Behavioral Grooves Podcast

Can we control our unconscious behavior? How much does the situation we’re in control us? Can we prime people to behave a certain way? Is it even ethical to try? To what degree do cultural identity and stereotyping impact the automaticity of our actions? Following on from our discussion with Dr Philip Zimbardo PhD, in our last episode (#247) about the Stanford Prison Experiment, we reached out to our friend and previous guest (episode #155), Dr John Bargh PhD, social psychologist at Yale University. As the world’s leading expert on the unconscious mind, John gave us fresh insight on how our behavior is primed by factors such as our cultural identity and even by who we are thinking about. Interestingly our conversation shifted towards changing attitudes in society and in particular the inspiration stance that athletes such as Simone Biles and Naomi Osaka have taken recently to prioritize their mental health. John describes them as pioneers: “what pioneers and leaders do is they give an alternative example for