[2] He is the author of the three New York Times best selling books Predictably Irrational, The Upside of Irrationality, and The Honest Truth about Dishonesty.

[3] In his senior year of high school, Ariely was active in Hanoar Haoved Vehalomed, an Israeli youth movement.

While he was preparing a ktovet esh (fire inscription) for a traditional nighttime ceremony, the flammable materials he was mixing exploded, causing third-degree burns to over 70 percent of his body.

[14] In 2006, when he was a professor at the MIT Media Lab, Ariely conducted experiments including administering electric shocks with a research assistant who had no human–subject training.

[16] Ariely confirmed that he was suspended from supervising data collection at MIT and said that he wasn't aware that the research assistant did not have the needed one-hour online human–subject training.

His laboratory at Duke, the Center for Advanced Hindsight, pursues research in subjects like the psychology of money, decision making by physicians and patients, cheating, and social justice.

[22] In 2021, a 2012 paper written by Francesca Gino, Max H. Bazerman, Nina Mazar, Lisa L Shu, and Ariely was discovered to be based on falsified data and was subsequently retracted.

[7][23][24][25][26][27] In July 2021, the journal Psychological Science challenged a 2004 paper by James Heyman and Ariely, "prompted by some uncertainty regarding the values of statistical tests reported in the article and the analytic approach taken to the data".

[39][41] Ariely's entrepreneurial ventures also include founding Shapa in 2017, a company focused on health monitoring and behavior change.

In it, Ariely distilled complex scientific concepts and provided accessible explanations for the forces that shape human behavior, motivation, and decision-making.

[48] Ariely has also presented talks at several TED, with titles such as "Our Buggy Moral Code" and "Unraveling the Mysteries of Human Behavior".

[54][7] Directed by Yael Melamede and released in 2015, (Dis)Honesty: The Truth About Lies is a documentary film exploring dishonesty in contemporary society.

With references to behavioral experiments and anecdotes—from athletic and academic cheating to political scandals—Ariely draws on his research on behavioural economics and irrationality to shed light on why and how people lie.

Numerous people make appearances in the documentary, including the author and marketer Ryan Holiday, to share their personal experiences with dishonesty and lies.