Assertion Not checkable as stated
Ariely: Token female leadership appointments make female employees feel worse
“We found that some companies, when they assign women to high positions, The women within these companies feel worse. Why? Because they take it as an indication that the company doesn't really care about them, that they're only doing things to appeal to PR, lik…”
Insight
Ariely: Compensation fairness drives performance much more than absolute pay levels
“We found that overall level of compensation doesn't matter so much. Fairness, perception of fairness in compensation matters a lot.”
Insight
Ariely: Disparity in appreciation between management and rank-and-file hurts stock performance
“One of the things we find is that it's not about just the overall level of, let's say, feeling appreciated. So we find that feeling appreciated is a very good signal. But it's not just the overall level of being appreciated. It's the difference between how man…”
Assertion Supported
Ariely: The SHE Index systematically underperforms the S&P 500
“Yeah, so it does much worse. Systematically, repeatedly, by big gap.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Ariely: Low gender sentiment gap delivers 5% annual alpha over S&P
“When we look at our data, and we ask the question of, what is the gap? We said a lot of things are about relativity. So we said, for each company, let's calculate the gap between how men feel and how women feel. Like, you know, do you feel appreciated? What's …”
Assertion Supported
Ariely: Treating employees well generates 6% annual alpha
“And we find, if you look at our results, we have, like, six percent a year of alpha of treating your employees well does better.”
Insight
Ariely: Increasing pain intensity worsens memory far more than extending duration
“I found out that if you have a period of pain, and you make it longer, you don't actually remember it as worse, but if you change the amplitude, the intensity, you can make it much worse, and the nurses were doing the wrong thing. They were trying to minimize …”
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Ariely: Human capital factors almost universally outperform the S&P 500 in backtests
“It turns out that all of those strategies but one, all of these building blocks at one, beats the S&P on that time period, and the one that does worse is like tiny bit worse. Not all of them do as well as others. It's a You know, there's a range, but one from …”
Assertion Supported
Ariely: A $30 cash bonus cost Intel 5% to 6% in worker productivity
“In the money condition, it went up by about six percent on the first day, went down by 12% the next day. It actually backfired and went slightly up toward the control condition on the next two days, not catching up, though, to the control condition. And in gen…”
Insight
Ariely: Widening gap between leadership and employee sentiment signals shorting opportunity
“I will tell you that we find that in every company, when the gap between how Leadership feels about the company and how the rank and file employees feel about the company. As this gap grows, it's a good sign to short the stock.”
Insight
Ariely: Adding unstructured job interviews makes candidate hiring predictions worse
“Job interviews are notoriously terrible. You take somebody and you get their GPA, GRE, whatever, and then you add an interview, your prediction is worse. If it's a non-structured interview.”
Insight
Ariely: Uneven employee complaints signal worse performance than uniform dissatisfaction
“And if you find that people are complaining equally at management and at the level of the employee, this is not as a bad signal as if management is not complaining and employees are complaining much more.”
Insight
Ariely: ESG drives profitability primarily through employee motivation
“I think that the real pathway is For ESG, goes through employee motivation. If you think about it, the moment you are doing some version of ESG, presumably your employees are more on board. They feel that the company has better goals, the company is more conne…”
Insight
Ariely: HR should operate as an R&D function, not legal compliance
“HR in most company is a procedural process. Legal function. They do the sexual misconduct and the module. They worry about procedural things. I think that HR needs to be an R&D function. They need to continuously try different things and improve how the compan…”
Opinion
Ariely: Activist investors trying to reform corporate culture misunderstand it
“And I think that a lot of investors, a lot of activist investor look at companies where they don't like the culture and they say, let me buy that company and influence the culture. But I don't think they systematically understand the culture.”
Assertion Partly supported
Ariely: High-appreciation firms gained 15% in early COVID versus 5% market average
“The companies in general, if I remember correctly, between March and October, the stock market lost a lot and then gained a lot, and it was about five percent net overall. The companies that I'll tell you now about went up by 15%. That's a big gap, and those c…”
Assertion Partly supported
Ariely: Employee health and financial benefits only boosted performance during COVID-19
“So before COVID, we found that employee benefits didn't make a big difference. Financial benefits, health benefits didn't matter. During COVID, there was actually a positive effect of these benefits, and I think it's because period when people are more worried…”
Assertion Supported
Ariely: JPMorgan found his human capital data uncorrelated with ESG
“And the team at JP Morgan did a really nice analysis of our data. They were unbelievably thorough. I was deeply impressed by these guys, and it came basically with very good analysis and result, and it's kind of nice to have somebody like a third It's a little…”
Assertion Supported
Ariely: A gender-focused index underperforms a pure human capital index
“The real index was designed to maximize return from the beginning with no other constraint. The gender index was taking the best we had, but limiting it to companies who do well on, on gender. So it does not as well. Maybe we have something like slightly more …”
Assertion Supported
Ariely: Physical tracking coin doubled savings in Kibera study over 20% match
“And it turns out that the coin almost doubled savings compared to everything else, including 20% match.”
Insight
Ariely: People under-save because modern savings and insurance are socially invisible
“Every time we save or buy insurance, we don't get any positive reinforcement. Not from ourselves and not from the people around us. So think about the time when people used to save in goats, right? If you saved in livestock, you could come home from the office…”
Opinion
Ariely: HR is the least reputable and most bureaucratic corporate department
“HR, I think, is maybe the worst, least reputable department in almost every company. Maybe compliance is worse, but you know, it's a hierarchy of the company. HR, rather than
Being considered the R&D arm of the company is considered a bureaucracy that people d…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Ariely: Employee benefits are a lagging indicator, not a predictor of performance
“So for example, the dimension of benefits, that one changes much more as a result of how companies do financially rather as a lead indicator. And actually in our data, we don't see much of an effect for that.”
Assertion Supported
Ariely: Lemonade eliminates insurance conflicts by donating residual claims pools to charity
“So we decided to create an insurance company that takes a fixed amount of profit. When people sign up, they sign up around the charity. So let's say there's a thousand people that sign up around the World Wildlife Fund. They sign up around the World Wildlife F…”
Dan Ariely