It turns out that not everyone averted their gaze from Jeffrey Epstein’s ethical transgressions, with one behavioral researcher, Dan Ariely, actively seeking him out for insights into human nature and moral boundaries. According to The New York Times, he zeroed in on the convicted sex offender, often bringing up his past unbidden in their communications.
Ariely, a professor at Duke University’s business school, has built a reputation for understanding the human mind. This included its capacity for dishonesty and other “dodgy behavior,” so Epstein might have seemed like a tantalizing source of psychological insights. Ariely even shared that he was “deep into research on dishonesty and crime” at the time of their meetings, and many of those ideas became part of his book and documentary about dishonesty.
