Behavioral Grooves Podcast

Tara Austin is a strategist and was recently the Chief Strategy Officer for Kindred in London. Many of us know her for her public speaking events, like her presentation at Nudgestock in June 2020, and the amazing work she did with Rory Sutherland, Sam Tatam, and Jez Groom at Ogilvy over many years. We discussed a project she did with Ogilvy Change referred to as the Babies in the Borough. On the heels of the London riots in 2011, Tara wanted to see how a paper she’d read a few years earlier might apply to reduce crime in England. With the help of a master street painter, Ben Eine, the team gathered photos of babies from locals in the neighborhood and had them rendered on the security doors of businesses. After the babies’ faces were added to the shop shutters, the city saw declines in theft, vandalism and public urination year-over-year. We also talked about Edward de Bono, his development of lateral thinking and the six thinking hats. De Bono’s work can help us improve our decision making, which is likely to

Elspeth Kirkman is responsible for BIT’s work on health, education, and local government. Prior to this role, she oversaw the establishment and growth of BIT’s North American office from New York. She has taught behavioral science at Harvard, acts as an expert advisor to a number of global institutions, and serves as a Senior Fellow for Casey Family Programs, advising on the applications of behavioral and decision science to child welfare systems. Prior to joining BIT in 2013, Elspeth was a management consultant working with government clients around the world. Due to some technical challenges, we weren’t able to record a full hour of conversation. However, in the time we had available we discussed how important models can be in helping us solve problems, especially the COM-B model. (COM-B focuses on three aspects of behavior change and they are Capability, Opportunity and Motivation.) We also discussed the central pillars for good application of behavioral science. Elspeth used words like, “context” and “pra

Shlomi Ron is the CEO of the Visual Storytelling Institute. He co-founded the institute after 20 years of digital marketing with some of the largest brands in the world. Its purpose is to help business leaders rise above the noise through the power of storytelling and the effectiveness of visual media.   Shlomi is an author and his latest book is “Total Acuity: Tales with Marketing Morals.”  In it, he offers readers relatable real-world stories that reinforce the powerful visual storytelling principles.   We talked to Shlomi in the days just prior to Miami’s 2nd wave in the Coronavirus pandemic about the value that visual storytelling can have on pro-social initiatives such as homelessness. We also discussed the challenges advertisers and brands have at capturing our attention and some tips for accomplishing that.   We were also introduced to the concept of Social Semiotics, the way communication tools vary in social settings and context.   Links Shlomi Ron: http://www.shlomiron.com Visual Storytelling Instit

Stephen Wendel, PhD is an applied behavioral scientist who studies how digital products can help people take action more effectively. He currently serves as Head of Behavioral Science at Morningstar, leading a team of behavioral scientists and practitioners who conduct original research on saving and investment behavior.   Steve has authored “Designing for Behavior Change,” “Improving Employee Benefits,” and “Spiritual Design.” He is also a co-founder of the non-profit Action Design Network that focuses on educating the public on how to apply behavioral research to product development with monthly events in fifteen cities.   In our conversation, we talked about epistemic humility, which is a cool concept that was new to both Kurt and Tim. We also discussed a few of our favorite topics including the role of behavioral science in the corporate world, the ethical application of behavioral science, and how important context is to … well, everything.   We hope you enjoy our conversation with Steve and encourage yo

[NOTE: This episode is republished from #50 in January 2019.] Robert Cialdini, PhD is counted among the greatest psychological researchers alive today and his published works have been cited thousands of times. His New York Times best-selling book, Influence, from 1984, is considered a classic for classroom and corporate use alike. He is an ardent author and a passionate professor, and his work has impacted millions. In short, Bob Cialdini has shaped the landscape of how sales and marketing workers do their jobs and how researchers frame their studies. In this episode of Behavioral Grooves, Bob took a few minutes to discuss some of his most underappreciated research and some of the new things he’s working on. We began with a study that used littering as a way to predict, before the polls closed, the outcome of an election by watching how voters treated candidate fliers left on their cars. One of the very elegant aspects of this study was that it required no surveys – merely the observation of behaviors in the

