Starbucks, say, or goes online shopping, and ‘the roundup rule,’ which does exactly what it says it will, converting odd pennies into savings. The overarching goal is to make saving money as frictionless as spending it.

He’s also an advisor to Lemonade, a New York-based insurance startup that just raised $34 million in Series B funding. When he first met with founders Daniel Schreiber and Shai Wininger in 2014, he was impressed by their technology but ambivalent about joining in an official capacity. That changed when he heard their goal: to create an insurance system that fostered trust, not suspicion, among its users.

As a behavioral economist, it was an intriguing problem to try and solve. “That’s when I became very excited,” he says. “As someone who has been studying conflicts of interest and dishonesty for 15 years, and I see how corrosive it can be.”

Under the traditional model, insurer’s and users’ incentives are fundamentally misaligned. Every successfully paid claim costs the insurance company money, hence the difficulty in getting them accepted in the first place (which, in turn, encourages fraudulent behavior in users, who often assume they’re getting screwed regardless). To correct for this, Lemonade takes 20% of premiums as a flat fee; when a policy ends, all unclaimed funds are donated to a nonprofit or charity, a rather elegant solution that removes the financial conflict of interest.

In addition to his role at Lemonade and Qapital (he has an equity stake in both companies), Ariely is the co-founder of Genie, a kitchen appliance that “cooks” nutritious cartridge meals (options include couscous and vegetables, chicken with rice, and miso ramen) in less than two minutes, and Shapa, a smart scale that displays shifts in weight on a five-point scale in lieu of pounds.

Both attempt to remove every-day obstacles—cooking and the counterproductive “loss aversion” we feel when we get on a scale and to find the number has inched up—that often stops us from making healthy decisions. This desire, to shape behavior via a series of gentle nudges, informs all of Ariely’s entrepreneurial work: “It’s about trying to take the research we know about what kind of mistakes people make, and figuring out how can we get people to make better decisions.”

Technology makes his job easier. “One of the principles from behavioral economics is that the environment matters,” he says. In a pre-digital world, this was hard to achieve at scale. But thanks to our smartphones, which, for many of us, are basically appendages at this point, “we can be part of your environment.” The more time we spend on our phones, the more seamlessly people like Ariely, through our various apps, trackers, and reminders, can control our behavior.

Of course, the reverse is also true. The more time we spend glued to our phones, the easier it is for people with the opposite goal—to distract us, to encourage spending, to keep us from going to the gym via online wormholes—to manipulate our actions.