Fenster writes:

Do you know the behavioral economist Dan Ariely?

His work is worth knowing, and he is accessible to boot, the very model of the engaged scholar of the internet era: interested in both relevant research and the clear communication of results to a wide audience in an enjoyable manner.

His TED talks here, here, and here are interesting and highly entertaining.  Ditto his book Predictably Irrational.

He has a blog, too, in which he does some semi-public ruminating about his research ideas.  Here’s today’s post, in which he pulls a possible research idea from literature:

Not only do I find examples of behavioral economics in literature, sometimes I get research ideas from it. This passage from Wallace Stegner’s Angle of Repose was one such instance:

“Touch. It is touch that is the deadliest enemy of chastity, loyalty, monogamy, gentility with its codes and conventions and restraints. By touch we are betrayed and betray others… an accidental brushing of shoulders or touching of hands… hands laid on shoulders in a gesture of comfort that lies like a thief, that takes, not gives, that wants, not offers, that awakes, not pacifies. When one flesh is waiting, there is electricity in the merest contact.”

We already know that touch can change our behavior, for  instance, holding something for a few seconds makes us much more likely to buy it. But what about how touch, as slight as described here, changes interpersonal dynamics? How exactly might I test this idea? What might an experiment look like? And could I possibly get approval for it from the Institutional Review Board? More on this soon, I hope…

I subscribe to his blog and am interested to see if and how he formulates a research design for this, and how he gets it by an Institutional Review Board, which can be a persnickety creature.