Behavioral Grooves Podcast

Imagine that the two drawings below are called Kiki and Bouba in some alien language. If you had to guess which one was Kiki and which one was Bouba - without any other information, which one would be Kiki, and which one would be Bouba? If you are like most people, the sharp angular shape (on the left) would be named Kiki while the curvier rounded shape (on the right) would be named Bouba. This effect is called the Bouba/Kiki effect which highlights how we map sounds to visual shapes and was first observed by Wolfgang Kohler in the late 1920s and then refined in the early 2000s by Vilayanure Ramachandran and Edward Hubbard. In experiments, over 95% of respondents selected the curvy shape as Bouba and the jagged one as Kiki. The effect shows that words that have softer, rounded sounds (i.e., oo’s and ah’s) are associated with rounder shapes, while sounds that have more angular, sharp sounds (i.e., k’s and I’s) are associated with more pointed shapes. While this effect focused on speech and visuals, my colleague and co-host of Behavioral Grooves, Tim Houlihan and I have started to use it as a way to describe how we think. Some of us think with a “Kiki” like a brain. Others of us think with a “Bouba” like a brain. While not perfect, it does help in understanding the differences in how our brains process, retain, and regurgitate information. For instance, a “Kiki brain” is precise and sharp and can remember specific names, dates, and titles. While a more “Bouba brain” retains information about the general concepts and impacts but is less precise and more holistic in the combination of ideas and thoughts. So while Tim can typically recall the name of a behavioral science study, the year it was published, and the author(s) (very much a Kiki brain), Kurt can usually only recall the concept that the study explored, how that concept can be applied, and how it interacts with other behavioral science concepts (more of a Bouba brain). Often times during the podcast, my Bouba mind will be at a loss for the name of a study or a particular researcher, however, Tim’s Kiki brain will have those names readily available. On the other side of the coin, Tim will be reciting a specific study and my Bouba brain will instantly go to the nuances of the application of how this works and implications for the people involved. Of course, like most other ways of describing ourselves, this is not an either/or situation. I would argue that we all have aspects of Kiki thinking AND Bouba thinking depending on the topic, situation, and other factors (i.e., how much sleep we had the night before). And no brain is just Kiki or Bouba – we shift between the two on a regular basis. Like personalities, these descriptions are just the tendencies for the way we think. For instance, I’m not always at a loss for remembering a study name or researcher nor do I not understand the subtleties or connections from those studies that I do remember. We fluctuate on a continuum and we often move easily between the thinking styles. In general, my notion is that Kiki brains are more admired. Those are the people that I don’t like getting into debates with, because they will bring in facts and figures and names at lightning speed and I’m just trying to stay up and connect the dots. I need to be on my phone looking up references and facts, while they are seemingly pulling them out of the air. People with KikI brains come across as smarter and more informed – because they can recall these details whereas people with Bouba brains are left talking about the general proposition. Kiki brains are not fumbling to remember people’s names, the exact figure for the organization’s budget or the year that the Challenger exploded. At this point, there is no research that is on this or supports this crazy theory. However, by naming these types of thinking styles, I think we can better interact with each other and contribute to our work. The power of this is in helping us understand how we communicate with others and understanding how we process and remember information. Notes Image: Monochrome version 1 June 2007 by Bendž Vectorized with Inkscape Maurer, Pathman, and Modloch (2006), The shape of Boubas: sound-shape correspondences in toddlers and adults. Developmental Science. Ramachandran, V.S. & Hubbard, E.M. (2001). "Synaesthesia: A window into perception, thought and language" (PDF). Journal of Consciousness Studies. © 2019 Behavioral Grooves

Cristina Bicchieri, PhD is the S. J. Patterson Harvie Professor of Social Thought and Comparative Ethics, a Professor of Philosophy and Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, a Professor of Legal Studies at the Wharton School, the Head of the Behavioral Ethics Lab, the Director of the Philosophy, Politics, and Economics Program, and is the Faculty Director of the Master of Behavioral and Decision Sciences Program at the University of Pennsylvania. She’s one busy woman! We met up with her at the NoBeC (Norms and Behavioral Change) conference that her program sponsored in the Kislak Center at UPenn. Cristina’s program is in its 3rd year and hosts 75 students from 12 different countries. The unique program emphasizes practical applications of behavioral science and cross-disciplinary work. Students come from celebrity restaurants, tech businesses, NGOs, non-profits and global corporations and find the program engaging because of its diversity. If you’re interested, we encourage you to check it out – there are links in the episode notes for how to reach them. We had some recording issues when we were talking to Christina. Some edits were made to accommodate our gaffs and we hope you won’t mind. And, because we recorded it on the sidelines of a conference, you might hear some background noise occasionally. © 2019 Behavioral Grooves Links Cristina Bicchieri, PhD: https://philosophy.sas.upenn.edu/people/cristina-bicchieri The Grammar of Society: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/grammar-of-society/2B063E9C9621C2340DEFB2BE15B3AEA5 Norms in the Wild: https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/norms-in-the-wild-how-to-diagnose-measure-and-change-social-norms/ Master in a Behavioral Decision Science at UPenn: https://www.sas.upenn.edu/lps/graduate/mbds Decision Theory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decision_theory Game Theory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_theory Epistemic Foundations of Game Theory: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemic-game/ Multiple Equilibria: https://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences/applied-and-social-sciences-magazines/multiple-equilibria David Kreps, PhD: https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/faculty/david-m-kreps Social Norms: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/social-norms/ Conditional Preference: https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~cb36/files/2010_norm.pdf UNICEF: https://www.unicef.org/ Gates Foundation: https://www.gatesfoundation.org/ Reference Network: http://www.iit.comillas.edu/technology-offer/rnm Soap Opera: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soap_opera Well Told Story: https://www.welltoldstory.com/ Musical Links Giuseppe Verdi: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3UAd3d8I6k Wolfgang Mozart: https://www.biography.com/musician/wolfgang-mozart Bruce Springsteen: https://brucespringsteen.net/ U2: https://www.u2.com/index/home Chicago: https://chicagotheband.com/ The Band: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjCw3-YTffo Styx: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XcKBmdfpWs Journey: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMSFsZFFUzo Fleetwood Mac: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBYHwH1Vb-c Kurt Nelson: [email protected] Tim Houlihan: [email protected]

Kurt and Tim like to read about behavioral science and a variety of related fields. To help those interested in the subject, but unsure how to pick good books to either get started or advance their learning, our 2019 Top 10 Reading List should help. Our Top 10 list is really a Top 9, since both Kurt and Tim already had one of the books on both of their lists. But we also go beyond that list with some honorable mentions (that could have easily been swapped for some of our top choices), as well as a shortlist of fiction and poetry for your review. We hope you enjoy this year’s list and encourage you to let us know your thoughts about it. Did we nail the top picks? Did we miss some? What’s on your reading list for 2020? Who do you think should be a guest on Behavioral Grooves in 2020? Let us know. We’d love to hear from you. Do you need some Christmas or Birthday gifts? Or maybe you just want to treat yourself? Here are links to the books we mentioned in the episode! Kurt’s Best Non-Fiction Books John Bargh, “Before You Know It" https://amzn.to/33PdYJR Yuval Noah Harari, “Sapiens” https://amzn.to/34YWlZO Michael Mauboussin, “Think Twice” https://amzn.to/2qtfS5y Wendy Wood, “Good Habits, Bad Habits” https://amzn.to/2RlCjoc Tim’s Best Non-Fiction Books Rory Sutherland, “Alchemy” https://amzn.to/2OUfG8J Franz de Waal, “Mama’s Last Hug” https://amzn.to/2ORrEjg Francesca Gino, “Rebel Talent” https://amzn.to/36alEIb Roger Dooley, “Friction” (on Kurt’s AND Tim’s lists) https://amzn.to/2r86Gnx Alan B. Krueger, “Rockonomics” https://amzn.to/38bMQYU Honorable Mentions Honorable mentions for really great books that you should be aware of. Virtually any of these could have made our Top 10 list. Nir Eyal, “Indistractable" https://amzn.to/368qiX8 Daniel Pink, “When” https://amzn.to/33QMrbg https://www.danpink.com/ Daniel Levitin, “The Organized Mind” https://amzn.to/2qnL7Pf http://www.daniellevitin.com Liliana Mason, “Uncivil Agreement” https://amzn.to/2RtIA1j Tali Sharot, “The Influential Mind” https://amzn.to/33S8wpN And since we have had great guests with great books in 2019 (we love them and their work), we want to refer you to these authors and titles: Brian Ahearn, “Influence PEOPLE: Powerful Everyday Opportunities to Persuade that are Lasting and Ethical” https://amzn.to/38bc8q8 Ori Brafman, “The Spider and the Starfish" https://amzn.to/2OUdLAQ Liz Fosslein, “No Hard Feelings” https://amzn.to/2LpVR6S Will Leach, “Marketing to Mindstates” https://amzn.to/34UMwvB https://www.will-leach.com/book Stephen Martin & Joseph Marks, “Messengers” https://amzn.to/2PfKU99 Amit Sood, “Guide to Stress-Free Living” https://marketplace.mayoclinic.com/shop/healthy-lifestyle/book/mayo-clinic-guide-to-stress-free-living_294600 Tim’s Non-Fiction List We didn’t speak to these on the podcast, because we were most interested in addressing behavioral science books. However, Tim is also an avid reader of fiction and poetry. Tim wanted to mention some books he’s read (or re-read) this year that were particularly rewarding. Madeline Miller, “Circe” http://madelinemiller.com/circe/ John Updike, “Rabbit is Rich” https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/181928/rabbit-is-rich-by-john-updike/ David Whyte, “Everything is Waiting for You” https://www.davidwhyte.com/english-poetry Thank you! © 2019 Behavioral Grooves. Note that we may receive commissions when you click our links and make purchases. However, this does not impact our suggestions, thoughts or ideas. All recommendations are made by Kurt and Tim based on what they believe.

This is Behavioral Grooves’ 100th episode! Who would have thought when we started out two years ago without a clue about HOW to produce and publish a podcast that we’d reach this milestone? Our first podcast recording began with a very willing Dr. James Heyman, a computer with some recording software, and a dinky little microphone before a meetup we were doing that night. But the conversation was terrific, and we launched it with excitement. Today, we are more thoughtful, have better equipment, and continue to have great guests. For our 100th Episode, we traveled to Philadelphia to host Annie Duke, Jeff Kreisler and Dr. Michael Hallsworth in front of a live audience at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. A little about each of them… This episode covers decision making in an uncertain world with these three renowned experts. We talk about biases and hacks to deal with those biases. And we dove into the role that context plays in our decision making. After the live event, Kurt and Tim groove on some of the highlights of the discussion. Following that, Tim shares a recap in the Bonus Track portion of the episode. Guests Michael Hallsworth, PhD is the Managing Director of the Behavioural Insights Team in North America, based in Brooklyn, New York. He has also worked on health and taxes in the Cabinet Office of the UK government and has authored behavior change frameworks including MINDSPACE and EAST. Annie Duke is the author of Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts, which quickly became a national bestseller. At one point in her career, she was a professional card player, where she won millions in tournament poker. And she is the co-founder of The Alliance for Decision Education, a non-profit whose mission is to improve lives by empowering students through decision skills education. Jeff Kreisler is a Princeton-educated lawyer who became a comedian, then an author, and then a total advocate for behavioral science. With his co-author, Dan Ariely, they wrote Dollars and Sense: How We Misthink Money and How to Spend it Smarter. Sponsors and Recognition It is important to note our sponsors. Podbean, who has been hosting us since the very first episode, supported our endeavor and helped us live stream our event to listeners all over the world. We are very grateful to PeopleScience, an organization that supports the application of behavioral sciences with special emphasis on the world of rewards and recognition. PeopleScience is a terrific resource for job postings and original authorship. And, most importantly, PeopleScience is doing something that we love: they are bringing more science to the world of work. Special thanks go to a few of our peeps, too. Ben Granlund and Raya Parks helped us prepare for and execute the event. Chris Nave and Eugen Dimant at UPenn sent their masters students to the hall after a very long day of lectures. And Trey Altemose managed all of the people and technical issues as our stage manager. Your best friend at any live event is your stage manager and Trey guided us at every turn. © 2019 Behavioral Grooves Links Annie Duke: https://www.annieduke.com/ Jeff Kreisler: http://jeffkreisler.com/ Michael Hallsworth, PhD: https://www.bi.team/people/dr-michael-hallsworth/ PeopleScience: https://peoplescience.maritz.com/ Podbean: https://www.podbean.com/about-us 100-Year-Old Scotch: http://www.oldest.org/food/scotch/ Overconfidence bias: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overconfidence_effect Imposter Syndrome: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome Motivated Reasoning: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivated_reasoning Blind Spot Bias (The Bias Bias): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bias_blind_spot Base Rates: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/9780470479216.corpsy0109 Illusion of Control: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusion_of_control Human Operating Systems: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40QCCMVZDO8 Choice Architecture: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choice_architecture Tribalism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribalism Paternalism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paternalism Backfire Effect: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Backfire_effect Jay Van Bavel: http://as.nyu.edu/content/nyu-as/as/faculty/jay-van-bavel.html Chris Nave, PhD: https://www.sas.upenn.edu/lps/graduate/mbds/contact/christopher-nave Eugen Dimant, PhD: https://www.sas.upenn.edu/lps/graduate/mbds/faculty/eugen-dimant Cristina Bicchieri, PhD: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cristina_Bicchieri Jim Guszcza, PhD: https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/profiles/jguszcza.html Alex Blau: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-blau-2271788/ Alex Imas, PhD: https://www.cmu.edu/dietrich/sds/people/faculty/alex-imas.html Koen Smets: https://www.linkedin.com/in/koensmets/ Motown Records: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motown Soul Train: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soul_Train Musical Links: The Five Stairsteps, “Ooh, Child, Things Are Gonna Get Easier”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DHR

