Close your eyes and visualize a horse. Most people can picture the outline of the body, the color of the horse and the unique features of the animal. But some people simply don’t see any image at all. This lack of a mind’s eye is known as aphantasia . To help explain exactly what aphantasia is, and how it can affect behavior, we talk with Professor Adam Zeman who actually helped identify and name the neurological condition. Adam has a medical degree and a PhD in philosophy from Oxford University...
Sep 26, 2022•53 min•Ep 320•Transcript available on Metacast “The primary source of unconscious priming…is your conscious experience.” Our consciousness is where we bring everything together, where we integrate and form a rich integration of our experience. This result is that this experience gets spread out to all the processes of the mind which is pivotal to how priming, an unconscious effect, actually works. Dr John Bargh PhD is a researcher and professor at Yale University and is probably the leading researcher on behavioral priming and has been study...
Sep 19, 2022•1 hr 18 min•Ep 319•Transcript available on Metacast Rory Sutherland is a British advertising executive who became fascinated with behavioral science. Between his TED talks, books and articles, he has become one of the field’s greatest proponents. Rory is currently the Executive Creative Director of OgilvyOne, after gigs as vice-chairman of Ogilvy Group UK and co-founder of the Behavioural Sciences Practice, part of the Ogilvy & Mather group of companies. He is the author of The Spectator’s The Wiki Man column and his most recent book, which we hi...
Sep 12, 2022•2 hr 39 min•Ep 318•Transcript available on Metacast Psychology and neuroscience have proven that our minds do things on autopilot. These shortcuts (or heuristics) are laden with unconscious biases, which are juxtaposed to our self identity as a “good” person; one that isn’t racist, sexist or homophobic. Dolly Chugh believes we should set a higher standard for ourselves by being good-ish people. By implementing a Growth Mindset, a concept pioneered by Carol Dweck, we don’t hang on too tightly to our identity. We learn to change, and to be taught a...
Sep 05, 2022•1 hr 5 min•Ep 317•Transcript available on Metacast For many years, the general consensus by many researchers and practitioners was that providing people with short-term extrinsic rewards sapped their long-term motivation. This led to some organizations reducing or not using short-term rewards at all. However, this perspective has always had some detractors and now even more research shows that this belief is misleading. In this episode, Kurt and Tim explore the research paper by Indranil Goswami and Oleg Urmisky with the lovely title of “ The Dy...
Sep 02, 2022•7 min•Ep 316•Transcript available on Metacast The GodFather of Influence, Robert Cialdini joins us on Behavioral Grooves to share his motivation for expanding his bestselling book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion which now includes a completely new Seventh Principle of Influence: Unity. This additional principle can help explain our political loyalties, vaccine hesitancy and why media headlines can be so inflammatory. Another motivation for the revised edition to the book is to include more application to the Principles of Influence....
Aug 29, 2022•1 hr 19 min•Ep 315•Transcript available on Metacast Priming studies have had some negative press over the past ten years - some of it justified, some of it not. In this groove track, Kurt and Tim examine a 2018 study done by Alexander Stajkovic, Kayla Sergent, Gary Latham, and Suzanne Peterson called “ Prime and Performance: Can a CEO Motivate Employees Without Their Awareness? ” This field study, with real-world implications, demonstrated that the choice of words had an impact on company performance. The impact was not just statistically signifi...
Aug 25, 2022•10 min•Ep 314•Transcript available on Metacast Shankar Vedantam is the host of the wildly popular podcast, Hidden Brain and esteemed author of the book Useful Delusions: The Power and Paradox of the Self-Deceiving Brain . We initially interviewed Shankar in mid 2021 but want to highlight this discussion for you again as it is one we still discuss in more recent episodes. Before reading Shankar’s book and interviewing him for this podcast we were, as Shankar describes himself, card-carrying rationalists. We were firmly in the camp of believin...
Aug 22, 2022•1 hr 22 min•Ep 314•Transcript available on Metacast Three things generate a sense of meaning IN life; Coherence - can you make sense of the world? Purpose - do you feel a sense of purpose with what you do? And Significance - does your life matter? Having meaning in your life is correlated with a sense of self certainty. Knowing who you are and having a sense of self, gives you structure and a stable way of seeing the world. But how do you answer the question “who am I?” Our guest, Dr Brian Lowery PhD says the answer isn’t as individualistic as we...
Aug 15, 2022•1 hr 8 min•Ep 312•Transcript available on Metacast Incentives can improve motivation. But what actually happens when the incentive is removed? An influential body of research previously suggested that extrinsic rewards have a negative impact on intrinsic motivation. However, more recent studies show this not to be the case over the long term. Our guest, Dr Indranil Goswami PhD, talks us through the longer term effects of temporary incentives and the implications for motivating behavior change. Indranil is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at t...
