(Dan Ariely) ♫ Wise men say...♫
No. Should I sing? Not really, uh?
(A woman, off, laughs, then:) No, really you shouldn't sing, no.
(Ariely) This is Aileen saying I shouldn't sing.
So, I try all kinds of things, sometimes they work, sometimes they don't.
Singing, clearly, is not one of them.
I wanted to thank you for taking this class.
As you can see, I'm unshaved and tired.
It's because it has been a very long period.
It was taxing and demanding, but also very enjoyable.
But I want to link something, kind of broad, about the experience,
to something we learned about.
So you remember the principle of loss of urging.
The principle of loss of urging is that we suffer more from negative things
than we enjoy positive things.
And it is this asymmetry that going below is painful,
going above is just not that happy.
And I discovered that, of course, we all experience it in our day-to-day lives.
For me, one of the strongest case was when I wrote my first book.
Mostly, I got very good reviews,
but there was one review that was just terrible.
And you know what?
I remember that review in much more detail than I remember the positive ones,
which is our tendency to focus on the negative things.
And actually, the same thing, basically, happened in the class.
You know, from time to time, we had people in the class who complained.
And we had people who complained on the fora,
we had people who called Duke,
we had a few people who kind of made our lives very, very difficult
and if I think about the balance,
then most of you have been appreciative, and fantastic, and helpful,
very few have been negative,
but the problem is that the negative comments loom so large.
The vast, vast, vast majority of you were so helpful, and
kind of, I felt, came to the rescue, then basically tried to even out
the forces of ev--- no, tried to even out the negative comments.
And I really appreciated this, you know, this is an effort that we're doing
out of our feeling of camaraderie and participation and helpfulness
and we are delighting in participating in this community
that formed together for a few weeks to study together social science
and learn and reflect and think together,
and it's been a great experience.
And there is no question that I'm paying much more attention
to the negative comments, and there is no question
that they've impacted my well-being in the last few weeks,
and all the people who have been involved in the class for the last few weeks
to a larger degree, but I do think incredibly fondly about
the people who have been positive
and I think, this has been such a force of good and you know,
I think this is one of the things that is incredibly important:
how do we create a community?
How do we create a community that, even when there's some outliers
who try to make things not as good for everybody,
how do we make sure the community strives and continues and so on?
And you know, we do learn from the bad, so that's good,
but I do want to remember the positive.
So, what is the big positive positive?
I'll tell you, when I look at the activity around,
I feel that we've created a community of people who care about research
and people who care about each other,
and people who are interested in the same topic:
we gathered around the world, and people spent a substantial amount of time
listening to me, talking to each other, reading papers.
And that kind of activity,
that kind of ability for people to get together across the world and do something
together in social science is really exciting.
And that, for me, is the biggest positive impact, and I thank you all
-- save for a few of you -- for participate in it.
So thank you very much. Now I'm going to sleep for a few days
and hopefully, we'll see you online at some point.
Bye for now.
♫ Wise men say: only fools rush in♫ ♫but I...♫
[cah Center for Advanced Hindsight an advanced insight production]