Katy Milkman is no ordinary behavioral scientist. She’s a Professor of Operations, Information and Decisions at Wharton and 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: Behavior change is hard – cut yourself some slack. We humans are not built to do the right thing all the time. Just keep trying. Stay tuned for our BONUS TRACK at the end where we review key takeaways and offer up a Groove idea for the week! NOTE: This podcast was recorded before Katy Milkman became a podcast phenom of her own and the audio quality in this episode, to put it diplomatically, lacks sparkle. However, we talked to Katy again in episode 232 and we think you’ll the conversation and audio much better there: Katy Milkman: How to Make Healthy Habits that Actually Last: https://behavioralgrooves.com/episode/katy-milkman-habits-that-last/ (C) 2019 Behavioral Grooves Links Katy Milkman, PhD: http://www.katherinemilkman.com/ Katy Milkman – Twitter: @katy_milkman Behavior Change for Good: https://bcfg.wharton.upenn.edu/ Choiceology podcast: https://www.schwab.com/resource-center/insights/podcast Temptation Bundling: https://mayooshin.com/temptation-bundling/ Fresh Start Effect: https://faculty.wharton.upenn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Dai_Fresh_Start_2014_Mgmt_Sci.pdf Charles Duhigg: https://charlesduhigg.com/ BJ Fogg Maui Habit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2L1R7OtJhWs Robert Cialdini, PhD: https://www.robertcialdinibf.com/ Francesca Gino, PhD: https://francescagino.com/ Angela Duckworth, PhD: https://angeladuckworth.com/ Kurt Nelson: [email protected] Tim Houlihan: [email protected] Musical Links Michael Jackson: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Jackson Taylor Swift: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taylor_Swift

Chris Nave, PhD is the Associate Director of the Master of Behavioral and Decision Sciences Program at the University of Pennsylvania. We caught up with Chris at the NoBeC conference (Norms and Behavioral Change Conference) at UPenn. NoBeC brought together some of the brightest researchers in the field and we got to attend! The Master of Behavioral and Decision Sciences program is in its 3rd year with 75 students from 12 countries. The students come from jobs in restaurants, fire stations, small businesses, and global corporations and they intend to leave UPenn with an understanding of what it means to be a behavioral scientist, but not actually BE one. We met Chris through our friend, Jeff Kreisler, and we instantly connected as members of the same tribe. But it was even cooler when Chris invited us to attend the conference and to record conversations with some of the researchers. This episode is the cornerstone of the series we recorded at the University of Pennsylvania and we are excited to share an over of the master’s program from Chris Nave. Links Chris Nave: [email protected] UPenn Masters of Behavioral Change Program: https://www.sas.upenn.edu/lps/graduate/mbds/contact Piyush Tantia: https://www.linkedin.com/in/piyush-tantia-4727b74/ Musical Links Baby Shark: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrplOhMSoDU The Cure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXCKLJGLENs Red Hot Chili Peppers “Dark Necessity”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWioV5tO1lk Miley Cyrus “Party in the USA”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M11SvDtPBhA AFI: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Yzu-4kJg6g Vivaldi “Four Seasons”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnDLlajMxyo

Chris Brown is in human risk management and practice is set in backcountry snow. He grew up outside of Philadelphia and after graduating with a degree in Urban Design/Architecture, he moved to Utah to pursue certification with the AMGA (American Mountain Guides Association) in avalanche training. Chris works as a ski guide and avalanche/snow science professional, but his real job is helping skiers overcome their biases. He incorporates the work of Kahneman and Tversky, Richard Thaler and other great researchers into his classes and we found his intentionality in decision making noteworthy. We had a great conversation with Chris and we also want to express our gratitude to friend and colleague, Ben Granlund, for connecting us with Chris. Ben attended one of Chris’ classes and found it so engaging that he referred us to Chris. Ben was also delighted that Chris relies heavily on behavioral science and reminds us that the biggest threat to your life in avalanche country is your own decision making. After our recording stopped, we discussed Guide Services for training. If you are interested, check out AMGA (amga.com) and the American Avalanche Association: https://www.americanavalancheassociation.org/ Links Chris Brown Email: [email protected] Chris Brown Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cbskiclimb/ Ian McCammon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKeoF53syKw Phil Tetlock “Super Forecasters”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rV5Gicb66WA Familiarity Bias: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Familiarity_heuristic Expert Halo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect System 1 / System 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow Premortem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-mortem Bruce Tremper: https://backcountrymagazine.com/stories/video-avalanche-expert-bruce-tremper-risk/ Bayesian Decision Making: https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Bayesian_decision_theory First Tracks: https://www.boston.com/culture/ski-guru/2012/01/31/its_all_about_f Laurence Gonzales “Deep Survival”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTyfvOrEm1w Wicked Learning Environments: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/5c5d/33b858eaf38f6a14b3f042202f1f44e04326.pdf Daniel Kahneman: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Kahneman The Tao of Wu: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tao_of_Wu Kurt Nelson: @motivationguru Tim Houlihan: @THoulihan Musical Links Hip Hop: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hip_hop Reggae: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reggae Classical Music: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_music Death Metal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_metal Steel Pulse: https://steelpulse.com/ Wu Tang Clan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBwAxmrE194 MadLib: https://www.stonesthrow.com/madlib Gang Starr: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/gang-starr-guru-bad-name-video-909996/ John Coltrane: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EH3mb3oXCpw Marcus Miller: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kCi-SsYD5s Stanley Clarke: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcuigwtdzS4 Bela Fleck: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWIfFIEeZjw Victor Wooten: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzL4BkqmzDQ Herbie Hancock: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHhD4PD75zY

Sometimes things just go better in twos and that was the case regarding our guests for this episode. Zarak Kahn is the Behavioral Innovation Director at Maritz and Erik Johnson is an independent Behavioral Science Consultant. They are the co-hosts of Action Design Radio and board members at Action Design Network. Kurt and Tim have known them as coaches and colleagues and wanted to talk to them about all of that. We discussed how the application of behavioral science continues to grow in both the corporate and policy words. Today, there are more jobs, more workshops, more bachelor's programs, more masters programs, more PhD programs, more meetups and more bootcamps than ever before. We expressed our collective desires to make behavioral science so easy to do it will be ingrained into every job from UX to Marketing to HR, and how we’d like to see people applying a behavioral lens in all of their decision-making. In our grooving session, Kurt and Tim emphasized the importance of expanding the community of people applying behavioral science and we are grateful to share the mantle with very bright and fine folk like Erik and Zarak. Links Erik Johnson Twitter: https://twitter.com/erikleejohnson Erik Johnson LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erikleejohnson/ Erik Johnson Website: erikj.net Zarak Kahn LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/khanzarak/ Action Design Network: http://www.action-design.org/ Action Design Radio (podcast): https://actiondesignradio.libsyn.com/ Robert Cialdini: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Cialdini Dan Kahneman: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Kahneman Richard Thaler: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Thaler Cass Sunstein: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cass_Sunstein Musical Links Idles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuQG6_evFc8 Local Natives: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_Natives Lana Del Rey: https://lanadelrey.com/ Carley Rae Jepson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWNaR-rxAic Wye Oak “The Louder I Call the Faster it Runs”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kO7ffikJOE4 Sylvan Esso: http://www.sylvanesso.com/ Johnny Flynn: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Flynn_%26_The_Sussex_Wit Sharon Van Etten: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7sTHoeH0eA Gillian Welch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJ_nWPxrzmE M Ward: https://mwardmusic.com/ The National: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIWmRbHDhGw

Victoria Shaffer is a researcher and professor at the University of Missouri. Victoria focuses on applying decision psychology and behavioral economics to medical decision making. In particular, she is researching judgment and decision making and how they impact the design of patient decision support tools. Tim and Victoria met working on a field research project with Dan Ariely, PhD because of her work on non-monetary rewards with Scott Jeffrey, PhD. She was pushing back on common sense preferences, such as money is the best motivator, just as she is today with her work in the medical field. Our conversation with Victoria began on familiar ground: the preference for cash as a reward and how it’s actually less effective than non-monetary rewards in incentive schemes. But we soon turned to the very personal journey of how she and her mother dealt with decisions surrounding her father’s diagnosis with cancer. Her personal journey became the foundation for important research to help patients, their loved ones and the caregivers communicate more effectively through stories. It’s a fascinating discussion and we hope you enjoy it. Links Victoria Shaffer: https://psychology.missouri.edu/people/shaffer Shelly Taylor on Biases and Mental Health: http://humancond.org/_media/papers/taylor_brown_88_illusion_and_well_being.pdf Hal Arkes: https://psychology.osu.edu/people/arkes.1 Decision Support Tools: https://www.healthit.gov/topic/safety/clinical-decision-support “Being Mortal” by Atul Gawande: http://atulgawande.com/book/being-mortal/ MD Anderson Cancer Center: https://www.mdanderson.org/ Advance Directives: https://www.nia.nih.gov/health/advance-care-planning-healthcare-directives Palliative Care: https://getpalliativecare.org/whatis/ Peter Ubel – Duke: https://www.fuqua.duke.edu/faculty/peter-ubel Affective Forecasting Errors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affective_forecasting Columbia Records: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_Records Dan Gilbert: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Gilbert_(psychologist) Kurt Nelson, PhD: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kurtwnelson/ Tim Houlihan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tim-houlihan-b-e/ Music Van Halen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9X6e7uctAww Black Sabbath: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5s7_WbiR79E Ozzy Osbourne: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtHEN518VCM Styx: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XcKBmdfpWs Depeche Mode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diT3FvDHMyo The Cure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXCKLJGLENs Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQ9NaqjeDGU James Taylor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWGK_fWKb4U

Kurt and Tim were invited to attend the Norms and Behavioral Change (NoBeC) workshop at the University of Pennsylvania on October 17 and 18, 2019, and what we experienced blew us away. We were impressed with a terrific diversity of academic fields studying social norms, the great work they are doing, and the generosity of the community (at UPenn as well as the behavioral science researchers from around the world). This gathering was very different from industry assemblies we’ve attended, which in and of itself was not a surprise. However, there were three noteworthy differences. First, the lineup of speakers was heavily weighted toward researchers with findings on projects involving social norms. Second, academic audience members held speakers accountable for rigorous processes and the descriptions of their results. Lastly, the Q&A at the end of each presentation was filled with animated questions from economists, behavioral economists, sociologists, political scientists, philosophers, strategists, law professors, and of course, psychologists. The cross-disciplinary aspect of this group reinforced the need for more diverse thinking in the business world. We came away with a greater appreciation of the role that social norms play in our behaviors and decision making as well as the tremendous research that’s being conducted on related topics. We will be publishing our series of interviews with researchers from the workshop in the coming weeks, and we hope you enjoy them as much as we did. Links University of Pennsylvania Master of Behavioral and Decision Sciences: https://www.sas.upenn.edu/lps/graduate/mbds

Paul Hebert knows incentives. He is the Vice President of Individual Performance Strategy at Creative Group, Inc. and a writer, speaker and consultant and is widely considered an expert on motivation and incentives focused on influencing behaviors that drive business results. Paul has been interviewed by the BBC and USA TODAY because of his work applying solid psychological theory to sales motivation. Paul, Kurt and Tim recently co-authored an eBook called “The 7 Deadly Sins to Avoid in Your Next Sales Incentive.” The purpose was to help sales managers who are struggling to maximize their effort and results when they use sales incentives. In the podcast, we recap the most common sins committed by sales managers and discuss ways of avoiding them. Spread goals evenly Give a huge prize to the top performer Must be above quota to earn We’ll figure it out behind the scenes Under-quota performers can’t be winners It’s all about the Benjamins We hope you enjoy the discussion and recommend you download the eBook for reference. Links Paul Hebert: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulhebert/ 7 Deadly Sins Ebook: https://hubs.ly/H0kR8g60 Paul Hebert’s Blog: http://wphebert.com Fistful of Talent Blog: http://fistfuloftalent.com/author/paulhebert Elliot Aronson, PhD: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliot_Aronson Zeno of Citium: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeno_of_Citium Steenburgh and Ahearne “Motivating Salespeople”: https://hbr.org/2012/07/motivating-salespeople-what-really-works Ariely and Heyman “A Tale of Two Markets”: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.0956-7976.2004.00757.x?journalCode=pssa Jeffrey and Shaffer “The Effects of Tangible Rewards”: https://theirf.org/research/the-effects-of-tangible-rewards-versus-cash-rewards-in-a-sales-tournament-a-field-experiment/1638/ The guy who traded a paper clip for a house: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_red_paperclip The Price is Right: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Price_Is_Right Estonia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estonia Musical Links “Eve of Destruction” by Barry McGuire: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfZVu0alU0I “Timothy” by The Bouys: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGNdvKvbxYQ “DOA” by Bloodrock: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WQptxygSM8 First Avenue: https://first-avenue.com/ Trip Shakespeare: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PvyrRupOf0 Trip Shakespeare “The Slacks” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkOepnPJS3o Dan Wilson: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Wilson_(musician) Tragically Hip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XN25TcN--I8 Morphine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morphine_(band) Lucius: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QSF8bgqgC4 Semisonic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGytDsqkQY8 Trampled by Turtles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcoPedyXJVc And the Professors: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kxiVQI3XeA The Mighty Pines: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHrR8LhTKfo Ewert & the 2 Dragons: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddCsOTWz7gI

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 short grooving session also delves into some myths and how to deal with them. Ultimately, we want listeners to come away with a clear understanding of the powerful results than can be obtained with practical and effective use of self-selected goals. Links Zig Ziglar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zig_Ziglar Goal-Setting Theory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goal_setting Edward Locke: https://peakon.com/us/blog/future-work/edwin-locke-goal-setting-theory/ Gary Latham: http://www.rotman.utoronto.ca/FacultyAndResearch/Faculty/FacultyBios/Latham Howard Klein: https://fisher.osu.edu/people/klein.12 Ran Kivetz: https://www8.gsb.columbia.edu/cbs-directory/detail/rk566 George Loewenstein: https://www.cmu.edu/dietrich/sds/people/faculty/george-loewenstein.html Saurabh Bhargava: https://www.cmu.edu/dietrich/sds/people/faculty/saurabh-bhargava.html Raghuram Bommaraju: https://www.isb.edu/faculty-research/faculty/directory/bommaraju-raghuram Raghuram Bommaraju & Sebastian Hohenberg on self-selected goals: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1509/jm.17.0002 Kurt Nelson, PhD: [email protected] Tim Houlihan: [email protected]

