The Science of Change

from the baggage that we had before. A lot of people who do make big change are looking at moments that feel like breaking points and doing it. Katie Milkman's a professor of behavioral economics at the University of Pennsylvania. She's also a friend and collaborator. We got to work together on some projects when I was in the Obama White House, and she happens to be an expert on change. As you know, this show is all about how people navigate the big changes in life. We're talking swing for

the fences, change your life type changes. What Katie's research has taught me over the years is that small tweaks to our mindset in daily behaviors can actually inspire big change within ourselves. I've personally been using insights from Katie's research in my own life for a while now. In this special episode, Katie and I dive deep into the science of change. I hope our conversation will leave you with some valuable tips to help your approach change differently

in your own life. I'm Maya Shunker and this is a slight change of plants. Well, Katie, I was curious to know how you got into the topic of change. Honestly, I was in love with behavioral science, but it took me a little while to figure out that I wanted to focus on change. And what happened is I went to a seminar over at the med school and there's a bunch of brilliant people over there thinking about behavioral science and medicine. How can we help patients make better decisions?

How can we improve the decisions of doctors as well? And I was in this seminar and a graph went up, which normally doesn't change your life, but this graph changed

my life. The graph just showed a breakdown of how many premature deaths are due to different causes from accidents, to environment to daily decisions, and forty percent of premature deaths turn out to be the result of decisions that we can change on a daily basis about things like whether or not we drink or smoke, what we eat, whether or not we're physically active, we buckle our seat belts. Those kinds of decisions accumulate more than I could have

ever imagined. I had just no idea of the magnitude. And when I saw that and realized, you know, the tools of behavioral science could be applied to improve health outcomes and health decisions, I could have this enormous impact. And then then I sort of started thinking, like, Okay, well, if it matters that much with health, it's sort of obvious that it would accumulate in areas like savings and education similarly, even if I've never seen an exact breakdown

of that sort. So that really just got me excited about the potential to use this thing that I found so interesting, so exciting and fun to actually have an impact. So that was it for me. I'm really curious about how your journey changed, because you've had many career shifts, but you certainly went from you know, a more laboratory based focus too, you know, jumping into the White House to tackle change head on from a policy perspective, how

did how did you shift? It's interesting because in my mind my big shift in life was from the violin to cognitive science. But I'm just remembering, like, oh wait, I also had this other really big shift. And I think this is true across science too, But certainly when we were working in the government, the stakes feel so high you just can't screw up because these are real people's lives and they can be affected by the work you're doing. And yeah, it's so funny. I mean, we

actually worked together on some projects. Actually one of them used an insight from your book, and it was the fresh Start effect. And I'm curious if you can share what the fresh start effect is. It was very exciting at the time to have caught off the press's research coming out of your lab actually applied to a problem

that we were trying to solve in the government. So my research group has studied this phenomenon where at the beginning of sort of a new chapter in your life, you are more motivated and likely to make a change. And we've often studied small changes in this context, like you go to the gym more, or you search on Google for the term diet more frequently, or you're more likely to set a goal on a goal setting website.

But I also think you know where the interest in this topic came from was the realization that a lot of people who do make big change are looking at moments that feel like breaking points and doing doing it. And so I tell stories about bigger changes in my book, moments when you leave college and you shift identity is and take on a new role, or when you become a parent. Those moments they feel like new beginnings and chapter breaks in our lives, and I think they're freeing

in a way. They free us from the baggage that we had before. But they can also be freeing psychologically because we feel like you're a new person. You can take on a new identity, whatever wasn't working before, whatever ambition you failed to have before you couldn't shed that, and say okay, now I can do it. So anyway, I do think we could study big change, and I actually think some of the research we've done around small change is inspired by a recognition that these might also

be the triggers for big change. Was there a particular moment in your life where you felt the fresh start effect play out where it really felt like a new beginning and there was a certain set of habits or behavior changes that you witnessed. Oh my gosh. I mean, you know, I do mesearch, so totally, meaning like a lot of my research is motivated by like, oh wow,

that's weird. I wonder if other people And then I asked my friends, Oh yes, me too, and then I realized, okay, like this might be this might be something we're studding. I will say one example that I love is that I realized I wanted to write this book for a long time. Finally what happened that triggered it when I actually began. My son was three years old. We decided we were going to move out of our apartment into

a house. We bought the house, we signed the papers, and that day I said, you know what, I'm ready, We're moving to a new house. It's a fresh start. This is the moment and the project started from there, So that that was a big one for me. Interesting.