[NOTE: This episode is republished from #74 in June 2019.] This episode is a discussion on the principle of scarcity. Kurt and Tim attempt to illuminate the power of this very fundamental effect in behavioral science with some real-world examples. Simply put, the scarcity effect is that people want more of those things they can have less of. It’s terribly powerful and is evident in many aspects of our lives. “Sale ends tomorrow” is one of the strongest tools in a marketer’s handbook, and Kurt and Tim discuss that and others and the ways they impact behavior. We also talk about the implications of scarcity and how scarcity helps us prioritize and can actually increase focus in our lives. This episode is the third in our series on the Principles of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini, PhD. The other principles from Cialdini’s work have been discussed in previous episodes and you can check them out at the Behavioral Grooves website. The principle of Reciprocity was overviewed in episode #57 and the principle of Consis

[NOTE: This is a republished episode from #99 in November 2019.] Katy Milkman is no ordinary behavioral scientist. She’s a Professor of Operations, Information and Decisions at Wharton. She has a secondary faculty appointment in the University of Pennsylvania’s Medical School in the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy. She’s Co-Director, with Angela Duckworth, at the non-profit Behavior Change for Good Initiative. She’s the host of one of our favorite podcasts, called Choiceology, she is in the middle of writing a book, and she’s a Mom and Partner all at the same time! We are grateful to her for taking time to record a conversation with us about her work on temptation bundling, the sorts of projects she’s getting at the Behavior Change for Good organization, and a few tidbits about what her book, coming out in 2021, will have in store for the readers. Most importantly, Katy shared three important pieces of wisdom about behavior change during our conversation: 1. Behavior change is hard – cut yourse

[NOTE: This episode is republished from #92 in October 2019.] Goals are often misunderstood. Goals are much more than just objectives that are handed down to subordinates. Rather, goals are self-determined in the best cases, and at the very least, are set collaboratively to get the most out of them. We discuss Goal Setting Theory (GST), results from research that Tim conducted, and we address the three key elements that must be included to maximize the effect of the goals: 1. The goals must be perceived as achievable. Without perceived achievability, the goal is not accepted and, therefore, not a goal. 2. There must be some involvement with those who are executing the goals. If the goal is handed down from on high without meaningful participation from the person who’s going to act on it, it’s not a goal. 3. There must be a positive relationship between the goal and the reward (including a perceived assessment of risk). As the risk of achievability increases, so must the perceived value of the reward. This sho

Caroline Webb, a Senior Advisor at McKinsey, is an executive coach, author, and speaker specializing in insights from behavioral science to improve our lives at work. Her book on that topic, How To Have A Good Day, has been published in 14 languages and in more than 60 countries. One of her past jobs was to contribute to the world economic forecast, and she is fluid in her ability to speak with authority on a wide spectrum of topics. This session was recorded in February 2020 in the early days of the lockdown and we realize Caroline's words of encouragement to identify even the smallest things that we can control stand up well today.  We found profound value in her reminder that in times of great upheaval, we can still control our kindness,  She spoke with determination on the importance of intentionality and deliberateness in our daily lives, but she tweaked these ideas with a special twist. Caroline noted that ‘batching’ our lives - the use of compartments and guardrails for work, news, work-outs, socializi

Margaret Robinson Rutherford, PhD, is a clinical psychologist in private practice with more than twenty-five years of experience treating individuals and couples for depression, anxiety, and relationship issues.  She also offers her compassionate and commonsense therapeutic style to the general public through her popular blog and podcasts, with the goal of decreasing the stigma around psychological treatment. Her podcasts and shows on perfectly hidden depression (PHD) have reached thousands, as she sheds light on this overlooked presentation of the disease. She is also the author of PERFECTLY HIDDEN DEPRESSION: How to Break Free from the Perfectionism that Masks Your Depression.  We wanted to speak to Margaret about a syndrome she’s identified that is increasingly common during the lockdown. Perfectionism and shame are getting in the way of people living healthy lives, especially now. Also, what may sound like bird sounds and wind chimes in the background are actually the sounds of live birds and wind chimes!