Aug 08, 2022•1 hr 1 min•Ep 311•Transcript available on Metacast Groove Track | Why can’t you find a cab in the rain? We take a deep dive exploring the 1997 study “LABOR SUPPLY OF NEW YORK CITY CAB DRIVERS: ONE DAY AT A TIME,” by Colin Camerer, Linda Babcock, George Loewenstein, and Richard Thaler. This paper shifts through piles of data to look at how NY city cab drivers behaved - and what they found was an economic anomaly - the cab drivers did not behave as classical economists predicted. The data showed that the drivers worked shorter hours on days when t...
Aug 04, 2022•10 min•Ep 310•Transcript available on Metacast Love connects us to things in a deep way. But when we say we love our car, or we love our favorite beach, or we love our children, the love we express for each of those things is very different. So can we really love things as much as we love people? Our guest is Dr. Aaron Ahuvia , the world’s leading expert on brand love, a topic he pioneered and has worked on since 1990. He is a Professor of Marketing at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor’s Ross School of Business. Among the many books and p...
Aug 01, 2022•54 min•Ep 309•Transcript available on Metacast Disembarking people from a plane, row by row during the height of COVID, but then cramming all the passengers into a bus to the terminal…where is the common sense in that? Best selling author Martin Lindstrom laments that we are drowning in bureaucracy and that technology is contributing to the death of common sense in society. Founder and chairman of Lindstrom Company, Martin Lindstrom is also the best selling author of seven New York Times best-selling books. We talk with Martin about his most...
Jul 25, 2022•43 min•Ep 308•Transcript available on Metacast When making big decisions, people often go with what feels right - who we marry, where we live, what career we pursue. We base these decisions on our gut instinct. But what if our gut is biased, misinformed or quite simply wrong? Economist, former Google scientist, New York Times bestselling author and friend of the show Seth Stephens-Davidowitz has mined through thousands of data sets to prove that we are, in fact, frequently making ill-informed decisions when we only trust our gut. And we are ...
Jul 18, 2022•1 hr 13 min•Ep 306•Transcript available on Metacast Over the last 50 years, little has changed for the pharmaceutical management of mental illness. This is troublesome, but not unsolvable, according to The New York Times writer and author, Daniel Bergner. We talked with him about his most recent book, The Mind and the Moon: My Brother’s Story, the Science of Our Brains, and the Search for Our Psyches , and some of the key themes he discovered along his personal journey with a mentally challenged family member and other people he came to know well...
Jul 11, 2022•58 min•Ep 305•Transcript available on Metacast Customer feedback lacks two fundamental pieces of information: context and behavior. Traditional methods of insight, like the Net Promoter Score (NPS) and customer feedback surveys have their limitations. Andrea Belk Olson, our guest on this episode, challenges organizations to adopt a different approach to customer behavior by delving into the WHY and the WHAT, then coming up with a WOW hypothesis - a 3 step process called the 3W Ideation. Author of the new book, “What to Ask: How to Learn What...
Jul 05, 2022•58 min•Ep 304•Transcript available on Metacast Utilizing the power of identity by proudly declaring yourself as indistractable can be a persuasive step in becoming the kind of person we want to be. By changing the language we use to describe ourselves, we can actually influence our own behavior. This is just one of the techniques that our popular guest, Nir Eyal describes in his new book, “ Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life ”. Nir is the international bestselling author of “ Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming...
Jun 27, 2022•1 hr 5 min•Ep 303•Transcript available on Metacast Mitt Romney once mistakenly quipped that people were either "makers or takers" echoing a common sentiment among US politicians that by working we provide society with value and are rewarded with a sense of dignity. But what if we considered that each of us had dignity that wasn't engulfed in our work identity? Would we be less susceptible to burnout if we accepted ourselves as enough as we are, regardless of our job status? Having come through a dark period of burnout himself, Jonathan Malesic f...
Jun 20, 2022•1 hr 2 min•Ep 302•Transcript available on Metacast We’ve been programmed to treat burnout as a self-care issue, as if we’re just one yoga session or a relaxation app away from fixing the problem. Jennifer Moss , however, describes the solution to burnout as an organizational issue, not an individual hurdle. Creating a workplace culture where leaders model healthy work behavior, engage with empathy and cater for employees' individual needs can foster an environment that helps prevent burnout before it starts. "Employees can’t be what they can’t s...
Jun 13, 2022•1 hr 4 min•Ep 301•Transcript available on Metacast We all know someone who believes in conspiracy theories and we wish we could change their mind. It is possible. There are techniques that can work to transform how people think. But what we love about our conversation with David McRaney is that he adds in a Step 0 to the process and asks “why do you want to change their mind?” Are you open to changing your own mind? If you have any interest in changing someone else’s mind, you should be open to changing your own mind too. To effectively collabor...