One of the anecdotes around the fresh Start that I love the most is Obama decided that he would stop smoking for good when the Affordable Care Act passed, and I was like, wait, a next level the fresh start effects, like he truly chose a once in a lifetime experienced to anchor his commitment on. And it was like aligned on, you know, it was aligned on like a health focus. Yes, of course, of course Obama one ups all of us and does the thing in the best way imaginable. Duh.

But I do love that, Like there's no other future, one of those where he can be like old. Maybe I can cave a little now because they'll be this other right the other time I passed right the other times healthcare as president. I love that, and I don't. I don't think I knew that. Actually, that's amazing. Um, have you used the fresh start effect maya, or like in hindsight? Have you ever noticed that a fresh start shifted? I have some I swear, I swear to God every

Sunday I'm committing to eating healthily. It's just that there's too many damn Sundays, and so I always feel like I've gotten you fall on to give it a go. Yeah, but yeah, I mean, I think it's it's hard for

so many of us to keep our resolutions. And in reading your book, it did make me think, okay, choose really remarkable milestones for pivoting, like big moves like when I moved from DC to California, getting married, big events like that, Because I do think you feel like your identity is changing a bit, and any behaviors at a company identity shifts might be more sticky, or at least they have than in my experience. I think that's right.

And you get the benefit not only of the sort of psychological break and the fresh start and opening a chapter, but you also have physical change, which is so important to disrupting sort of bad habits or routines and giving you that real blank slate to build upon and say like, oh, I'm not going to go to the burrito shop every day for lunch, or you know, whatever your bad habit

is that you want to kick um exactly. Yeah. I think one of my favorite insights from the book, and it's instead I've been using in my own life since I read your research years ago, is around temptation fundling. Do you mind for sharing what that is? And then I'd love to let you know how I've been using it. Yeah, yess, I want to hear about your temptation bundeling um that this is gonna be fun. So temptation. Bundling is a solution I came up with because I had two problems.

Um taking you back to grad school again. I was taking all these hard engineering classes, and I was stressed out, and I'd come home after a long day of classes, and all I wanted to do was just like indulge in entertainment, right like turn on Netflix and binge watch TV, read tempting novels. So I just wanted I wanted to dive into that in a scape my reality, and I didn't want to do my problem sets. On the flip side,

I also knew I should really be getting exercise. I was an athlete in college, but again when I came home from a long day, I didn't want to put on sweats and go to the gym. So these two problems, like I couldn't get myself to do my homework because I was procrastinating indulging in all this entertainment, and I couldn't get myself to exercise, And all of a sudden, I realized, like, wait a minute, what if I solved

them all at once? What if I only let myself enjoy this entertainment that I love so much while I'm exercising, I'd start craving trips to the gym to find out what happens next in my latest page turner. And I would stop wasting time at home on this sort of literary garbage that normally captures my attention, and I just focus on my problem sets. And I started doing it. Was just like magic. I worked out every day. Time flew while I was at the gym because I was

engrossed in Harry Potter or Alex Cross. And when I got home, I was ready to work because I'd already had my indulgence and I wasn't as stressed out. And I also realized like I could use them not only to help me exercise, but in lots of places, like if you just tie something tempting to a chore, you can magically turn it into something you look forward to and do less of that indulgent thing and feel less

guilty about it. Like you know, if only you get a glass of wine while you're making a home cooked meal, or listen to your favorite podcast while you're doing chores. For all your listeners who are doing laundry right now, Katie and I are carrying you on. Go for it. Yes, your temptation bundling. You didn't know there was a name for it, Yes, exactly. Okay, So I one of my favorite things in life is discovering a new pop song