Brad Shuck, PhD is an Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Leadership, Evaluation, and Organizational Development at the University of Louisville. He is also recognized as one of the world’s most knowledgeable experts on employee engagement and is a sought-after speaker from around the world. Brad’s work is recognized as some of the most influential research in the field of employee engagement and his insights are invaluable. On top of that, Brad is a drummer, a lover of all sorts of music and our discussion traversed topics from the social determinants of health to having parents that were patient enough to allow him to learn drums as a child. In our grooving session, Kurt and Tim dive deeper into creating a work culture of meaning and we ask the musical question: how does moving from town to town as a child impact your musical tastes? And don’t forget to join us for our 100th Episode Celebration on October 17, 2019 in Philadelphia! Eventbrite link: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/behavioral-grooves-100th-episode-event-tickets-73159537145 Links Brad Shuck email: [email protected] Brad Shuck web page: www.drbshuck.com Brad Shuck Google Connection: @drbshuck Teresa Amabile: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/profile.aspx?facId=6409 Brad’s Research Shuck, B., Alagaraja, M., Immekus, J., Honeycutt, M., & Cumberland, D. (2019). Does compassion matter for leadership: a two-stage sequential equal status mixed method exploratory study of compassionate leader behavior and connections to performance in human resource development. Human Resource Development Quarterly, X, XX-XX. doi: 10.1002/hrdq.21369 Shuck, B., Peyton-Roberts, T., Zigarmi, D. (2018). Employee perceptions of the work environment, motivational outlooks, and employee work intentions: An HR practitioner’s dream or nightmare? Advances in Developing Human Resources, 20, 197-213. doi: 10.1177/1523422318757209 Shuck, B., #Osam, K., Zigarmi, D., & Nimon, K. (2017). Definitional and conceptual muddling: Identifying the positionality of employee engagement and defining the construct. Human Resource Development Review, 16, 263-293. doi: 0.1177/1534484317720622 Shuck, B., Nimon, K., & Zigarmi, D. (2017). Untangling the predictive nomological validity of employee engagement: Decomposing variance in employee engagement using job attitude measures. Group and Organizational Management. 42, 79-112. doi: 10.1177/1059601116642364 Shuck, B., Alagaraja, M., Rose, K., Owen, J., #Osam, K., & Bergman, M. (2017). The health-related upside of employee engagement: Exploratory evidence and implications for theory and practice. Performance Improvement Quarterly, 30, 165-178. doi: 10.1002/piq.21246 Shuck, B., Adelson, J., & Reio, T. (2017). The employee engagement scale: Initial evidence for construct validity and implications for theory and practice. Human Resource Management, 56, 953-977. doi: 10.1002/hrm.21811 Rose, K., Shuck, B., #Twyford, D., & Bergman, M. (2015). Skunked: An integrative review exploring the consequences of dysfunctional leaders and implications for the employees who work for them. Human Resource Development Review, 14, 64-90. doi: 10.1177/1534484314552437 Musical Links Folk Music: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_music A Lion Named Roar: http://www.alionnamedroar.com/ Mumford & Sons: https://www.mumfordandsons.com/ For King and Country: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_King_%26_Country_(band) John Coltrane: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EH3mb3oXCpw Rodd Stewart: https://www.rodstewart.com/ Kenny G: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenny_G

Jim Guszcza is the chief data scientist at Deloitte Analytics. His title paints a picture that he’s a total numbers geek. And that would be a fair, but single-dimensional assessment. What it doesn’t speak to is Jim’s passion for behavioral science and, more importantly, the collaboration of data science and behavioral science. He makes a case for the application of behavioral science simply with this analogy: if we need help to see, we get eyeglasses. In so doing, we are using science and technology to help correct our faulty vision. But when it comes to correcting for our biases, we don’t turn to science and technology and that might improve our decision making. But we could. That’s where the collaboration between data science (or Big Data) and behavioral science come together: applying science and technology to decision making. And THAT was fascinating. In our discussion about music, we talked about Jim’s equal interest in a Dvorak string quartet as much as he is the in the soundtrack to “Wonder Boys” or a great jazz piano performance. He shared he has a penchant for small venues and small bands. He then shared some tips about how to apply behavioral science to your job and your life. He focused on reading books and listening to podcasts as ways to become more educated on the topic and to help you apply behavioral science principles. NOTE: Behavioral Grooves is celebrating our 100th episode in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on October 17, 2019 with authors Annie Duke and Jeff Kreisler. Our sponsors for the event include PeopleScience and Podbean and we want to thank them for helping us make this possible. If you’re unable to join us in person, we’ll be live streaming the event and we hope you’ll log in there! Links Jim Guszcza: https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/profiles/jguszcza.html “Moneyball” Michael Lewis: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1301.Moneyball “Clinical Versus Statistical Prediction” Paul Miele: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2006-21565-000 Richard Thaler: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Thaler Cass Sunstein: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cass_Sunstein Daniel Kahneman: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Kahneman Imposter syndrome: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome Bounded Rationality: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bounded_rationality Bounded Self-Control: https://www.economicsonline.co.uk/Behavioural_economics/Bounded_rationality_and_self_control.html Craig Fox, UCLA: https://www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty-and-research/management-and-organizations/faculty/fox Intention Action Gap: https://www.tutor2u.net/economics/reference/behavioural-economics-the-intention-action-gap Mike Green, Deloitte: https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/authors/g/michael-greene.html Cathy Neil: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weapons_of_Math_Destruction Robert Cialdini, ASU: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Cialdini “The Design of Everyday Things” Don Norman: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/840.The_Design_of_Everyday_Things Tom Malone, MIT: https://cci.mit.edu/malone/ “Rockonomics” Alan Krueger: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/564519/rockonomics-by-alan-b-krueger/ “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism” Shoshana Zuboff: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26195941-the-age-of-surveillance-capitalism “Deep Medicine” Eric Topol: https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/eric-topol/deep-medicine/9781541644649/ Stanford Human Centered AI: https://hai.stanford.edu/ Carnegie Mellon Social & Decision Sciences: https://www.cmu.edu/dietrich/sds/ Behavioral Scientist Ethical Checklist: https://behavioralscientist.org/behavioral-scientists-ethics-checklist/ “Quiet” Susan Cain: https://www.quietrev.com/ “Thinking in Bets” Annie Duke: https://www.annieduke.com/ Herbert Simon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_A._Simon Kurt Nelson: @motivationguru Tim Houlihan: @thoulihan 100th Episode Event at Meetup: https://www.meetup.com/Philadelphia-Behavioral-Science-Meetup-Group/events/264495763/ 100th Episode Event at Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/behavioral-grooves-100th-episode-event-tickets-73159537145 Behavioral Grooves: www.behavioralgrooves.com PeopleScience: https://peoplescience.maritz.com/ Podbean: https://www.podbean.com Musical Links Bob Dylan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Dylan Van Morrison: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Morrison Leonard Cohen: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Cohen David MacDonald: https://www.msmnyc.edu/faculty/david-macdonald/ Arthur Schoenberg: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Schoenberg Wigmore Hall: https://wigmore-hall.org.uk/ Dvorak String Quartet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxtAHpYIXdU Schumann String Quartet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iO4UhZuw7gQ Vijay Iyer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vijay_Iyer Wonder Boys: https://www.discogs.com/Various-Wonder-Boys-Music-From-The-Motion-Picture/master/341271 Angus & Julia Stone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHdPyp8onSI Flora Cash: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzjMmwki1Fs Echo and the Bunn

Gina Merchant, PhD is a behavioral scientist who wound her way through academia and into the corporate world for the purpose of improving the health of communities, not just individuals. Her work examines how online and offline social networks influence our health behaviors and healthcare decision-making. Gina shared her insights through research she’s been conducting with promotores, the women who govern how information flows through Hispanic communities in Southern California. The research explores how the work these women do impacts the health and wellbeing of their communities. Our discussion also included Gina’s thoughts on misinformation, especially with respect to the myths that people have come to believe about vaccinations. This topic came to light as a source of passion in her work. We also talked about the role that a behavioral scientist can play in a corporate setting. She shared how business leaders can experience positive results by including a behavioral scientist in communication and design discussions. We also want to remind everyone that we’re celebrating our 100th episode in Philadelphia. It’s an evening event and it will be live streamed. If you’re interested in attending or listening live, check out the Behavioral Grooves website at www.behavioralgrooves.com. Links Gina Merchant: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gina-merchant-phd-2279b6140/ Truthful Illusion Effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_truth_effect ANOVA Framework: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analysis_of_variance “Willful Blindness,” by Margaret Heffernan: http://www.mheffernan.com/book-wb-summary.php?location=US Inoculation Theory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inoculation_theory Confidence Project, by Heidi Larson: https://www.vaccineconfidence.org/ The Filter Bubble: http://www.lse.ac.uk/assets/richmedia/channels/publicLecturesAndEvents/slides/20110620_1830_theFilterBubble_sl.pdf The Looking Glass Self: https://lesley.edu/article/perception-is-reality-the-looking-glass-self Kate Starbird: https://www.hcde.washington.edu/starbird Promotores: http://www.visionycompromiso.org/wordpress/about-us/the-promotor-model/ Topanga Canyon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topanga,_California Kurt Nelson: @motivationguru Tim Houlihan: @THoulihan Check out the Behavioral Grooves website: https://behavioralgrooves.com/ Music DMX: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DMX_(rapper) Tupac: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupac_Shakur Lil’ Kim: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lil%27_Kim Biggie Smalls: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Notorious_B.I.G. Jack Johnson: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Johnson_(musician) Tribe Called Quest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Tribe_Called_Quest Ben Harper: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Harper Ivan Schultz, “Firetruck,”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spk7gOIExjI&hl=fr&gl=SN Swan Lake, by Pytor Illyich Tchaikovsky: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swan_Lake Nova Mob: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova_Mob_(album)

We are re-sharing our original September 2018 discussion with Annie Duke to announce the Behavioral Grooves 100th Episode on the evening of October 17, 2019 in the Historic Hamilton Auditorium at the Pennsylvania Academy for Performing Arts. It's a live event and we invite you to join us to hear Annie, Lila Gleitman and other guests discuss the application of behavioral sciences. Seating is very limited for this intimate engagement and we hope to see you there! Links below... . . . Annie Duke’s latest book, Thinking in Bets, Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts, is a masterful mash-up of her life as a researcher, poker player and charitable organization founder. In it, she explores new ideas on how to make better decisions. Our interview with her expanded beyond the book and we talked extensively about probabilistic thinking and having people hold us accountable for our decision making. As expected, our interview covered an eclectic mix of behavioral biases, sociology, language development and, of without fail, music. We used the movie The Matrix and the blue pill/red pill metaphor for looking at the world as accurate vs. inaccurate, rather than right or wrong. We discussed how tribes can offer us distinctiveness and belongingness but also confine us with the tribe’s sometimes negative influences. We also examined learning pods and how they can be used to keep our decisions more in line with reality. If you like this episode, please forward it on to a friend or colleague and help Kurt win his bet with Tim for who pays the donation to How I Decide. You can find more information on or donate to this wonderful non-profit at www.howidecide.org. Links Anna Dreber: http://www.sverigesungaakademi.se/en-GB/755.html Phil Tetlock: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_E._Tetlock Jonathan Haidt:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Haidt Lila Gleitman:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lila_R._Gleitman Syntactic Bootstrapping: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syntactic_bootstrapping Jack White: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_White Willie Nelson: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Nelson Jonathan Richman: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Richman Prince: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_(musician) Alex Chilton: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Chilton Violent Femmes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violent_Femmes Kurt Nelson: [email protected] Tim Houlihan: [email protected] Behavioral Grooves 100th Episode Meetup: https://www.meetup.com/Philadelphia-Behavioral-Science-Meetup-Group/events/264495763/

Groovers, a couple of announcements for you: 1. Kurt and I are hosting a meetup immediately after Customer Focus North in Minneapolis on September 19, 2019: https://www.customerfn.com/. Rodd Wagner will be speaking! Make sure you use this code to get 10% Off your registration to Customer Focus North: BEHAVIORAL 2. We're celebrating our 100th Episode and want you to join us in Philadelphia at the live event. Annie Duke will be onstage for our discussion! The link for the 100th Episode Meetup in Philadelphia on October 17, 2019: https://www.meetup.com/Philadelphia-Behavioral-Science-Meetup-Group/

Christian Hunt is the founder of Human Risk, a Behavioral Science Consulting and Training firm specializing in the fields of Risk, Compliance, Conduct & Culture. Before this, he was the head of Behavioral Science at UBS and before that, Chief Operating Officer of the Prudential Regulation Authority, a subsidiary of the Bank of England responsible for regulating Financial Services. Christian shared his 5 principles of human risk – myths that humans cling to that don’t help us do what we ought to be doing. They are all founded on the notion that very few people are doing things they shouldn’t be doing – and yet most of the rules in corporate culture are created to prevent, rather than uplift. And Christian’s biggest beef is that many, many people are NOT doing the things they SHOULD be doing – again, in part because of context and culture. We encountered some internet gremlins that mucked up the portion of our discussion with Christian that was about music. Regrettably, we are unable to bring you Christian’s Top 10 Behavioral Science Hits but we promise to return to it in the future. In our grooving session, we discuss the implications of the mental algorithms and what we can do about them. We hope you enjoy our conversation with Christian Hunt. Links Christian Hunt: https://www.linkedin.com/in/humanrisk/ Human Risk: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/interested-behavioural-science-subscribe-now-human-risk-hunt/ Harley Davidson: https://www.harley-davidson.com/us/en/index.html BMW Motorcycle: https://www.bmwmotorcycles.com/en/home.html#/filter-all Royal Enfield: https://www.royalenfield.com/ “Predictably Irrational,” by Dan Ariely: http://danariely.com/books/predictably-irrational/ Franz Kafka: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Kafka Daniel Kahneman: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Kahneman Prison Experiment: https://www.prisonexp.org/ Game of Thrones: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_of_Thrones Chernobyl (TV Show): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_(miniseries) Henrik Ibsen: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrik_Ibsen Somerset Maugham: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Somerset_Maugham Sinclair Lewis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_Lewis Inner Emigration: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inner_emigration William Shakespeare: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shakespeare Othello: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Othello “The Culture of Responsibility” Netflix: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/36417234 “Shawshank Redemption,” by Stephen King: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rita_Hayworth_and_Shawshank_Redemption E.A.S.T.: http://38r8om2xjhhl25mw24492dir.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/BIT_Update-Report-Final-2013-2015.pdf Buckminster Fuller: https://www.bfi.org/about-fuller/biography Kurt Nelson: @motivationguru Tim Houlihan: @THoulihan Check out the Behavioral Grooves website: https://behavioralgrooves.com/

