[NOTE: Republished in its entirety from original episode #104 on December 15, 2019.] Eugen Dimant, PhD is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Master of Behavioral and Decision Sciences Department and a Senior Research Fellow at the Identity and Conflict Lab, Political Science Department – both at the University of Pennsylvania. His research is rooted in economics and sits at the crossroads of experimental behavioral economics, behavioral ethics, crime, and corruption, with much of his recent work f...
Aug 30, 2020•56 min•Ep 170•Transcript available on Metacast Nicole Fisher, DrPH is the president of Health and Human Rights Strategies and is a regular contributor to Forbes magazine on social justice issues. Her piece in Forbes about “The Psychology of Protests” is an excellent analysis of why people take to the streets. Nicole earned a Master’s in Public Health from the University of Chicago, then her Doctorate of Public Health from Chapel Hill, and she was also an Economics Fellow at George Mason University. We felt we could go wide and deep on our co...
Aug 23, 2020•1 hr 14 min•Ep 169•Transcript available on Metacast 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 migh...
Aug 16, 2020•1 hr 8 min•Ep 168•Transcript available on Metacast 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 mana...
Aug 10, 2020•1 hr•Ep 167•Transcript available on Metacast 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 princi...
Aug 02, 2020•1 hr 12 min•Ep 166•Transcript available on Metacast 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 f...
Jul 26, 2020•1 hr 17 min•Ep 165•Transcript available on Metacast [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 wor...
Jul 19, 2020•1 hr 20 min•Ep 163•Transcript available on Metacast [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 an...
Jul 15, 2020•10 min•Ep 162•Transcript available on Metacast [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...
Jul 12, 2020•58 min•Ep 164•Transcript available on Metacast [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 p...
Jul 08, 2020•20 min•Ep 161•Transcript available on Metacast 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 o...
Jul 05, 2020•55 min•Ep 160•Transcript available on Metacast 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 s...
Jun 28, 2020•1 hr 9 min•Ep 159•Transcript available on Metacast 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 ...
Jun 21, 2020•21 min•Ep 158•Transcript available on Metacast 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 Imagin...
Jun 19, 2020•44 min•Ep 157•Transcript available on Metacast 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 rese...
Jun 14, 2020•2 hr 32 min•Ep 156•Transcript available on Metacast 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...
Jun 07, 2020•53 min•Ep 155•Transcript available on Metacast 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 ...
Jun 05, 2020•29 min•Ep 154•Transcript available on Metacast 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 Administrati...
Jun 03, 2020•47 min•Ep 153•Transcript available on Metacast 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 R...
May 31, 2020•1 hr 1 min•Ep 152•Transcript available on Metacast 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 d...
May 27, 2020•47 min•Ep 151•Transcript available on Metacast 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 ...
May 24, 2020•44 min•Ep 150•Transcript available on Metacast 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 consi...
May 19, 2020•59 min•Ep 148•Transcript available on Metacast Gary Latham, PhD is the Secretary of State Professor of Organizational Behaviour at the Rotman School of Management in the University of Toronto. His research in the field of organizational psychology has yielded over 200 peer-reviewed publications and he has written several books on the topic of goal setting. He and his lifelong research partner, Ed Locke PhD, are responsible for Goal Setting Theory, prized by both the scientific community and sales leaders around the world. He is the only reci...
May 17, 2020•2 hr 40 min•Ep 149•Transcript available on Metacast Mariel Beasley is the Co-Director of the Common Cents Lab at the Center for Advanced Hindsight at Duke University. She works on applications of behavioral research, primarily in the financial services sector and public policy arena. She holds a Master of Public Policy degree from Duke University and her previous work experience includes a variety of nonprofits and charitable foundations. As the leader of Common Cents Lab, she often develops partnerships with financial institutions to put behavio...
May 13, 2020•1 hr 5 min•Ep 147•Transcript available on Metacast Samuel Salzer is a leading behavioral strategist and habit expert, having worked with organizations across Europe, Australia, and North America. Among other things, he’s one of the first Chief Behavioral Officer's (CBO) in tech, applying insights from behavioral science and behavioral economics to build user-centered and habit-forming products and services. At the forefront of the emerging field of Behavioral Design, Samuel is a frequent keynote speaker, curates the popular newsletter Habit Week...
May 11, 2020•2 hr 31 min•Ep 146•Transcript available on Metacast Kaveh Yazdifard is the Chief Innovation Officer at Sahab Pardaz located in Tehran, Iran. He is also the Director of Urban Innovation for the city and COO of Avatech Accelerator, a firm focused on empowering business startups through a values-driven culture. While much of Kaveh’s work is focused on collaborating and creating value through Innovation, we were particularly interested in speaking with him about the way he applies Cognitive Psychology and Data Science to his work. And at this writing...
May 05, 2020•52 min•Ep 145•Transcript available on Metacast Gretchen Chapman, PhD researches how we make decisions about vaccines. She is a Professor in the Social & Decision Sciences department at Carnegie Mellon University and works across disciplines in both fields of judgment and decision making as well as health psychology. She is the recipient of an APA early career award and an NJ Psychological Association Distinguished Research Award, a fellow of APA and APS. She is a former senior editor at Psychological Science, a past president of the Society ...
May 03, 2020•57 min•Ep 144•Transcript available on Metacast Jules Nolan, PhD is a psychologist, speaker, and author. She is the president of the Minnesota School Psychology Association and chairwoman for the Human Diversity Committee for the International School Psychology Association. Her research, which has been conducted and published internationally, focuses on behavior, achievement, and wellbeing for school-aged children. She consults with parents and educators on how to manage family life and classrooms to help all children thrive. We talked to Jul...
May 01, 2020•1 hr 10 min•Ep 143•Transcript available on Metacast Our inspiration this week comes from an article written by Shayla Love for Vice titled, “You’ll probably forget what it was like to live through a pandemic.” We thought it would make a great jumping-off point for how we will remember this time as well as a discussion on memory in general. We explore how memories get shaped during historically significant times and how vividness and emotion play into those memories. But, as Shayla notes, we don’t remember things all that accurately. She points ou...
Apr 29, 2020•18 min•Ep 142•Transcript available on Metacast Greg Davies, PhD is a specialist in applied behavioral finance, decision science, impact investing, and financial wellbeing. He founded the banking world’s first behavioral finance team at Barclays in 2006, which he led for a decade. In 2017 he joined Oxford Risk to lead the development of behavioral decision support software to help people make the best possible financial decisions. Greg holds a PhD in Behavioural Decision Theory from Cambridge; he has held academic affiliations at UCL, Imperia...
Apr 28, 2020•1 hr 21 min•Ep 141•Transcript available on Metacast 