that I love. And what makes me really sad is that I very quickly like it loses the spark after a certain number of listens, Like you just know you only have fifteen amazing listens with a song and before before it kind of becomes old hat, right, So as soon as I discovered an amazing song, I will only allow myself to listen to it while I'm working out

from that point on. And like, I'm a really non fun wife because my husband sometimes and I will discover the song together and we'll be cooking in the evening, We'll be having fun. He's like, hey, let's play that new album by Casey Musgraves, who's one of my favorite artists. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, you don't understand. That's only like a treadmill elliptical song because I just feel like I have to protect it and save it. But it certainly makes the work out a lot more

tolerable and a little bit more exciting. So yes, I love pop music too, and I feel like we should trade some song recommendations later so we can each share. It's now very seriously tied to my exercise between In fact, the one thing that can happen is when you temptation bundle. Sometimes what can happen is the intrinsic extrinsic motivation balance

gets thrown off kilter a bit. So it's like, initially I'm just using all of my internal will to go exercise, but now I've got this extrinsic motivator, which is a song. So on the rare occasion where like my headphones are out of battery or like my phone's Wi Fi is not working, I'm like, oh, I don't know if I can do this anymore. Just have to make sure your headphone are always working in your your iPhone is always charged or whatever. Yes, I'm wondering whether are for temptation bundling.

You see this plate on the wild in places that were behavior change feels a little bit more serious. That's interesting. I'm trying to think if I have a great answer for you. There's a study I love of teachers who are trying to figure out how to motivate their students to do more math. Problems, which kids apparently say they like doing math about as much as they like eating broccoli. So that tells you something about how delightful it is. And math is so important to everything, as we both know.

So these two researchers suggested, basically a temptation bundle. What if the kids could, you know, listen to music, have snacks markers that they like using. And they did that all on the day when they're doing their math worksheets, but not at other times. And the teachers were sort of skeptical. They were like, I think they'll focus less

could so I'll be distracted. And it turned out that kids persisted longer on math when they were randomly assigned to groups that had these i'll say temptations linked with them. It's not you know, it's not changing their lives in that day. It is cumulative. But I think that that's an example of like some of the big goals we have in life, whether it's getting through your math assignments or finishing a dissertation, if you can find a way to make it more enjoyable, that really matters. I love

the math example, I think for two reasons. I mean, the first is I just love any time research findings violated our expectations, you know, when the teachers are like, oh, I'm not really sure that this is a good idea, But then you're able to generate empirical data that runs counter to that hypothesis. That's wonderful because it's moving the field forward. And I think the other reason I love it is that, you know, success begets success, Passion begets passion.

It's kind of one of those things where if you get a kid just through that initial period they're just learning the basics, getting over those initial super hard humps, then they might actually realize that they really like this thing, and that just becomes easier and easier and easier to do every problem from that point forward. So I do feel like it can have massive long term effects. I'm with you, And if they have positive associations with math, I mean, what more could we hope for. We'll be

right back with a slight change of plans. In this episode, doctor Katie Melfin and I are talking about the science of change and the different techniques we can use to spur on that change. One technique is called a commitment device, which locks you into a plan to reach your long term goals. The key feature of a commitment device is that if you don't follow through with your plan, there's

some sort of penalty in place. I remember, I'm curious if you actually remember the experience of first learning about them, because for me, it was like mind blowing how powerful they were, and actually mind blowing how few people use

them given how powerful they are. But the study that I love that really I think illustrates nicely how much they can help us is a study where they partnered with a bank in the Philippines that saw low savings rates and wanted to figure out if there was a way to help people save more so they'd have the ability to have better health, have better life outcomes. Where they came up with this idea that one of the reasons people were having trouble accumulating savings balances is they