Brian Ahearn is Behavioral Grooves’ first repeat guest. (He was first featured in Episode 39: The Heart of Reciprocity.) We recently reconnected with him to discuss his new book, Influence PEOPLE. The book explores the science behind the influence process – what drives people to take the actions you want them to take, without manipulation or trickery. The book is about changing people's behavior. Positive thoughts, and even agreement from others, only go so far – and seldom lead to a change in behavior. Our conversation with Brian focused on specific ways to make that happen. Brian’s book is not intended as an academic replay of all the aspects of the science of persuasion. While the science is foundational, the book focuses on the practical aspects of application with lots of great examples and case studies, many of them from Brian’s personal experiences. We recommend you check it out if you’re uninterested in the science but care deeply for the “how-to” part of the story. We also returned to music and revisited Brian’s eclectic playlists. We focused on his predilection to combine Frank Sinatra and Coldplay into a single “clean” playlist that he uses in client workshops and presentations. In our grooving session, we discussed whether the tool can be held accountable or is it only the user of the tool? And are you familiar with the Wilhelm Scream? Listen in to find out. For those of you listening before October 2019, Kurt and Tim will be celebrating our podcast’s 100th episode in Philadelphia at the Pennsylvania Academy of Performing Arts on October 17th. Our lead guest will be Annie Duke. Links Brian Ahearn: https://www.influenceatwork.com/about/trainers/brian-ahearn/ Influence PEOPLE: https://www.amazon.com/Influence-PEOPLE-Powerful-Everyday-Opportunities/dp/1733178503 Daniel Kahneman: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Kahneman Robert Cialdini: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Cialdini Dan Ariely: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Ariely Ellen Langer study: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/brain-wise/201310/the-power-the-word-because-get-people-do-stuff Record Store: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Record_shop Michael Kerrison: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-kerrison-760a778/ 100th Episode Meetup in Philadelphia on October 17, 2019: https://www.meetup.com/Philadelphia-Behavioral-Science-Meetup-Group/ Kurt Nelson: @motivationguru Tim Houlihan: @THoulihan Check out the Behavioral Grooves website: https://behavioralgrooves.com/ Artists Hamilton: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5VqyCQV1Tg Queen, Bohemian Rhapsody: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsl3gBVO2k4 Frank Sinatra: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Sinatra Coldplay: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coldplay Boston: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_(band) Johnny Cash: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Cash Ministry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministry_(band)

Alex Blau is a vice president at ideas42 with projects in consumer finance, design and decision-making, and international development. In our discussion, we focused on a new project he’s working on in the area of supervision of people after they're released from incarceration, or what we commonly refer to as parole. The cost of incarceration and supervision is more than just social – it comes with a big price tag. Nearly $7 billion is spent annually to supervise individuals coming out of the prison system and another $9 billion is spent on incarceration. More than 4.5 million people in the United States are under supervision and government data indicate that roughly two-thirds of those released from prison will be arrested within 3 years. Roughly 50% of the arrests are for rule violations (the other 50% for committing new crimes). Alex and his colleagues at ideas42 are researching ways to change the context of the world the parolees return to with the hope of reducing recidivism. We talked about the novel interventions they’re testing. We also discussed a brief history of Jamaican music with an emphasis on the rich catalog of the island nation’s artists, emerging near the middle of the 20th century. In our grooving session, Kurt and Tim cover the implementation-intention framework and how reminders via association can be more powerful than specific triggers, especially when triggers are difficult to identify. We hope you enjoy our discussion with Alex Blau. Links Alex Blau: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-blau-2271788/ ideas42: https://www.ideas42.org/ Annie Duke: https://www.annieduke.com/ Todd Rogers & Katy Milkman “Reminders through Association” https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/todd_rogers/files/rogers_milkman_rta.pdf Sendhil Mullainathan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sendhil_Mullainathan Laurie Santos, GI Joe Effect: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GimHHAID_P0 Reggae: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reggae Ska: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ska Rocksteady: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocksteady Mento: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mento Fugue: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugue David Hussman episode #17: https://behavioralgrooves.com/episode/the-accidental-behavioral-scientist-with-david-hussman/ Kurt Nelson: @motivationguru Tim Houlihan: @THoulihan Check out the Behavioral Grooves website: https://behavioralgrooves.com/ Artists Bob Marley: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhJ0q7X3DLM Desmond Decker: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxtfdH3-TQ4 Toots and the Maytals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nqqp5XoyLE Koffee: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8HoEvDh70Y

Steven Sisler may not be a household name, but he should be. Steve is a Master Level Behavioral Profiler and the lead Behavioral Analyst at The Behavioral Resource Group. He consults on personality, career strategy, leadership strategy, culture, spiritual growth, relationship management, and temperament strategy. We were introduced to Steve by one of our listeners and we were happy to invite him on the show. His wit and wisdom were both entertaining and rewarding in ways that only a guy who has held jobs as diverse as roofing a house to authoring seven books and speaking at conferences can be. Steve’s behavioral focus emerges from his work with personality assessments, and this brought a fresh perspective us as we rarely dive into the tools of the trade. We discussed the value of understanding who we are as individuals to help us better understand how others are. As Steve said, “We don’t see people as they are, we see people as we are.” We hope you enjoy our conversation with Steve and we’ve shared links to many of the references – and there were many – for those unfamiliar with this field of study. Links Steven Sisler: https://behavioralresourcegroup.com/about-us/about-steve-sisler/ King Solomon (Ecclesiastes 9:11): https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/06/04/race-swift/ Descriptive Self: https://positivepsychology.com/self-concept/ Normative Self: https://philarchive.org/archive/SILAAN-4 The Prince of Egypt (Disney): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prince_of_Egypt Robert S. Hartman, PhD: http://www.athenaq.com/about-us/robert-s-hartman-phd/ Axiology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axiology Bad Players Make Great Coaches: https://www.thesportster.com/entertainment/top-15-horrible-athletes-who-made-great-coaches/ Turning into a Skid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONXHtODehHk Dave Ramsey (radio host): https://www.daveramsey.com/ John G. Geier & Dorthey E. Downey, Aristos: http://www.geierlearning.com/aristos.html DISC Assessment: https://www.123test.com/disc-personality-test/ Hyper Empathy: https://exploringyourmind.com/hyper-empathy-syndrome-much-good-thing/ Emotional Intelligence: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/emotional-intelligence GI Joe Fallacy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GimHHAID_P0 Mirroring: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirroring_(psychology) Pinky & The Brain: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinky_and_the_Brain “Quiet” by Susan Cain: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8520610-quiet “9 Lies About Work” by Marcus Buckingham & Ashley Goodall: https://hbrascend.org/topics/9-lies-about-work/ Meyers Briggs Personality Assessment: https://www.businessinsider.com/myers-briggs-personality-test-is-misleading-2014-6 Kimberlé Crenshaw – Intersectionality: https://blackwomenintheblackfreedomstruggle.voices.wooster.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/210/2019/02/Crenshaw_mapping-the-margins1991.pdf Music “A Star is Born” soundtrack: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Star_Is_Born_(2018_soundtrack) Lady Gaga: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPJjwHAIny4 Foreigner: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSOtCMYJqOw Electric Light Orchestra: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQUlA8Hcv4s Queen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbvyNnw8Qjg Dredg “The Pariah, the Parrot, the Illusion”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73Wt-jhBdtA “Down to the Cellar”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDIVA2sDnek “The Times They Are A Changing” by Bob Dylan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7qQ6_RV4VQ “Purple Rain” by Prince: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9X2R_YF4Qc “Love Will Never Do Without You” by Janet Jackson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KCvVsNstjE “Candy Apple Gray” by Hüsker Dü: https://nl.qwerty.wiki/wiki/Candy_Apple_Grey The Replacements: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Replacements_(band) The Suburbs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Suburbs_(band)

Our guest in this episode is a prolific writer and observer of the human condition, Chris Matyszczyk (pronounced ma-TIS-chick). We talked with Chris about a variety of topics including advertising, the psychology of who we are, including an unplanned psychoanalysis of Tim’s desire to be heard as a musician. We also talked about politics and referenced Brexit, life at Google and Facebook, and, hold the phone: how World War will be won by the best nerds. All of this got started because we saw an article Chris wrote that caught our attention. It was a topic we have discussed in the past: Music and its relationship to getting work done. Is music a stimulant to creativity or is it a buzz kill? Does it enhance the work experience or drown it out? You’ll have to listen to see what Chris has to say about this. In our grooving session, we focused on the dynamics of why we connect so easily with some people and others, not so much. And we also covered some of the challenges of a digital, high-social-media age where the lines of work and life might be more like how our ancient ancestors live: it’s just life. Or is it? We hope you enjoy our conversation with Chris. And please share your thoughts with us and stay in touch. Links Chris Matyszczyk:https://www.zdnet.com/blog/technically-incorrect/ and https://www.inc.com/author/chris-matyszczyk and https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-matyszczyk-935b604/ Brexit: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/brexit.asp John Cleese: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Cleese Fawlty Towers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcEws7il4EY On Privacy: “Privacy and human behavior in the age of information,“ by Alessandro Acquisti, Laura Brandimarte, and George Loewenstein https://www.cmu.edu/dietrich/sds/docs/loewenstein/PrivacyHumanBeh.pdf Marvel comics: https://www.marvel.com/ Work-Life Balance was Episode 59 with Jeanie Whinghter and Afra Ahmad: https://behavioralgrooves.com/episode/jeanie-whinghter-and-afra-ahmad-balance-vs-harmony/ Charlotte Blank: https://www.linkedin.com/in/charlotte-blank-52554a2/ Roger Dooley: https://www.rogerdooley.com/ Kurt Nelson: @motivationguru and https://www.linkedin.com/in/kurtwnelson/ Tim Houlihan: @THoulihan and https://www.linkedin.com/in/tim-houlihan-b-e/ Check out the Behavioral Grooves website: https://behavioralgrooves.com/ Cold Play: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coldplay Pink Floyd: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_Floyd Ludwig Van Beethoven: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_van_Beethoven Beethoven’s Violin Concerto: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Cg_0jepxow

Because we're taking a little break, we are republishing one of our favorite episodes: a conversation with Scott Jeffrey, PhD from Monmouth University in New Jersey, recorded in December 2017. Our conversation was so engaging that we wanted to make sure no one misses out on it. The original audio from this was only our third podcast we’d ever recorded, and it was a recorded with the simplest tools available. That said, we hope you enjoy the content. In this episode, we discuss the concept of justifiability with one of its earliest researchers, Scott Jeffrey, PhD. Scott was early among researchers, including Itamar Simonson at Stanford, to note that part of what makes a thing a 'reward' is its difficulty to be justifiable. In other words, the best reward is something that we would NOT justify spending our own money on. Scott took an interesting turn with his theme song and we had also talked about how employee engagement platforms are 'dollarizing' the relationship between the employer and the employee. Scott also brought up Max Bazerman's "Arguing with Yourself and Losing" model which coaxed a spirited discussion among us. We groove on holiday eats, since we originally recorded this in December and lots of geeky stuff in this episode. We hope you enjoy. Links Scott Jeffrey, PhD: https://www.monmouth.edu/directory/profiles/scott-a-jeffrey/ Justifiability: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/8da9/c17cecfba7806e00a966009c67e11f14e13f.pdf A Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith: https://www.ibiblio.org/ml/libri/s/SmithA_MoralSentiments_p.pdf Cognitive Misers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_miser Dragon’s Den: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragons%27_Den Max Bazerman, PhD: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/profile.aspx?facId=6420 Dan Ariely, PhD: http://danariely.com/ Source Attribution: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attribution_(psychology) Behavioral Grooves: https://behavioralgrooves.com/ Kurt Nelson: @motivationguru and https://www.linkedin.com/in/kurtwnelson/ Tim Houlihan: @THoulihan and https://www.linkedin.com/in/tim-houlihan-b-e/

Kurt and Tim groove on where behavioral science shows up in popular music. Social norms, loss aversion…all at its best. The human condition is redolent in popular music and we hope you notice some of your own. Let us know what songs YOU think are great for demonstrating behavioral science principles. Links Aretha Franklin, “Think”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsL9UL9qbv8 Linkin Park “Numb”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXYiU_JCYtU Cheap Trick, “Surrender”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sAm5UCJ9vA Joan Jett, “Bad Reputation”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RAQXg0IdfI George Jones, “She Thinks I Still Care”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UquXUYfHYok Dan Hicks, “How Can I Miss You When You Won’t Ever Leave Me”: https://www.lyrics.com/lyric/1136477/Original+Recordings/How+Can+I+Miss+You+When+You+Won't+Go+Away

We met up with Kathleen Vohs, PhD at our Behavioral Grooves Meetup in Minneapolis on the evening that her op-ed article appeared in the Washington Post on July 18, 2019. She had been asked by the newspaper to write a piece explaining how supporters of President Donald Trump could continue backing him in light of his, “send them back” comment in a tweet. The tweet referred to 4 first-term congresswomen of color. All of them are US citizens and only one of them was born outside the United States: Representative Ilhan Omar from Minnesota. Representative Omar is from Kurt and Tim’s district and we were motivated by the situation to groove on the cognitive dissonance that Dr. Vohs wrote about. In this short grooving session, we talk about politics, politicians and cognitive dissonance. We also explore the age-old philosophical question about whether or not a piece of art can be viewed (and appreciated) without the context of the artist. Links Kathleen Vohs, “The psychological phenomenon that blinds Trump supporters to his racism,” https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/the-psychological-phenomenon-that-blinds-trump-supporters-to-his-racism/2019/07/18/29789344-a8ac-11e9-ac16-90dd7e5716bc_story.html?utm_term=.3cd14b5c4d4b Kathleen Vohs, PhD: https://carlsonschool.umn.edu/faculty/kathleen-vohs Leon Festinger, PhD: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Festinger Cognitive Dissonance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance Picasso: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablo_Picasso Kurt Nelson: @motivationguru and https://www.linkedin.com/in/kurtwnelson/ Tim Houlihan: @THoulihan and https://www.linkedin.com/in/tim-houlihan-b-e/ Check out the Behavioral Grooves website: https://behavioralgrooves.com/

