About this item
Bestselling author Dan Ariely reveals fascinating new insights into motivation - showing that the subject is far more complex than we ever imagined.. Every day we work hard to motivate ourselves, the people we live with, the people who work for and do business with us. In this way, much of what we do can be defined as being "motivators." From the boardroom to the living room, our role as motivators is complex, and the more we try to motivate partners and children, friends and coworkers, the clearer it becomes that the story of motivation is far more intricate and fascinating than weve assumed. Payoff investigates the true nature of motivation, our partial blindness to the way it works, and how we can bridge this gap. With studies that range from Intel to a kindergarten classroom, Ariely digs deep to find the root of motivation - how it works and how we can use this knowledge to approach important choices in our own lives. Along the way, he explores intriguing questions such as: Can giving employees bonuses harm productivity? Why is trust so crucial for successful motivation? What are our misconceptions about how to value our work? How does your sense of your mortality impact your motivation?
About the Author
Dan Ariely is the James B. Duke Professor of Behavioral Economics at Duke University. He also holds an appointment at the MIT Media Lab where he is the head of the eRationality research group. He was formerly the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Behavioral Economics at MIT Sloan School of Management. Dan Ariely grew up in Israel after birth in New York. He served in the Israeli army and when 18 suffered third-degree burns over 70 percent of his body from an accidental magnesium flare explosion during training. Ariely recovered and went on to graduate from Tel Aviv University and received a Ph. D. and M.A. in cognitive psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a Ph. D. in business from Duke University. His research focuses on discovering and measuring how people make decisions. He models the human decision making process and in particular the irrational decisions that we all make every day. Ariely is the author of the book, Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions, which was published on February 19, 2008 by HarperCollins. When asked whether reading Predictably Irrational and understanding one's irrational behaviors could make a person's life worse (such as by defeating the benefits of a placebo) , Ariely responded that there could be a short term cost, but that there would also likely be longterm benefits, and that reading his book would not make a person worse off.