were constantly tempted to dip in. They were like, they opened the bank account and then they put some money aside, but then somebody's birthday or there's a holiday, and so the money came right back out and it never accumulated. And that people said, you know, actually, I'd kind of like it if I couldn't get them money out I kind of wish I couldn't act on those impulses. So they developed this new kind of account. It was a

commitment savings account. So you put money in and you are not allowed to take it out until a predetermin and date you choose or a savings goal you choose. They offered this kind of account to, you know, a random subset of customers alongside the usual account with the same interest rate, but free in and out access. They saved eighty percent more year over year than the control I mean eighty percent more savings. Right, you've studied savings

like that. That's life changing. So I love that story. That's a hard commitment because when you put your money in, there is another you know, there's a third party, the bank that is saying like, you cannot have it. It is not accessible to you. I'm preventing I'm preventing you from So there's like a hard restriction on access to something.

And a commitment device is something you voluntarily opt into that restricts you or penalizes you in some way if you don't achieve your goals or pursue your goals in the way you intend to. So that's a hard one because there's no fudging it. There's soft commitments in the world too, Like you know, you tell your partner or your mom you're going to do something, and then they ask them to give you a hard time if you don't. That's like a weak commitment device. You're gonna get a

little You're gonna get ribbed a little bit. You're accountable to someone, but you can back out. Yeah. I also remember learning about commitment devices for the first time. Gosh, we sound like such nerds. Do you are? For you, Katie, do you remember where you were Remember the day you learned about commitment devices? I mean remember exactly where I was. I mean I'm like, yeah, I was in a classroom.

My head exploded. Where were you? I was in my kitchen with my roommates, and I was reading this paper and I was like, oh, this is so exciting. The researchers ran a study in which they had people outline where, when, and how they were planning to get vaccinated. So that was my study. Oh my gosh, this is so fun. The flu shot study I'm talking about is your study. See that's awesome. Okay, well, the seminal work by doctor milkman Um so in your study. You ask people where, when,

and how you're gonna go get vaccinated? Right, And I think what was so studying to me is like you, so you write down this forum. You know, I maya nine am after or I drop off my husband at work and I go pick up my groceries. I'm going to go to the CBS can get my flu vaccine. And what was astonishing to me is that it significantly increased the vaccination rate despite the fact that you weren't

accountable to anyone, right in this intervention. You were not required to send the letter back to anyone, No one was on your case. You were literally just planning it out for yourself, and that was enough to significantly drive the numbers up, which to me again was such an extraordinary lightlift, low cost intervention that could potentially save people's lives.

And in your book you talk about the fact that we all have a fairly maybe not everyone, but many people have a very high view of themselves, so they feel like they might not benefit that much from commitment devices. And you know, we can be very over optimistic about our ability to use willpower to avoid temptation. And I'm wondering if you have any thoughts or advice for helping people overcome this over confidence so that they can achieve

their goals. Yeah, it's funny. Optimism is a really good thing, but in this particular case, it plays tricks on us that are problematic because we don't in general persevere as much as we think we will, and we do tend to be present biased, right, so we dramatically overweight whatever value will get from something instantaneously rather than the long term value. So you know, I can buy a present right now for myself, or I can put money in savings.

I'll take the present even if that's not really good for me in the long run. And if we don't appreciate that, this disconnect keeps happening, and we think we'll just barrel through and do what's in our long term best interests, we don't choose to use commitment devices because we don't recognize this challenge. So I think it's a

really tough nut to crack. And for me, the big thing was sort of seeing the data and seeing here's the evidence if you see it with your own eyes and you see how powerful these tools are, how often we do stumble even though we think we'll be able to push through. Maybe that evidence will be enough to get people to recognize this can be a really potent approach. You have lots of colorful anecdotes sprinkled throughout of real people who are facing these challenges and using these behavioral

tricks of the trade. And I do feel like in many ways you're wielding the power of social norms by saying, Hey, at least here's a collection of people who are willing to acknowledge that they may be a bit overconfident about their ability to use, for example, willpower to achieve their goals, and they're open to using some of these strategies. So maybe there could be a positive norm effect that comes from people reading your book Fingers Crossed. I love that.