In this episode, we spoke with Matt Loper, CEO and Co-Founder of Wellth, an app that helps people with chronic conditions improve their health through better adherence to their prescriptions. Matt’s company works with healthcare providers and insurers to provide rewards for patients who need small behavioral interventions to stay on track. Wellth does this by “giving” patients money at the start of each month to take their pills. To prove they’re on track, they use the Wellth app to take a photograph of their medicines in the palm of their hand. But every day that they miss, they are penalized in the form of fee, which nets them less money at the end of the month. This loss-contract model is gaining notoriety and it should be: Wellth discovered that positive incentives accounted for adherence rates around 60% while loss-contract models account for better than 90% adherence rates. Matt is quick to point out that the science of behavior change is not like chemistry, where all the inputs and outputs can be measured and is easily replicable. Behavioral science, Matt argues, is much more complex and requires more rigorous testing. In our grooving session, Kurt and Tim discuss loss contracts in greater depth and the complexities of the human condition. Links Matt Loper: [email protected] Kevin Volpp, PhD. Director, Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics, Leonard Davis Institute: https://hcmg.wharton.upenn.edu/profile/volpp70/ Kevin Volpp’s group: https://chibe.upenn.edu/ Eisenberger & Camerer: https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/sage/eisenberger-r-cameron-j-1996-detrimental-effects-of-reward-reality-or-GQliEjHSH0 Teresa Amabile: http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/publication%20files/12-096.pdf Riding the Bike: http://blog.lanterngroup.com/?s=bike Ran Kivetz: https://www8.gsb.columbia.edu/cbs-directory/detail/rk566 Kurt Nelson: @motivationguru and https://www.linkedin.com/in/kurtwnelson/ Tim Houlihan: @THoulihan and https://www.linkedin.com/in/tim-houlihan-b-e/ Check out the Behavioral Grooves website: https://behavioralgrooves.com/ Musical Links Fleetwood Mac – Rumors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumours_(album) Stevie Nicks would be the IT girl today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stevie_Nicks Simon & Garfunkel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_%26_Garfunkel Richard Prior – original, foul language comic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Pryor Glass Animals. https://www.glassanimals.com/ Alabama Shakes. https://www.alabamashakes.com/ Childish Gambino. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Glover Kendrick Lamar. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kendrick_Lamar Led Zeppelin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Led_Zeppelin The Doors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Doors Black Keys. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Keys Kid Cudi: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kid_Cudi Haim: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haim_(band) "Loss Aversion" by Tim Houlihan & Kurt Nelson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyeRNVSWJAI&t=15s

In this episode, Kurt and Tim explore Robert Cialdini’s Fifth Principles of Influence: Liking. In it, we groove on the very powerful tool for influence and persuasion and give examples of how to apply it. In short, we like people who like us and are more willing to do things for others who we like. We can find aspects of liking and similarity on a multitude of levels, and this subconscious bias impacts much of what drives our behavior. There are three key things to keep in mind when it comes to maximizing the impact of liking: 1. Don’t give people a reason to say no, 2. Be cooperative, and 3. Be authentic in the way you present yourself. We hope you enjoy our short grooving session on liking. If you find yourself liking this episode, please be kind enough to leave us a review. Thank you. Links Robert Cialdini, PhD on Liking: https://www.influenceatwork.com/principles-of-persuasion/ Negotiation study: https://www.pon.harvard.edu/daily/negotiation-training-daily/negotiate-relationships/ Attractive Bankers in Call Center study: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/002224298404800110 Halo effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect Celebrity effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celebrity_branding Kurt Nelson: @motivationguru and https://www.linkedin.com/in/kurtwnelson/ Tim Houlihan: @THoulihan and https://www.linkedin.com/in/tim-houlihan-b-e/ Check out the Behavioral Grooves website: https://behavioralgrooves.com/

In this episode, we spoke with Nurit Nobel, who is living in Stockholm, Sweden where she’s working on her PhD. Nurit is a co-founder of Impactually, along with one of our favorite guests, Christina Gravert, PhD. Impactually is a behavioral science consultancy that is firmly grounded in both academic rigor and real-world experience. Nurit, who is related by marriage to the family associated with the Nobel Prize, talked about Impactually’s BOOST model, which is a practical tool for behavior change. The majority of our conversation was focused on a client case study about de-biasing the recruitment and hiring processes. Her client’s intentions were all in the right places; however, the firm still ended up hiring new employees that were fundamentally the same as the existing employees. The research Nurit relied on to de-bias the hiring process was originally conducted by Iris Bohnet at Harvard, and it is focused on modifying the process in order to overrule our natural biases. Nurit and her team put the research to good use and our discussion dove into the nitty gritty of the issues they dealt with as well as the results they’re getting under the new process. We also talked about the Lindy Hop, a pre-World War II dance developed in Harlem, and Sweden’s fascinating revival of it. We hope you enjoy our conversation with Nurit Links Nurit Nobel LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nnobel/ Twitter: @nuritnobel Impactually: http://impactually.se and https://impactually.teachable.com/ for the BOOST online course Iris Bohnet, PhD, Harvard University: https://scholar.harvard.edu/iris_bohnet/home Kahneman & Levav on judges after lunch: https://www.theguardian.com/law/2011/apr/11/judges-lenient-break Christina Gravert: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cgravert/ South by Southwest (SXSW): https://www.sxsw.com/attend/ Richard Thaler: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Thaler Dan Ariely: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Ariely April Seifert, PhD: https://www.aprilseifert.com/ Laurie Santos and the GI Joe Effect: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GimHHAID_P0 Brexit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brexit Muzak: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muzak Lindy Hop: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7KO7b9qbfU Frankie Manning: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankie_Manning “Sonic Boom,” by Joel Beckerman: https://thesonicboom.joelbeckerman.com/ Tim Houlihan, “Washington Square”: https://soundcloud.com/timhoulihan/washington-square Kurt Nelson: @motivationguru and https://www.linkedin.com/in/kurtwnelson/ Tim Houlihan: @THoulihan and https://www.linkedin.com/in/tim-houlihan-b-e/ Check out the Behavioral Grooves website: https://behavioralgrooves.com/

We are excited to re-share our favorite episodes from time to time and this discussion with Tom was terrifically informative about the sales managers can be more effective at introducing new products to their sales team. Thomas Steenburgh, PhD is a senior professor of Business Administration and Senior Associate Dean at the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia. Tom spent a good portion of his career in the corporate world and before he departed for academia, he held senior positions at Xerox Corporation, ending his work there as head of the US Direct Incentive Strategy with a budget of $140 million budget for 4,000 salespeople Tom has partnered with Mike Ahearne, PhD from the University of Houston (featured in a June 2018 episode of Behavioral Grooves) on extensive research related to the performance and management of sales reps. Recently, the two of them developed ground-breaking research on how to help sales reps be more successful when they are asked to sell new products. Tom and Mike invested 5 years in gathering data from sales managers, salespeople, and even customers. The insights they gained were especially valuable for those working in sales leadership positions. There were three primary discoveries we discussed with Tom. The first is that the best asset for a sales rep to have when it comes to selling new products is a learning mindset. A learning mindset, as described by Tom, is what comes from a sales rep’s innate curiosity about customers, their environment and their needs. As intuitive as that sounds, it’s a lot less common than we imagine. Reps with learning mindsets spend more time discussing the market trends affecting the customers as well as the situations and the specific needs their customers have before they start into selling new products. This deep investigation into each customer’s situation contributes to increased success when they start selling. The downside is that it takes more time and reduces output while they’re doing that investigation. Sales managers who are anxious to keep the numbers up from month to month may struggle with this. Tom highlighted a few ways to work around this in the short term. The second big discovery was the disconnect between sales reps and their customers in how they perceive the strengths of the reps. In other words, customers were asked to rate reps on a variety of scales and reps were asked to the same of themselves. When considering the rep’s strengths, customers tended to rate sales reps very differently than reps rated themselves. The only dimension the reps and customers agreed on was on the sales rep’s product knowledge. Customers were more likely to give reps lower scores on reps’ learning mindsets, adaptability and openness than the reps gave themselves. This revealed big blind spots. The third big discovery was the role of the rep’s emotional wellbeing in the selling process. We recognize that selling new products can be hard on the reps, but it’s vital to the company’s long-term success. Tom’s research revealed that sales reps need to become change agents within the organization as well as masters to change their own selling methods. These changes, along with saving face with clients, can cause significant emotional challenges – a component that has been undervalued in the past. It turns out that reps were surprised by the stark contrast between how easy it was to get customers to take meetings and how difficult it was to close deals after the initial interest. Unfortunately, most sales reps failed to do the deep investigation to understand who the best target for the new product would be, so many of their meetings were wastes of time. We also talked about the importance of strategic account reps with their broader viewpoints and longer-term orientations and how they can be leaders in new product introductions. And we discussed Neil Rackham, the creator of SPIN selling and author of books on consultative selling. Of course, we also discussed Tom’s eclectic tastes in music. Apparently, he has seemingly equal interest in the works of Philip Glass, great American contemporary composer of minimalist orchestral music and John Lurie and the Lounge Lizards, who are responsible for some of the greatest covers of Ornette Coleman’s classic sax tunes. But Tom also listens to the sweet and simple Americana melodies of Dave Rawlings and Gillian Welch. Not to be outdone with another left-turn, Tom paid special note to Kurt Weill, the early 20th-century composer of The Threepenny Opera which featured the song “Mack The Knife” (lyrics by Berthold Brecht). It was popularized by Bobby Darin in 1958, then Ella Fitzgerald in her 1960 performance Live in Berlin, which we’ve referenced before as one of the greatest live recordings – ever. Our own notes included references to The Who’s Tommy and Pink Floyd’s The Wall. Thomas Steenburgh, PhD: https://www.darden.virginia.edu/faculty-research/directory/thomas-j-steenburgh/ In our grooving sessio

The role of the User Experience (UX) designer is growing in corporations around the world. UX Designers have a great deal of influence over how a customer CAN take an action. Relatedly, behavioral scientists are interested in addressing the issue of WILL a customer take an action. What if the two were fused? In this episode, Jonathan Mann explores ways in which the UX designer and the behavioral scientist can merge into one, combining the CAN and WILL elements for more effective – and ethical – marketing messages. He relates his experiences from studies he performed at PayPal under the direction of renowned researcher Robert Cialdini, PhD. Their work applied the element of social proof to advertising that increased validation – the act of connecting a bank account to a PayPal account – with a dramatic effect. Millions of dollars of compounding annual revenue materialized after A/B testing a variety of messages. Jonathan cleverly leverages The Year of the Shark and the terrific elephant & rider metaphor to drive home the important message that marketing will be most successful when it appeals to both the rider (the rational part of the brain) and the elephant (the emotional part of the brain). In the grooving session, Kurt & Tim discuss the ethical application of such powerful tools and what songs we might use for priming in particular situations. Special thanks to Stefani Simon, president of Inprela Public Relations, for hosting this event: https://inprela.com/ Links Jonathan Mann: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jdmann/ Jonathan’s Deck from the presentation: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1pa1CvMOQzWUpreQpirDGSjTEoDl3gPCg Robert Cialdini, PhD: https://www.influenceatwork.com/ Galeophobia: https://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=12518 Summer of the Shark Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzVC6tBTaQ8 Jonathan Haidt / Elephant and the Rider: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9KP8uiGZTs Ovid, Metamorphisis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamorphoses Discount Distance Congruity Effect (Coulter & Norberg): https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1057740809000266 Visual Depiction Event (Coulter): https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/3760/a10d0adf5636bbd18f9804fb11ce77a02195.pdf Auditory Price Perception Effect (Coulter): https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1016/j.jcps.2011.11.005 All definitions of Behavioral Science Principles including Present Bias, Availability Heuristic, Social Proof among others can be found at: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XHpBr0VFcaT8wIUpr-9zMIb79dFMgOVFRxIZRybiftI/edit# Cialdini Hotel Towel reuse: https://assets.csom.umn.edu/assets/118359.pdf Cialdini 6 Principles of Persuasion: https://www.influenceatwork.com/principles-of-persuasion/ “Don’t Make Me Think,” by Steve Krug: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_Make_Me_Think “People are People,” By Depeche Mode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzGnX-MbYE4 EDM: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_dance_music Kurt Nelson: @motivationguru and https://www.linkedin.com/in/kurtwnelson/ Tim Houlihan: @THoulihan and https://www.linkedin.com/in/tim-houlihan-b-e/ Check out the Behavioral Grooves website: https://behavioralgrooves.com/

This episode is a discussion on the principle of scarcity. Kurt and Tim 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 Consistency was discussed through the lens of politicians and politics in episode #49. Please check them out if you’re interested in Cialdini’s Persuasion Principles. Also, please leave us a quick rating and review. We benefit greatly from your support and you only have a few minutes left to do it today! LINKS Principles of Persuasion – Robert Cialdini, PhD: https://www.influenceatwork.com/principles-of-persuasion/ Stephen Worchel, Jerry Lee & Akanbi Adawole, (1975) “Effects of supply and demand on ratings of object value” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 32(5), 906-914. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1976-03817-001 Sendhil Mullainathan& Eldar Shafir, (2013) Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much, Times Books. https://www.amazon.com/Scarcity-Having-Little-Means-Much/dp/0805092641/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr= Tim Urban blog: Wait But Why? https://waitbutwhy.com/ Kurt Nelson: Twitter: @motivationguru or @whatmotivates and LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kurtwnelson/ Tim Houlihan:Twitter: @THoulihan and LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/tim-houlihan-b-e/ Check out the Behavioral Grooves website: https://behavioralgrooves.com/

Terry Esau is the founder of Free Bikes 4 Kids, a non-profit based in Minneapolis that collects and distributes tens of thousands of bikes to needy children every year around the holiday season. He’s not as well-known as some of our guests, but his story will engage even the savviest marketers and HR executives. Terry realized early on that growing the organization would require meaningful marketing, smooth operations, and a phalanx of well-trained volunteers. To streamline these functions, he turned to Kaizen / Lean analysis and employed a host of behavioral science tools, without all the terminology. As a result, he is maximizing the organization’s mission to bring FREE bikes to kids. Terry is what we call an Accidental Behavioral Scientist. His work clearly demonstrates the application of foundational behavioral science principles, yet he is unaware of the principles by name or theory. He has applied behavioral science principles to how kids (and their parents) shop for their free bikes and how volunteers are vetted and trained. In roughly 8 weeks, more than 20,000 volunteer hours are put into the collection, repair and distribution of bikes in each city. And it all happens with remarkably high satisfaction for both the riders and the volunteers. Terry is an avid bicyclist, and he is also a published author and speaker. However, he spent most of his career composing music for documentary films, television and radio advertising. He composed and produced music for over 2,000 TV commercials for clients including Target, McDonalds, Pepsi, Harley Davidson, Honda, Subway, Perkins, Golden Grahams and even Kitty Litter. He’s even has won a Clio award for his work in advertising. In our grooving session, Kurt and Tim suss out the ways Terry leverages the endowment effect and uses choice architecture to guide kids and parents on the journey of getting a new bike. We also talked about the psychological effects that music has on the taste of food. Not just another rabbit hole, but a very interesting discussion! We hope you enjoy the discussion with Terry Esau. If you would like to learn about how to bring Free Bikes for Kids to your city, please contact him directly: [email protected] Links Terry Esau: https://www.linkedin.com/in/terry-esau-8692042/ Terry Esau email: [email protected] and on Twitter: @FB4K Free Bikes for Kids: http://fb4k.org/ Feed My Starving Children: https://www.fmsc.org/ Kaizen / Lean: https://asq.org/training/lean-kaizen-a-simplified-approach-to-process-improvement-kaizen QBP (Quality Bike Parts): https://qbp.com/ Guthrie Theater: https://www.guthrietheater.org/ British Advertising Awards (Arrows): https://www.britisharrows.com/british-arrows-2018/ The Current (radio): https://www.thecurrent.org/ “Differentiate or Die” by Jack Trout: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/105146.Differentiate_or_Die “This is Your Brain on Music” by Dan Levitin: http://daniellevitin.com/publicpage/books/this-is-your-brain-on-music/ Autotune: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-Tune “The Service Profit Chain” by James Heskett: https://hbr.org/2008/07/putting-the-service-profit-chain-to-work Kurt Nelson: @motivationguru and https://www.linkedin.com/in/kurtwnelson/ Tim Houlihan: @THoulihan and https://www.linkedin.com/in/tim-houlihan-b-e/ Check out the Behavioral Grooves website: https://behavioralgrooves.com/ Artists Crosby, Stills & Nash: https://www.csny.com/ Blood Sweat & Tears: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood,_Sweat_%26_Tears Alice Cooper: https://alicecooper.com/ Amy Grant: https://amygrant.com/ Keith Richards: http://www.keithrichards.com/