We saw an article in the Wall Street Journal titled “When Workers Can Live Anywhere, Many Ask: Why Do I Live Here?” and it got us thinking. Millions of white-collar workers have been displaced from their offices and are being told they are on indefinite work-from-home status. And many of those workers are opting to leave the big cities where the virus has been most aggressive. In addition to the temporary exodus to more rural settings, some people are leaving big cities to find permanent solace in the countryside. This got us thinking about how humans are predictably irrational about decisions about their futures. The biases about future happiness go hand in hand with changing where you live. The article that got us thinking about this was written by Rachel Feintzeig and Ben Eisen. Together, they do a great job of assembling data on the movement during the heart of the crisis and notes that even with a major recession hitting the global economy, many people feel the need to move. © 2020 Behavioral Grooves   L

Elizabeth Gilbert, PhD is the Head of Research at PsychologyCompass, a content platform that uses insights from psychology and neuroscience to teach people how to be happier and more productive. She has a PhD in social psychology from the University of Virginia and a postdoctoral fellowship at the Medical University of South Carolina. And she’s been engaged in the replication of studies that were, on one level or another, considered questionable. We talked with Elizabeth about her work on Imaginal Exposure, the process of imagining your worst fears to overcome those very concerns and how they might prove relevant in such uncertain times as these. We also discussed human’s native power of adaptability and the tremendous benefits of making lists - again, the payoff during uncertain times is even greater. Elizabeth’s comments combined her work as a researcher and her role as a mother in the most authentic ways and we thoroughly enjoyed our conversation with her. We hope you will, too. © 2020 Behavioral Grooves  

John Bargh, PhD is a Professor of Psychology and Management at Yale University. His name may be familiar because of the replication crisis, but there is so much more to John Bargh than a couple of experiments that were challenged during replication. John has authored more than 100 peer-reviewed articles, chapters in over 30 books, and he founded The ACME lab at Yale in order to research the unconscious and implicit influences on social judgment, motivation, and behavior.  Over the years, his research has focused on embodied cognition effects, or how physical experiences (such as washing one’s hands or holding something warm or rough) influence metaphorically related social variables (like how physical warmth leads to feelings of physical warmth, for example).  Recently, he’s been focused on how social goals and political attitudes can be influenced by the satisfaction of underlying physical-level motivations; for example, how immunization against the flu virus influences attitudes towards immigration as ‘inva

Howard Friedman is a data scientist, health economist, and writer with decades of experience in both the private and public sectors, as well as academia. He is widely known for his work as a statistical modeler and he currently lives in New York City and teaches at Columbia University.  Howard's new book, Ultimate Price: The Value We Place on Life, is about how the monetary values assigned to our lives by governments, medical professionals, and insurers can determine who will survive during times of crisis.  We talked to Howard about different models for the valuation of human life and how the crisis has revealed many opportunities for improvement.  The conversation’s content is sobering, but Howard keeps things light, whenever possible. We hope you’ll enjoy listening as much as we did.  © 2020 Behavioral Grooves Links Connect with Kurt and Tim:  Kurt Nelson, PhD: @WhatMotivates  e-mail: kurt@lanterngroup.com  Tim Houlihan: @THoulihan  e-mail: tim@behavioralchemy.com  Lantern Group: http://lanterngroup.com/ B

On May 25, 2020, a white Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd, an unarmed black man, by holding him down with a knee on his neck for over 8 minutes. This was done while three other officers either helped in holding down Mr. Floyd down or stood by watching.  Mr. Floyd’s death is an unimaginable horror as it was not the result of a split-second or hair-trigger decision, but a callous, calculated effort that lasted more than 8 minutes.   This killing kicked off a week of protests which grew darker as the nights went on.  As many as 81 buildings in Minneapolis have been burned, with 25 of them completely destroyed, and 270 businesses have been vandalized since Mr. Floyd’s death. This hits home for Tim and Kurt. Tim lives only a few miles from the epicenter but has had people racing down his street, as they were deterred from the closed freeways by roadblocks – some of them threatening his neighbors with harm.  Kurt lives only blocks away from where some of the protests occurred and could smell the smoke