Jun 09, 2022•2 hr 57 min•Ep 300•Transcript available on Metacast What if we were so optimistic, nothing ever felt like an obstacle, only an opportunity? As an unapologetic optimist, Patreon page. If donating isn’t an option for you, don’t worry, you can write us a podcast review which will help promote our show to other listeners. Thank you. Topics (4:07) Welcome and speed round questions. (7:06) Should we rewrite the American constitution? (11:17) Paul is affected by SIPO. What is it? (15:14) Going from hating himself to loving himself. (19:32) How can we tr...
Jun 06, 2022•58 min•Ep 299•Transcript available on Metacast Many of us struggle with the demands of parenting. Our response to feeling overwhelmed can be to try and control our kids’ behavior. But guest Sue Donnellan challenges us to lessen our parenting load by giving our children more control, more responsibility and ultimately more respect. While this might go against our instincts, when we take ownership of our own behavior, rather than controlling our kids', we will become happier parents with children able to learn from their mistakes. Sue Donnella...
May 30, 2022•59 min•Ep 298•Transcript available on Metacast World-class pediatric surgeon, social scientist, and best-selling author Dr Dana Suskind MD talks about the Three T's (tune in, talk more and take turns) that parents can do to nurture their children’s brain development and the key ways that society needs to change to invest in the next generation. Dana is the founder and co-director of the TMW Center for Early Learning & Public Health , and Professor of Surgery and Pediatrics at the University of Chicago. She is also the director of the Pediatr...
May 25, 2022•1 hr 2 min•Ep 297•Transcript available on Metacast Lots of us have good ideas, some even back their ideas up with successful research. So why do these good ideas fail to scale into great, big ideas? John A. List shares the personal example of his highly successful kindergarten reform in South Side Chicago which then didn’t scale across the nation. His intrigue into this case led him to pen a phenomenal new book about scalability, “ The Voltage Effect ”. John A. List, is a Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago as well as recently be...
May 23, 2022•1 hr 26 min•Ep 296•Transcript available on Metacast Innovation doesn’t always require inventing new solutions to problems; chances are that evolution has already solved the issue with a unique design. This simple notion of looking to the natural world for design inspiration is called biomimicry. Guest, Sam Tatam uses biomimicry in his creative application of behavioral science. Friend of the show, Sam Tatam is the author of a fantastic new book called Evolutionary Ideas: Unlocking ancient innovation to solve tomorrow’s challenges . Sam is the Glo...
May 16, 2022•1 hr 8 min•Ep 295•Transcript available on Metacast A goal is a stepping stone on the way to a higher achievement, not an end point. By reframing our expectations, we can transform our mindset into an incredibly powerful psychological tool. Our guest on this episode is Paul Szyarto who has overcome some heartbreaking personal adversity to become an incredibly successful entrepreneur. Paul speaks with us in detail about the blind spots entrepreneurs experience and why many organizations fail because they don’t hire the right people with the right ...
May 11, 2022•39 min•Ep 294•Transcript available on Metacast Women are more likely to volunteer for a non-promotable task at work, than men. But why do women volunteer themselves more? What repercussions does this have on women and on the organization? And how can workplaces fix this inequity? Non promotable tasks (NPTs) are the pieces of work that are good for the organization, but not so good for the individual. It’s the request from your boss to organize the holiday party, or the task of ordering sandwiches for the team lunch, or the mission of being o...
May 09, 2022•48 min•Ep 293•Transcript available on Metacast The culture we live in has an invisible influence over our individual and collective behaviors. The tendency towards openness or order in a society is expressed by Michele Gelfand, as the looseness or tightness of a culture. How loose or tight a country is can be correlated to the amount of threat the nation has faced in the past, and in turn, can indicate how its people will respond to a new threat, such as a global pandemic. Michele Gelfand is Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Stanfo...
May 02, 2022•1 hr 16 min•Ep 292•Transcript available on Metacast Processes decrease our cognitive load and increase our productivity. On Behavioral Grooves we have talked with out guests a lot about habits and routines, but not so much about the processes behind them. In this bitesize episode we discuss the psychological benefits of using processes and how you can leverage them in your life. To illustrate the use of processes to achieve different outcomes, we are joined by both a practitioner and a researcher on this episode. Joseph R. Keebler is a Researcher...
Apr 27, 2022•23 min•Ep 291•Transcript available on Metacast Transporting humans from A to B is about more than just speed, efficiency and duration. Comfort, Wi-Fi access, entertainment and our habits, among many other factors, influence our choice of transportation. As we become increasingly aware of the way our travel decisions affect climate change, how can behavioral science positively impact the journeys we make? Let our entertaining discussion with Pete Dyson and Rory Sutherland take you on a journey through their new book, “ Transport for Humans: A...
Apr 24, 2022•1 hr 10 min•Ep 290•Transcript available on Metacast 