Roger Dooley is the author of Friction, his newest book that summarizes great examples of companies do good things to reduce friction for customers and some not-so-good things to increase friction. Roger is also the author of Brainfluence: 100 Ways to Persuade and Convince Consumers with Neuromarketing. He is the founder of Dooley Direct, a marketing consultancy, and frequent speaker on the topics of marketing and neuroscience. Roger even has ties to Carnegie Mellon as he earned his engineering degree there then went on to complete his MBA from the University of Tennessee. In this episode, we discuss how friction in the customer experience impacts loyalty and corporate revenues. We also talked about how corporate leaders could help employees be more engaged by reducing nonsensical friction in their daily work lives – like useless paperwork or the doubling of forms and data between separate systems. We groove on experiences we’ve had where friction negatively impacts a positive customer experience. And we discussed how long it’s been since we bought a CD. Let us know: when was the last time YOU bought a CD? Links Roger Dooley: https://www.rogerdooley.com/ Follow Roger at @rogerdooley William of Ockham, the Law of Least Effort: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_of_Ockham Gartner Group: https://www.gartner.com/en Brian Massey at Conversion Science: https://conversionsciences.com/author/bmassey/ Chater, Nick and Loewenstein, George F., The Under-Appreciated Drive for Sense-Making (April 20, 2015). https://ssrn.com/abstract=2596897 Teresa Amabile on The Progress Principle: http://progressprinciple.com/books/single/the_progress_principle Four Drive Model: https://www.leadersbeacon.com/four-drive-model-new-theory-on-employee-motivation/ Joshi Story: http://customerthink.com/joshie_the_giraffe_a_remarkable_story_about_customer_delight/ Kurt Nelson: @motivationguru and https://www.linkedin.com/in/kurtwnelson/ Tim Houlihan: @THoulihan and https://www.linkedin.com/in/tim-houlihan-b-e/ Check out the Behavioral Grooves website: https://behavioralgrooves.com/

Alex Imas is an assistant professor of economics in the Social & Decision Sciences department at Carnegie Mellon’s Dietrich College. His research dovetails perfectly into the department’s cross-disciplinary approach by blending behavioral and experimental economics, particularly how social concerns and emotions influence decision making and preferences. His most current research examines the effectiveness of prosocial incentive schemes and how subtle changes in social norms can have large effects on behavior. However, our conversation started with Alex discussing his findings with Sally Sadoff, from the University of California in San Diego, and Anya Samek from USC, on the effectiveness of loss contracts. Loss or clawback contracts are similar to incentives but instead of getting paid at the end of the work – contingent of successful achievement, the clawback or loss contract gives you money up front and you are forced to give it back what you don’t achieve the appropriate levels of performance. Many people would say they’d prefer a regular bonus structure – to get paid upon successful completion of their work – but Alex, Sally and Anya’s work found something different. The loss contract proved to be a commitment device – it helped reduce shirking – and improved performance overall. Even people with a higher sense of loss aversion tended to benefit most from loss contracts. There are even some people who ended up preferring loss contracts. In our grooving session, Kurt and Tim discuss their real-world experiences with clawbacks: do they work and in what circumstances are they most successful? With that, please sit back and enjoy our conversation with Alex Imas. Links Alex Imas (CMU): https://www.cmu.edu/dietrich/sds/people/faculty/alex-imas.html Alex Imas (Personal): http://www.aleximas.com Carnegie Mellon University: https://www.cmu.edu/ CMU Social and Decision Sciences Department: https://www.cmu.edu/dietrich/ "Do People Anticipate Loss Aversion?" (with S. Sadoff and A. Samek). Management Science, 2016. “Enhancing the Efficacy of Teacher Incentives through Loss Aversion: A field experiment.” https://rady.ucsd.edu/docs/faculty/Fryer_et_al_Teacher_Incentives_NBER_WP18237_2012.pdf By Roland G. Fryer, Jr., Steven D. Levitt, John List, Sally Sadoff Index funds: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/indexfund.asp Jack Bogle index funds: https://www.fool.com/investing/2019/01/17/jack-bogle-on-index-funds-vanguard-and-investing-a.aspx “Myopic Loss Aversion and the Equity Premium Puzzle,” Thaler & Benartzi. https://www.nber.org/papers/w4369 Abby Sussman: https://www.chicagobooth.edu/faculty/directory/s/abigail-sussman Paul Smeets: https://facilities.research.northwestern.edu/directory/paul-jozef-matheus-smeets Ashley Wilhans: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/profile.aspx?facId=943704 Please Kill Me, Legs McNeil & Gillian McCain. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/14595.Please_Kill_Me Festivus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Festivus Artists Bob Dylan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Dylan Phoebe Bridgers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psZuC10Oa4E Bright Eyes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwFS69nA-1w Boy Genius: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OS48Lp34Zic Conor Oberst: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FnmP_1vABE Mitzki: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qooWnw5rEcI Soccer Mommy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ouem6cFXJvA Run the Jewels: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfuCLp8VEng Cardi B: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUOh09GoQgk Tom Waits, “Jockey Full of Bourbon,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgMP9O-cIV8

On May 3, 2019, Kurt and Tim attended an invitation-only Science Symposium featuring a track on behavioral science at the San Francisco headquarters of human and food transportation giant Uber. During the one-day assembly, we sat in on presentations delivered by academic researchers from UCLA, University of British Columbia, University of California San Diego, Dartmouth, Cornell, Columbia University and Stanford, among others. We also heard from practitioners of applied behavioral sciences who work at Facebook, Morningstar, TruFit, Cerego, Ipsos, Maritz, and, of course, Uber. Kurt and Tim were exposed to a massive amount of new research data, new insights into human behavior from both academic and corporate fieldwork, as well as exciting hallway conversations with people that we wanted to share with you. We nabbed a few quick recordings during the breaks and, regrettably, there are times when the background noise is pretty high. (Our apologies.) We are grateful to Candace Hogan, a leader of applied behavioral science at Uber, for inviting us and we appreciate the effort that Uber is expending to integrate behavioral sciences with their business model and to share them with us. Guests (in order of appearance) Melanie Brucks, PhD student at Stanford University: https://www.melaniebrucks.com/ Elizabeth Kim, first behavioral scientist at Spotify: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elizabethdkim/ Charlotte Blank, chief behavioral officer at Maritz: https://www.linkedin.com/in/charlotte-blank-52554a2/ Ingrid Paulin, senior behavioral scientist at Rally Health: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ingrid-melv%C3%A6r-paulin-27543647/ Shirin Oreizy, founder and president at Next Step: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shirinoreizy/ Scott Drummond, brand builder at Next Step: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottdrummond/ Joseph Reiff, PhD student at UCLA: https://www.anderson.ucla.edu/degrees/phd-program/areas-of-study/behavioral-decision-making/meet-the-students/joseph-reiff Mentions Wendy De La Rosa, principal at Irrational Labs: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wendy-de-la-rosa/ Hal Hershfield, PhD, professor at UCLA: https://www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty-and-research/marketing/faculty/hershfield Brad Voytek, PhD, professor at UCSD: https://voyteklab.com/

Russell Golman is an Assistant Professor of Behavioral Economics and Decision Sciences in the Social & Decision Sciences Department at CMU. His pioneering, interdisciplinary work has been published in a wide range of academic journals, including Science Advances, Decision, the RAND Journal of Economics, the Journal of Economic Theory, the Journal of Economic Perspectives, and the Journal of Economic Literature. In 2017 Professor Golman organized the Belief-Based Utility Conference at Carnegie Mellon with generous funding from the Russell Sloan Foundation and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Professor Golman was trained as a game theorist with a Mathematics Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. But whereas game theorists usually assume that people making strategic decisions are hyper-rational, Russell wanted to acknowledge that real people are influenced by each other and sometimes make mistakes. They often care deeply about their beliefs, not just about material outcomes. And they rarely settle into an equilibrium in which everybody is static and content. Russell’s research interests expanded into behavioral economics and behavioral decision research as well as complex adaptive systems and social dynamics. He took a postdoc in Social and Decision Sciences at CMU, where Herb Simon first conceived of the concept of bounded rationality 50 years earlier. Professor Golman joined the faculty here in 2012. We talked to Russell about information avoidance and curiosity and to what lengths people will strive for both. In our grooving session, Kurt and Tim discuss information avoidance from a corporate perspective and wonder, “what impact does a manager have when he or she avoids a difficult conversation?” We also talked about ways to reduce information avoidance in the working world and how incentives may help managers through tough situations. We hope you enjoy this episode in our Carnegie Mellon series with Russell Golman. Links Russell Golman: https://www.cmu.edu/dietrich/sds/people/faculty/russell-golman.html CMU Social and Decision Sciences Department: https://www.cmu.edu/dietrich/ Carnegie Mellon University: https://www.cmu.edu/ Golman, Russell, David Hagmann, and George Loewenstein. “Information Avoidance.” Journal of Economic Literature, 2017, 55: 96-135. Featured on The Academic Minute Golman, Russell and George Loewenstein. “Information Gaps: A Theory of Preferences Regarding the Presence and Absence of Information” Decision, 2016, forthcoming. Golman, Russell, George Loewenstein, Karl Ove Moene and Luca Zarri. “The Preference for Belief Consonance.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 2016, 30: 165-187. GI Joe Fallacy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GimHHAID_P0 Herb Simon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bounded_rationality Bluegrass music: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluegrass_music Great Blue Heron Music Festival: https://greatblueheron.com/ Donna the Buffalo: https://donnathebuffalo.com/ Jam bands: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jam_band The Pines: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuuFampLC6E The Cactus Blossoms: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qj7jJk8TPZk Kurt Nelson: @motivationguru and https://www.linkedin.com/in/kurtwnelson/ Tim Houlihan: @THoulihan and https://www.linkedin.com/in/tim-houlihan-b-e/ Check out the Behavioral Grooves website:https://behavioralgrooves.com/

Todd Fonseca is an executive in clinical research and communication for Medtronic and holds an interesting array of certifications including Certified Body Language Trainer. He is also the founder of the Anti-Networking Network Meetup and likes to ask meetup guests "What would be your superpower for an hour?" Needless to say, the interview brought interesting concepts to the floor and we had fun doing it. The interview with Todd included short discussions on the placebo effect, situational awareness, and a lengthy discussion of Paul Ekman PhD's work on microexpressions. The seven key microexpressions (Happiness, Sadness, Anger, Disgust, Contempt, Fear and Surprise) are foundational to human communication and found to be universal - in other words, they exist among people everywhere on the planet. Our conversation delved deep into the identification and application of them. We grooved on the themes of the importance of having these microexpressions in our communication toolbox and talked about music from the Oh, Hello's and Robert Finley, an artist recently produced by Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys.

Julie Downs, PhD is an associate professor of psychology in the Social and Decision Sciences department at Carnegie Mellon’s Dietrich College and fits perfectly into the cross-disciplinary culture of the group. Her interests have spanned anthropology to healthcare to economics and her zest for each of them is undeniable. Our discussion with Julie started with some of her latest research on how to help women make the proper vaginal insertion of an HIV-prevention drug. While scientists at the University of Pittsburgh are developing the medicine, Julie is focused on the behavioral aspects including the proper way to apply it because the efficacy of the drug relies on proper application. The drug is extremely low-cost, doesn’t require refrigeration, and can be kept private in otherwise touchy situations with sexual partners. We also discussed making decisions in an increasingly complex world of what to eat. Fast food is readily available, it’s cheap and easy to acquire for working parents with a hungry family. However, recent research on fast food consumption reveals the calorie counters on the food menus are not having a positive effect on what gets ordered. Julie is working to figure out solutions that make the calorie counts salient with an online ordering app. In our grooving session, we chat about the concept of friction and how that applies to product development and communications AND we talk about insights we can take from a food ordering app that has a special calorie counter built into it and use those insights in our work. So, sit back and enjoy another episode in our Carnegie Mellon series with professor Julie Downs. Links Julie Downs: https://www.cmu.edu/dietrich/sds/people/faculty/julie-downs.html Carnegie Mellon University: https://www.cmu.edu/ CMU Social and Decision Sciences Department: https://www.cmu.edu/dietrich/ Truvada: https://www.truvada.com/ Fleshlight. https://www.fleshlight.com/ Sahel Desert: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahel Satisficing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satisficing The Beatles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beatles Louie Prima / Jungle Book: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rV8HrpOu1FA Ella Fitzgerald: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2bigf337aU Queen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A22oy8dFjqc Hamilton: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvBYOBTkDRk Kurt Nelson: @motivationguru and https://www.linkedin.com/in/kurtwnelson/ Tim Houlihan: @THoulihan and https://www.linkedin.com/in/tim-houlihan-b-e/ Listen to Behavioral Grooves: https://behavioralgrooves.podbean.com/