Chris Pfeiffer is a Senior Business Analyst at Tegra Analytics. Chris specializes in salesforce effectiveness in the life science industry, which includes incentive compensation, targeting and segmentation, sales force sizing and optimization, statistical analysis, and business intelligence.  Chris graduated from The Johns Hopkins University, where he received his Master of Science in Government Analytics, and La Salle University, where he received his Bachelor of Science in Business Administration (major in Finance with a minor in Economics).  We spoke to Chris about some of the challenges brought on by the coronavirus crisis. We discussed sales quotas and sales compensation in an era where nearly nothing can be forecasted because there is nothing “business as usual” about our world today. He offered some excellent tips on how sales leaders can help manage their way through these uncharted waters.  © 2020 Behavioral Grooves Links Connect with Kurt and Tim:  Kurt Nelson, PhD: @WhatMotivates  e-mail: kurt@lant

Dan Hill, PhD is an internationally recognized expert on the role of emotions in politics, business, sports, and popular culture. He pioneered the use of facial coding (the analysis of facial expressions) in market research and has done work for over half of the world's top 100 consumer-oriented companies. He’s even received seven U.S. patents related to facial coding and he is an author on top of that. We talked to Dan about one of his recent books called Famous Faces Decoded: A Guidebook for Reading Others. Unless you’ve never been lied to in your life, you know that words don’t tell the whole story: our faces often give away our true emotions. Frankly, we needed a break from our series on the coronavirus and Dan was just the balm we were looking for.  Dan shares humous anecdotes and insights into the real emotions of the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Prince, Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, and you may imagine, Donald Trump. And in our grooving session, Kurt and Tim explore the potential evolutionary reasons for o

Claire Bidwell Smith is a licensed therapist specializing in grief and the author of three books of nonfiction, most recently ANXIETY: The Missing Stage of Grief. She has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, and a variety of other publications.  She received her Master’s Degree in clinical psychology from Antioch University, and has recently transitioned her therapeutic practice to the East Coast of the United States while working with clients around the globe. Our discussion with Claire focused on how a crisis is unique in its ability to generate grief, as well as anger and pain and anxiety. We talk about common problems that surface from not being able to grieve during the crisis in the same ways we would have traditionally. Claire shares some tips on how to manage grief during the pandemic and, interestingly, her list begins with “cut down on your screen time.” In our grooving session, Kurt and Tim discuss anticipatory grief and how difficult this experience is with no reasona

Kristen Berman is the co-founder of Irrational Labs and co-founder and principal at Common Cents Lab,  a non-profit behavioral consulting company, with Dan Ariely. They work focuses on the financial well-being of low-to-middle-income Americans. She was also on the founding team for the behavioral economics group at Google and hosts one of the top behavioral change conferences globally, StartupOnomics. She co-authored a series of workbooks (with Dan Ariely) called Hacking Human Nature for Good: A Practical Guide to Changing Behavior. Our conversation with Kristen began with some straightforward tips on boosting productivity while working in isolation, including intentional coordination and informal things like virtual lunch meetings. And she pointed out how too many emails and Zoom meetings crowd out time to think, analyze and, well, work.  She also suggested a framework for creating “Quaranteams” and how we need to develop new social norms on how non-nuclear families can work and play together.  We’re wonderi

Stephen Curtis, PhD is a Clinical Psychologist with a doctorate in Neuroscience Experimental Psychology. He specializes in Performance Psychology with professional and college athletes, musicians, and corporate leaders to help them reach their highest levels of performance.  Steve is the author of the proprietary Clarity Survey which has become a business research best practice instrument with Fortune 500 companies. Clarity uses common language answers to detect what consumers and employees consider their ideal CX and EX experiences, and in so doing, it offers tremendous insights for business leaders.  In this episode, we focused on the ways in which our brain literally changes as we reinforce particular behaviors, as described by Hebb’s Law, and the enormous benefit of neuroplasticity. We also discussed the impact that BHAG’s (big hairy audacious goals) have on the frontal polar cortex of the brain and how it’s those monstrous goals that engage our imaginations, emotions, and as a result, our behaviors.  Mos