I like that the modeling, and you know, anytime I can use insights about social norms to make the world a better place, I'm it's a win. What do you see in the future of change research? In your ideal feature. When I think about what I'm most intrigued by and feel like we've only scratched the surface of in studying change, there's two big things. One is durability. What are the kinds of tools that really propel change? In an incredibly

durable way, you know. I think a key takeaway for me has been, like, never stopped doing the thing that's working right. Don't like assume you can temptation bundle for a month, then you've built an exercise habit and magically, maya, you will never need to listen to a pop song again, and you'll always want to go to the gym. So you got to keep doing that. So we know that.

But are there any magical things that where if you sort of can put them on autopilot or do them for a little while and they propel you for it. I wonder I would love to uncover some if they exist. And then the other thing I'm really intrigued by is setbacks and how to sort of how to prepare for them and recover from them as effectively as possible. I think some of the most interesting ideas I have encountered around change work because they have they help us with

those setbacks. I think fresh starts sort of help us with the setbacks. They're like, okay, wipe the slate clean,

You're I get to get up and go again. There's wonderful work by my colleague Mersa Sharif on emergency reserves where she's figured out these clever ways that you set a tough goal, but give yourself a couple get out of Gael free cards if you can't achieve it every day of the week, and found that that's way better than giving yourself sort of like a slightly easier goal because you're going for the stretch, but you're giving yourself a little leeway. I think that also is like about

getting back up. So I think there's some really fundamental, interesting things to be explored around creating structures for success after a setback, and I look forward to studying that too, Katie. One of the things that I feel most intimidated by is this challenge of how it is we can change

people's minds. It feels like one of those really elicit things, and there's no one size fits all approach, And I'm just wondering if you have any thoughts on the most effective strategies you've seen, either in research or just in your personal life around how to change people's minds. Yeah, it's such an interesting question. It's obviously really hard, just like behavior change is hard, changing opinions is really hard. I think actually there are some common themes though, and

one common theme is exploration. So when we talked about the fresh start effect and how these disruptions in our lives can lead us to sort of be in a new environment and you can therefore explore and you don't have old bad habits necessarily already built to fall back on. There's also an opportunity to do that in terms of mindset shift. So I think when we have a set of beliefs and expectations, were less likely to explore and

read and talk to people outside of our perspective. But if we can, if there's a moment that career or forces some experimentation an exploration, that can be incredibly powerful. Yeah. I like that too, because it's not so pointed, right, It's not like I need you to change your opinion about this thing. It's let me just try to get

you to expose yourself to stuff. Period. I'm wondering if you have any concrete ideas on how we can motivate people to engage in that exploration, because exploration is very uncomfortable, right, Like we all have deeply entrenched views within us. Purposely going on a mission to challenge those views is not exactly the most fun adventure. It's just it's filled with cognitive dissonance. It just feels uncomfortable. And so how do

we incentivize people to go on those little missions? You know, I have to think that a big part of it is probably through social norms, which is such a powerful tool. For instance, if you end up with a roommate who's a good student, your grades are likely to be a bit higher. So you know, if we point out others like you who have changed their mind, it gives you license to say, like, oh, maybe, like it's reasonable for someone like meeting to keep exploring and keep thinking about

different ideas. I think that might be a way that we can introduce this exploration concept and not have it be too threatening and have it be appealing. I think that's exactly right. I mean, it's reminding me. There's this one interview I did with a woman named Megan Phelps Roper and she ends up leaving this hate group cult church, and I was asking her, are you using your platform today to convince other people? Because there's so much research

showing the power of a convert. So when you hold the views that this person in front of you previously held, and then you watch them walk you through their journey of changing their minds. It can open your mind in a really unique way because you feel attached to their former value system, right. You know that you started in the same place, but they ended up in a different place. I know the Department of Homeland Security uses this inside all the time by recruiting former extremists to try to

convert potential extremists away from that craft. It's so interesting too, because I'm thinking about like the original, like nineteen fifty five Solomon ash experiments where he'd bring all these people into a room and he'd show them two cards. One had one line on it and one had three and you had to figure out which of those three lines was the same length as the one line. And it seems like this really simple task and it was fairly straightforward.