George Loewenstein, PhD is the Herbert A. Simon Professor of Economics and Psychology in the Social and Decision Sciences Department in the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University and is the director of the Center for Behavioral Decision Research. George received his PhD in economics from Yale but was always interested in topics outside of the field. At one point, he considered switching from economics to another major but was advised to remain: “We need you here,” he was told by a sage researcher. We’re glad he did. George may not be a household name, but he is a rockstar in the world of behavioral science. Nobel laureate Richard Thaler dedicated his last book, Misbehaving, to George, along with their colleague Colin Camerer. George’s insights into behavior and decision making are legendary and he is recognized as one of the founders of behavioral economics, in part because he was literally at the table when the field was named “behavioral economics.” During his career, George has indulged his curiosities in research projects that span an incredibly wide variety of topics including risk, confidence, the effects of feelings, emotions, wanting and enjoying sex, sequencing, preferences, bargaining, incentives, privacy, healthy behaviors, investing, empathy, and sympathy…to name but a few. George’s work has been cited nearly 100,000 times in published articles and peer-reviewed papers. He’s not only remarkably curious, but he’s also remarkably productive. His book of essays titled Exotic Preferences is a terrific read and provides some insight into this extremely talented man. We were excited to have George as a guest because his comments can be so insightful that they can be pondered for hours, and because he is so rarely recorded (and we are grateful to Linda Babcock for her support and participation in our conversation). We focused on some new work George is doing on the subject of boredom with a graduate student, Amanda Markey. We were surprised to learn that their work is breaking ground as there is no comprehensive functional theory for boredom. And in the category of not knowing where a conversation might go, we compared individual experiences of boredom (and flow). In our grooving session, we discussed some of the implications of boredom in the workplace and ways you could make meetings more successful. We also touched on the temporal nature of attention and George’s comment to “use it or lose it.” Finally, we returned to a favorite topic whether it’s a good idea to listen to music while we work. We hope you enjoy this rare recorded conversation with George Loewenstein. Links George Loewenstein: https://www.cmu.edu/dietrich/sds/people/faculty/george-loewenstein.html George’s H-Index: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=8nyQzDsAAAAJ&hl=en Linda Babcock: https://www.cmu.edu/dietrich/sds/people/faculty/linda-babcock.html Exotic Preferences: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/exotic-preferences-9780199257072?cc=us&lang=en& Carnegie Mellon University: https://www.cmu.edu/ CMU Social and Decision Sciences Department: https://www.cmu.edu/dietrich/ Center for Behavioral Decision Research: https://cbdr.cmu.edu/ Richard Thaler, PhD: https://www.chicagobooth.edu/faculty/directory/t/richard-h-thaler Colin Camerer: http://www.its.caltech.edu/~camerer/camerer.html Amanda Markey: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amanda-markey-026b5914/ Kurt Nelson: @motivationguru and https://www.linkedin.com/in/kurtwnelson/ Tim Houlihan: @THoulihan and https://www.linkedin.com/in/tim-houlihan-b-e/ Listen to Behavioral Grooves: https://behavioralgrooves.podbean.com/

Silvia Saccardo, PhD is an Assistant Professor of Management in the Social and Decision Sciences department in the Dietrich College of Humanities & Social Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University. Our conversation with Silvia is the fourth in our series on Carnegie Mellon professors. We sat down with Silvia in Porter Hall on a chilly day at CMU to discuss her findings on how motivated cognition and hidden biases shape our ethical (and unethical) decision-making. Her research on bribery and lying has been published in top peer-reviewed journals and we found her work with the Dictator Game particularly interesting, especially as it relates to measuring what we consider ethical behavior. Dr. Saccardo uses the Dictator Game in her research in a unique way. In one case, she set up the game to put people in situations where they can lie to other players and the results are fascinating. We also discussed the way people are more likely to give blunt feedback to out-group rather than in-group associates. Her findings reveal very interesting aspects of the human condition and how we respond to it. In our grooving session, we discuss the impact of what some people might consider small acts of kindness and how those acts may be construed as small acts of bribery in certain situations (i.e., dinners and small gifts). This conversation triangulated connections between two of our favorite Behavioral Grooves guests and Silvia and we couldn’t help but call attention to them: Francesca Gino, PhD as a fellow Italian American, and Christina Gravert, PhD as a co-author of papers with Silvia. We also want to thank Silvia for the opportunity to guest lecture and meet a classroom full of her uber-engaged and enthusiastic students. What a treat. Links Silvia Saccardo: https://www.cmu.edu/dietrich/sds/people/faculty/silvia-saccardo.html …and: https://sites.google.com/site/silviasaccardo/home Carnegie Mellon University: https://www.cmu.edu/ CMU Social and Decision Sciences Department: https://www.cmu.edu/dietrich/ Saccardo, Silvia, Aniela Pietrasz, and Uri Gneezy. "On the Size of the Gender Difference in Competitiveness." Management Science. Forthcoming. Gneezy, Uri, Christina Gravert, Silvia Saccardo, and Franziska Tausch. "A must lie situation–avoiding giving negative feedback." Games and Economic Behavior 102 (2017): 445-454. Jovanotti: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ro8PdDjKA3o Andrea Bocelli: https://www.youtube.com/andreabocelli Kurt Nelson: @motivationguru and https://www.linkedin.com/in/kurtwnelson/ Tim Houlihan: @THoulihan and https://www.linkedin.com/in/tim-houlihan-b-e/ Listen to Behavioral Grooves: https://behavioralgrooves.podbean.com/

At this writing, we’ve recorded and published 64 episodes of Behavioral Grooves and we’d like to make sure we’re on the right course for our listeners. If you would be so kind, we would appreciate hearing the answers to two questions at #behavioralgrooves. Question 1: Why do you listen? Question 2: What keeps you listening? Thanks very much and keep on grooving!

Daniel Oppenheimer, PhD, known to all as “Danny,” is a professor of psychology in the Social and Decision Sciences department in the Dietrich College of Humanities & Social Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University. This is the third episode in our Carnegie Mellon series, and Danny is a researcher with a wide variety of curiosities. His writings have been published in more than 50 peer-reviewed publications, as well as a number of book chapters and media contributions. Among his notable works, he co-authored Democracy Despite Itself: Why a System That Shouldn’t Work at All Works So Well, published by the MIT Press, and Psychology: A Cartoon Introduction, a cartoon book published by WW Norton on, you guessed it, the simple and humorous aspects of psychology. He is also an esteemed recipient of the Ig Nobel award for his paper titled “Consequences of Erudite Vernacular Utilized Irrespective of Necessity: Problems with Using Long Words Needlessly.” Need we say more? We spoke at length about how a person’s take on helicopter (and submarine) parenting strongly correlates to their view of governance. These findings cross-party affiliation and self-identification as liberal or conservative and can also vary from topic to topic. All in, it’s a fascinating discussion. We recorded our discussion with Danny just a couple of weeks before the 2019 college admissions bribery scandal was brought to light. We discuss the implications of Danny’s observations in our grooving session. Danny shared that he’s lived for long periods without a mobile phone and that he prefers delegating his music selection to radio DJ’s, who might be considered expert in this situation, to bring him new music without the stress of finding it himself. In our grooving session, we returned to helicopter and submarine parenting styles and how they might impact the next generation of entrepreneurship, corporate policies and management styles. We also spend some time on the ways business leaders manage data inputs from various sources and the potential impact these decisions have. We hope you enjoy our discussion with Danny and that you subscribe to Behavioral Grooves at the link below. It’s free! Links Danny Oppenheimer: https://www.cmu.edu/dietrich/sds/people/faculty/daniel-oppenheimer.html Carnegie Mellon University: https://www.cmu.edu/ CMU Social and Decision Sciences Department: https://www.cmu.edu/dietrich/ “Democracy Despite Itself: Why a System That Shouldn’t Work at All Works So Well” (MIT Press) https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/democracy-despite-itself “Psychology: A Cartoon Introduction,” (WW Norton) https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34068488-psychology “Easy does it: The role of fluency in cue weighting,” Anuj K. Shah and Daniel M. Oppenheimer, Princeton University: http://journal.sjdm.org/jdm7730.pdf “The Science of Giving: Experimental Approaches to the Study of Charity” https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2010-23933-000 George Lakoff: https://georgelakoff.com/ Jonathan Haidt & Greg Lukianoff: “The Coddling of the American Mind” https://www.thecoddling.com/ Helicopter parenting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter_parent Free-Range parenting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-range_parenting Snowplow parenting: https://www.businessinsider.com/parents-call-their-adult-childrens-bosses-snowplow-parenting-2019-4 Submarine parenting: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/unmapped-country/201603/submarine-parenting College Admissions Bribery Scandal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_college_admissions_bribery_scandal Mechanical Turk: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Mechanical_Turk Postmodern Jukebox: http://postmodernjukebox.com/home/ Kurt Nelson: @motivationguru and https://www.linkedin.com/in/kurtwnelson/ Tim Houlihan: @THoulihan and https://www.linkedin.com/in/tim-houlihan-b-e/ Subscribe to Behavioral Grooves: https://behavioralgrooves.podbean.com/

Jeff Galak, PhD is a professor at the Social and Decision Sciences department in the Dietrich College of Humanities & Social Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University. Jeff’s primary assignment is as an Associate Professor of Marketing in Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School of Business; however, he is on loan to the Social & Decision Sciences department in the Dietrich College, which is where we caught up with him. This is the second in the series featuring professors from Carnegie Mellon. Jeff earned his PhD from NYU and often works on research projects across functions, making him a terrific fit for the already-interdisciplinary department of Social & Decision Sciences. He’s so fond of collaboration, he’s even published peer-reviewed papers about how scientific research benefits from it. Jeff’s research expertise spans a wide variety of topics and interests including consumer behavior, consumer psychology, as well as judgment and decision making. His findings have been published in top academic journals and he has presented his research at top marketing and psychology conferences worldwide. He’s a very curious guy and we found him engaging as he shared his work and the applications of it. In our discussion with Jeff, he discussed a few of his research initiatives and focused on three areas: (1) his findings in new research on hedonic decline, (2) how high heels became the measure for the social implications of moving to and from a different socio-economic zip codes and (3) we talked about political lies and two primary subcategories we see in political lying: Lies about policies and lies about personal things. His research reveals how we tend to disregard one more than the other. In our grooving session, we tackle the work and life implications to some of Jeff’s findings. Specifically, we discussed how product developers can create more successful products by leveraging both simplicity and complexity and we discussed implications of high-heeled social changes. We hope you enjoy our conversation with the very curious researcher, Jeff Galak. Links Jeff Galak/CMU: https://www.cmu.edu/tepper/faculty-and-research/faculty-by-area/profiles/galak-jeffrey.html Jeff Galak/personal: http://jeffgalak.com/ Carnegie Mellon University: https://www.cmu.edu/ CMU Social and Decision Sciences Department: https://www.cmu.edu/dietrich/ On hedonic decline: When It Could Have Been Worse, It Gets Better: The Effect of Uncertainty on Hedonic Adaptation On socio-economic status and sales of high heels: Trickle-down preferences: Preferential conformity to high status peers in fashion choices Clayton Critcher, UC Berkeley: https://haas.berkeley.edu/faculty/critcher-clayton/ “Let It Go” (Frozen Soundtrack): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0MK7qz13bU “Bohemian Rhapsody” (Queen): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJ9rUzIMcZQ “Bohemian Rhapsody” (Lake Street Dive) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqEiWN44L3M “The Entertainer” (Billy Joel) “…and they cut it down to 3:05”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozDSk9XUkrc Toto (founded in 1977) recorded “Africa” in 1982: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTQbiNvZqaY “Aja” (Steely Dan): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fG2seugAgnU Kurt Nelson: @motivationguru and https://www.linkedin.com/in/kurtwnelson/ Tim Houlihan: @THoulihan and https://www.linkedin.com/in/tim-houlihan-b-e/ Subscribe to Behavioral Grooves: https://behavioralgrooves.podbean.com/

This is the first in a series featuring researchers from Carnegie Mellon University’s Social and Decision Sciences (SDS) department in the Dietrich College of Humanities & Social Sciences. We begin with SDS professor, author, researcher and department chair, Linda Babcock, PhD. Linda is the James M. Walton Professor of Economics at CMU and a member of the Russell Sage Foundation’s Behavioral Economics Roundtable. Linda has served the National Science Foundation and is the founder and faculty director of the non-profit Program for Research and Outreach on Gender Equity in Society (PROGRESS). She’s been a visiting professor at the University of Chicago, the Harvard Business School, and the California Institute of Technology. Linda’s research intersects economics and psychology where she focuses on negotiations and dispute resolution. Her work has appeared in the most prestigious economics, industrial relations, psychology, and law journals around the world. Her work has been covered by hundreds of newspapers and magazines in the U.S. and abroad, and she has appeared on numerous television and radio programs discussing her work. In a recent book with Sara Laschever, Women Don't Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide, the authors focus on the importance of women initiating negotiations and the authors explore the societal factors that hold women back from asking for what they want. In our discussion with Linda, we talked about how working women face more than a glass ceiling, they face something like a labyrinth. We covered the importance of negotiations, and how women need to pay attention to the non-promotable tasks they do at work. And we discussed the importance of interdisciplinary work and the tremendous benefits generated by a department like SDS. Linda shares how great it is that economists, psychologists and astrophysicists sit side-by-side to solve problems in the same department. In our grooving session, we dive deeper into the practical business applications of Linda’s directive for men to stop asking women to do stuff, how the cross-disciplinary groups serve businesses as well as academic institutions, and we revisit her tips on the importance of negotiation and being mindful about what tasks you do at work. A note of gratitude: We are grateful to Linda for her efforts in coordinating the SDS series. We are also grateful to all the professors who took time to sit with us – we enjoyed each one! In aggregate, this series was a tremendous amount of fun for us to record and publish. Thank you, CMU, and thank you SDS. Links Linda Babcock: https://www.cmu.edu/dietrich/sds/people/faculty/linda-babcock.html Babcock, Linda & Laschever, Sara (2004). Women Don't Ask Negotiation and the Gender Divide, Princeton Press: Princeton, NJ. https://press.princeton.edu/titles/7575.html Babcock, Linda & Laschever, Sara (2008). Asking for It: How Women Can Use the Power of Negotiation to Get What They Really Want. Bantam Books: New York City. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/959775.Ask_for_It Carnegie Mellon University: https://www.cmu.edu/ CMU Social and Decision Sciences Department: https://www.cmu.edu/dietrich/ Robert Cialdini, PhD: https://www.influenceatwork.com/robert-cialdini-phd/biography/ Eagly, A. H., & Carli, L. L. (2007). Through the labyrinth: The truth about how women become leaders. Boston: Harvard Business School Press. https://hbr.org/product/through-the-labyrinth-the-truth-about-how-women-become-leaders/1691-HBK-ENG Linda Carli, PhD (Wellsley College): https://www.wellesley.edu/psychology/faculty/carli Alice Eagly (Northwestern University): https://www.psychology.northwestern.edu/people/faculty/core/profiles/alice-eagly.html Bruno Mars “That’s What I Like” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMivT7MJ41M Parliament “Bring the Funk” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjKFCYzqq-A Run DMC “Walk This Way” (Aerosmith cover) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4B_UYYPb-Gk Kurt Nelson: @motivationguru and https://www.linkedin.com/in/kurtwnelson/ Tim Houlihan: @THoulihan and https://www.linkedin.com/in/tim-houlihan-b-e/ Subscribe to Behavioral Grooves: https://behavioralgrooves.podbean.com/