People didn't get it wrong except when he introduced social pressure. So he'd bring a group in and have seven of them consistently give those same wrong answer before you give your answer, and people started messing up and they're like totally confused. But was really interesting, you know, that's the famous finding. When everybody else says the wrong answer, you go along with it a lot, and you actually believe

that you must be seeing things. One of my favorite subfindings that I think gets less play is that if there's just one truthful person in that set, so six people out of the seven say the wrong answer, but one says the right answer, you're much more likely to follow your intuition and say what you really think is right. So anyway, I think that that's interesting in relation to the sort of power of the one person who broke free.

Just seeing one person who agrees with your shows you a slightly different worldview, can make it possible for you to feel comfortable going against the grain. Yeah, I love that. So I really want to get your thoughts on this. We are living in a world right now where we're almost in like this self help moment right where everybody's trying to optimize their lives, and I do wonder where the limits are of that. And at one point you have to say, you know what, like, I just can't

spend my whole life trying to optimize. I just need to kind of be and live and exist. And the reason I asked that is it it's alarming to me. I'll hear certain people say, oh, yeah, no, it's super important to be bored because actually boredom makes you more productive, So even boredom is now an instrumental thing, were becoming more productive, Like oh yeah, make sure you stare out the window for at least five minutes a day, because

that'll help you be more productive. I feel like sometimes we don't just do things because we've we just value those things. We always do things because they have some instrumental value in terms of achieving something else. And and that's also super interesting, maya, because those are like little hacks, right, like, oh, you know, stare out the window for five minutes. And if we like fill our life with all those little hacks, we actually don't make space for the big momentous change.

That's so interesting. Yeah, and you're saying that because it's like, oh, it's just taking up all your brain airwaves that you're not Yeah, you just don't have the time to think macro. It's a great point. I think I'll wrap by asking what the biggest change you feel you've experienced in your life is. Oh, my gosh, there's so many, which is

part of what makes life so fun. I think honestly, one of the biggest most important changes for me went from being focused on figuring out how to do my own work or live my own life, to taking on the role of coaching and helping other people. All of those relationships sort of reinforce the same change, which is how meaningful it is to be looking out for someone else besides yourself, and how much you can learn about everything when you are coaching and helping someone else. And

that helped me actually be better at everything. So I would say that's the biggest shift I've had in my life, and I hope everyone will get that opportunity to have that kind of a shift. Wow, what a positive change, What a positive feet to end on. I know how busy you are, and I know how much you optimize your life in order to make room for these kinds of conversations. So thank you so much. It was really fun to chat with you. This was so fun. Oh

my gosh, hey, thanks for listening. See you next week. When I talk with rock climber Tommy called Well, he says a near death experience where he was taken hostage propelled him to become one of the best rock climbers in the world. I definitely always felt like adversity is what brings us to life, but this turned up the volume on that in a pretty incredible way. In some ways, my climbing ever since then has been an effort to almost get back there in a way and learn more.

A Slight Change of Plans is created an executive produce by me Maya Shunker. Big thanks to everyone at Pushkin Industries, including our producer Mola Board, associate producers David Jaw and Julia Goodman, executive producers Mia Lavelle and Justine Lange, senior editor Jan Guera, and sound design and mixed engineers Ben

Holliday and Jason Gambrel. Thanks also to Louise Gara who wrote our theme song, and Ginger Smith who helped arrange the vocals, incidental music from Epidemic Sound, and of course a very special thanks to Jimmy Lee. You can follow A Slight Change of Plans on Instagram at doctor Maya Schunker anytime they violate our sorry for frog in my throat. Actually like, even though I'm a vegetarian, I occasionally get a frog. You're not chewing all, it's not chewing, getting it right back out