Looking for a simple 5-step plan to be happier? Our guest has one. Amit Sood, PhD is an author and physician at the world-renowned Mayo Clinic, in Rochester, Minnesota. He specializes in pediatrics, internal medicine and oncology and he also maintains certificates in acupressure, yoga and reiki. His books include two particularly relevant volumes that formed the basis of our discussion: The Guide to Stress-Free Living and Handbook for Happiness. He’s a remarkably well-rounded and humble healthcare practitioner as well as a highly productive author. It’s clear from talking with him that he cares deeply about his patients and the quality of his work. His passion was inspirational for us and we hope you have the same experience. Our conversation focused on the topic of happiness: things we do to increase it and things we do to reduce it. Amit shared some fascinating insights into specific things that we can do to increase our happiness and we were glad to speak with him. In the grooving session, Kurt and Tim wove these insights into a broader fabric of the environment we’re in when we go to work. Specifically, we addressed how different types of interactions – contentious, transactional or affiliative – influence our happiness and our productivity in the office. We also deliberated the human condition’s increasing need for responsiveness and how our patience for what we consider a socially-acceptable wait time is growing shorter. Finally, Kurt and Tim discussed the importance of intentionality that Amit believes is foundational to living a happy life, which acted as a springboard for Kurt to ask, “What song would you have wanted to write?” That question quickly got our brains into some miraculous and happy dreaming. We hope you enjoy our discussion with Amit Sood and, if you do, please leave us a very brief review on your favorite listening app. Links Amit Sood, PhD: https://www.mayoclinic.org/biographies/sood-amit-m-d/bio-20054879 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amit_Sood Mayo Clinic: https://www.mayoclinic.org/ The Guide to Stress-Free Living: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-mayo-clinic-guide-to-stress-free-living-amit-sood-md/1115183416#/ Handbook for Happiness: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-mayo-clinic-handbook-for-happiness-amit-sood-md/1119972623?ean=9780738217857 A Fragile Culture (by Jonathan Haidt): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lFsc-xGz7o In My Life (Paul McCartney & John Lennon): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xx8h4IBrRY Eleanor Rigby (Paul McCartney & John Lennon): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weN-l8SOiFU If We Were Vampires (by Jason Isbell): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JF45uzdPgd4 People Are People (by Depeche Mode): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzGnX-MbYE4 Kurt Nelson: @motivationguru and https://www.linkedin.com/in/kurtwnelson/ Tim Houlihan: @THoulihan and https://www.linkedin.com/in/tim-houlihan-b-e/ Subscribe to Behavioral Grooves: https://behavioralgrooves.podbean.com/

Imagine a company where 100% of the employees are rebels – would it be chaotic or wonderful? Our guest from the Harvard Business School, Francesca Gino PhD, argues that rebels are not just essential, but they can improve corporate effectiveness. Francesca is a professor and researcher at Harvard Business School who describes herself as a curious behavioral scientist, passionate about teaching and helping leaders make wiser decisions that can improve their lives and those of the people around them. She’s the author of dozens of peer-reviewed articles on decision making and her books include Sidetracked (2013), and more recently, Rebel Talent, that covers a body of research findings highlighting why the most successful people break the rules, and how rebellion brings joy and meaning into our lives. Our discussion revealed that Francesca isn’t the kind of person who just doles out good advice, she often tests it out first on herself, her husband and children, her students and colleagues and even the business leaders she consults with! She’s a rebel thinker and doer and her drive to discover answers to the why-we-do-what-we-do question is without limits. Her findings reveal key methods that companies can use to help employees remain curious and to steer employees clear of the day-to-day ruts that are so easy to fall into. In the grooving session that follows our discussion with Francesca, we dig deeper into the application of curiosity, psychological safety and extremely powerful (and portable) conversation too, “Yes, and…” Kurt and Tim share ways in which we’ve seen “yes, and…” is applied successfully in workshops, brainstorming sessions, corporate meetings, and presentations in the corporate world. We hope you enjoy our conversation with the rebel Francesca Gino. If you enjoyed this episode, please don’t hesitate to give us a positive rating on your favorite podcatching service. © 2019/2020 Behavioral Grooves Links Francesca Gino: http://francescagino.com Rebel Talent: https://www.rebeltalents.org Sidetracked: http://francescagino.com/sidetracked After the episode, Francesca told us that she listened to Youngblood’s version of 5 Seconds of Summer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jqs5EaAaueA Julia Minson, PhD at the Kennedy School at Harvard: https://www.hks.harvard.edu/faculty/julia-minson Pixar Animation Studios: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixar The Ballad of Lucinda (by Tim Houlihan): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jzM2wLgNc8 Blog Post on PADI certification (by Ben Granlund): http://blog.lanterngroup.com/behavioral-science-beneath-the-surface-the-power-of-rational-thoughts-in-an-unnatural-environment St. Vincent (on sounds): https://consequenceofsound.net/2017/10/10-times-st-vincent-gave-no-fucks/ Blasphemous Rumors (by Depeche Mode): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3EAzf5fDpY Kurt Nelson: @motivationguru and https://www.linkedin.com/in/kurtwnelson/ Tim Houlihan: @THoulihan and https://www.linkedin.com/in/tim-houlihan-b-e/ Subscribe to Behavioral Grooves: https://behavioralgrooves.podbean.com/

In this episode, we had the pleasure of speaking with two guests: Jeanie Whinghter, PhD and Afra Ahmad, PhD. Jeanie is the Chair of Industrial and Organizational Psychology and General Psychology at Capella University. Her research focuses on the manifestations of stressors and strains in alternative work arrangements and was in Memphis when we spoke. Afra was in Dubai at Zayed University but will begin a new role in the summer of 2019 as Director of the Masters in Professional Studies in Applied Industrial and Organizational Psychology at George Mason University. Her research emphasizes diversity and inclusion and she has been authored chapters in books, published in Harvard Business Review, as well as in peer-reviewed journals. Both are researchers, teachers, wives, mothers and truly fascinating people. We were grateful to be able to speak to them in advance the SIOP – the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology – conference in April 2019. At the conference, they’ll unveil an interactive workshop to illuminate the challenges of trying to “have it all.” Inspired by a satirical article in The New Yorker magazine (citation below), the idea of having it all has plagued women, especially, who strive to be successful at parenting and a career at the same time. Jeanie and Afra are advocating an approach that focuses on harmony rather than balance. Our conversation first centered around their research and revealed insights for those struggling to have it all. More timely, we discussed their SIOP session. After the formal discussion, with the tape still rolling, we talked in greater depth about their unique, interactive structure for their SIOP session and how surprising it is that more conferences don’t feature non-traditional, participant engagement sessions. To learn more about the SIOP session itself, listen to our grooving session which immediately follows the discussion with Jeanie and Afra. If you’d like to skip straight there, check out the discussion starting around 51:40. There we also tackled the concepts of work-life harmony and the importance of allies. Our grooving session continued with the challenges nursing mothers face when no nursing rooms exist. And we talked about the use of harmony is songwriting. Select Links Jeanie Whinghter, PhD: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeanie-whinghter-b303a9148/ Afra Ahmad, PhD: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-afra-saeed-ahmad-35229070/ SIOP – Society for Industry & Organizational Psychology: https://www.siop.org/ Inspiration for the workshop from this article in The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/i-am-the-one-woman-who-has-it-all Jeff Bezos on Work/Life Balance: https://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-bezo-advice-to-amazon-employees-dont-aim-for-work-life-balance-its-a-circle-2018-4 Jeff Bezos on Harmony vs. Balance: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/09/what-jeff-bezos-does-instead-of-work-life-balance.html Leading the Life You Want, by Stuart Friedman, PhD (Wharton Professor) 2014: https://hbr.org/product/leading-the-life-you-want-skills-for-integrating-work-and-life/11343E-KND-ENG Research on how we always think we do the most work at home by Yavorsky, Dush and Sullivan, especially after a baby comes into the house: “The Production of Inequality: The Gender Division of Labor Across the Transition to Parenthood.” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26430282 Bentley University’s Center for Women in Business (Waltham, Massachusetts) 2017 report: “Men as Allies: Engaging Men to Advance Women in the Workplace.” https://www.ceoaction.com/media/1434/bentley-cwb-men-as-allies-research-report-spring-2017.pdf A growing trend. Baby Shark: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqZsoesa55w Alicia Keys, Girl on Fire: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J91ti_MpdHA Tim Houlihan, Beneath the Surface of the Well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNUbRG1yWwM&t=0s&index=41&list=PLagHYhetqqmEEie866Zodn7W4IBlfNwli Kurt Nelson: @motivationguru and https://www.linkedin.com/in/kurtwnelson/ Tim Houlihan: @THoulihan and https://www.linkedin.com/in/tim-houlihan-b-e/ Subscribe to Behavioral Grooves: https://behavioralgrooves.podbean.com/

Michael Kaplan is a private equity and angel investor who was part owner and president of the wildly successful carpet cleaning franchise called Zerorez. (Note that it’s spelled the same backward as it is forward. A classic palindrome!) He is now associated with Red Hook Investments and is actively finding new ways to help small service companies grow. Michael grew up in Minneapolis, moved to Maine (undergrad) then to Atlanta (for barbeque and bourbon) then to Boston (pondering a Jimmy John’s franchise) then to Minneapolis (law school) and stayed to help turnaround a troubled carpet cleaning business in 2009. We talked about his life and business journey and discovered that the underlying themes he lived by are replicable. (We cover them in depth during our grooving session following the discussion with Michael.) We talked about how people make decisions and what data goes into those decisions; how framing impacts us from the name of our company to why we work; and we all long to have a sense of purpose and build a community – even at work! When Michael brought up the importance of having naysayers in the decision-making process, we felt right at home because of Annie Duke’s Thinking in Bets. This led us to view Michael’s successes through two important lenses: First, how he actively seeks out counterintuitive thinking. He dives deep and often reframes issues to reveal better answers. When there was trouble hiring the right people, he shared how Zerorez adapted the jobs to the marketplace rather than assuming the market would simply come around to his business needs. Second, we saw his tremendous attention to reworking ideas as he noted, “Whatever system you're implementing, it's going to be wrong. You have to tweak it, you have to get out in the real world and figure out where my assumption's correct.” Of course, we talked about music and his affection for having a local radio station curate playlists. The radio brings him both familiar and new tunes on a regular basis and he likes the mix of hearing Sinatra after the Lumineers. We hope you enjoy the conversation with Michael and take a moment to give Behavioral Grooves a quick review on your favorite podcatcher. Links Zerorez: https://www.zerorez.com/ Red Hook Investments: http://redhookinvestments.com/ 4-drive model (Lawrence & Nohria): https://www.leadersbeacon.com/four-drive-model-new-theory-on-employee-motivation/ French cooking music: https://www.pandora.com/genre/french-cooking-music Steve Miller Band “Swing Town”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jGYx0hMjM0 Twin Reverb amplifier: https://shop.fender.com/en-US/guitar-amplifiers/vintage-pro-tube/65-twin-reverb/0217300000.html The Current radio station: https://www.thecurrent.org/ June Carter Cash: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_Carter_Cash Lumineers: https://thelumineers.com/ Annie Duke, Thinking in Bets: https://www.annieduke.com/books/ Palindrome: https://examples.yourdictionary.com/palindrome-examples.html Subscribe to Behavioral Grooves: https://behavioralgrooves.podbean.com/ Kurt Nelson, PhD: https://twitter.com/motivationguru and [email protected] Tim Houlihan: https://twitter.com/THoulihan and [email protected]

This is the second episode in a series on the 6 Principles of Persuasion as identified by Robert Cialdini, PhD, in his 1984 book, Influence. (The first episode in the series was on consistency – with the link below.) In this grooving session, Kurt and Tim discuss reciprocity, the first principle of influence, its roots and how it shows up in our world today. Reciprocity is when we feel obliged to give back to people who have given to us. The operative word is given, to differentiate the experience from a contractual exchange like a loan or a quid pro quo. Reciprocity shows up not only in what we do but also how we do it. A great example is a study conducted by Cialdini, et. al, to measure how leaving a mint with a restaurant bill makes a difference in the size of the tip left for the server. The results are remarkable – but you’ll have to listen to find out what’s even more fascinating in this study. We talk about reciprocity as a social construct and a social obligation to keep our social credit strong. We talk about its roots in anthropological terms and how the humans need communities to survive and reciprocity helps maintain the community. We hope you enjoy this grooving session on one of our favorite topics: reciprocity. Links Episode on Consistency: https://behavioralgrooves.podbean.com/e/grooving-political-stalemates-insights-on-consistency/ Cialdini’s HBR article on harnessing the power of persuasion: https://hbr.org/2001/10/harnessing-the-science-of-persuasion Cialdini’s principles: https://www.influenceatwork.com/principles-of-persuasion/ Link to Influence: https://www.influenceatwork.com/store/#!/Paperbacks/c/2254134/offset=0&sort=normal Social Construct and Retaliation: https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.14.3.159 Obligation principle: http://changingminds.org/principles/obligation.htm Kurt Nelson, PhD: [email protected] or Twitter @motivationguru Tim Houlihan: [email protected] or Twitter @THoulihan Subscribe to Behavioral Grooves: https://behavioralgrooves.podbean.com/

Liz Fosslien is the co-author and illustrator of No Hard Feelings: The secret power of embracing emotions at work. The book is a wickedly funny guide to un-repressing your emotions at work, finding constructive channels even for jealousy and anxiety, demystifying coworker communication styles, and ultimately allowing readers to be the same person in work and in life. She recently joined Humu to develop nudges and behavior change models that make life at work better. Our conversation with Liz, like all of our conversations, meandered from her book to her workout music (EDM), to her background in math and economics, to 14 Ways An Economist Says I Love You, to the burnout that led to the book, to the research and findings that the book explores, to the OREO method of feedback and much more. The primary concept we took away was that our emotions can play a positive role at work for a variety of reasons, and the second is about how to deal with the limits or restrictions that we sometimes place on ourselves in the workplace. We talked about how these approaches impact our productivity and our emotional health. In our grooving session, Kurt and Tim discussed psychological safety, how emotions are contagious, to loss aversion and its relationship to our naturally negative brains, to William Kahn’s ground-breaking work on psychological safety, to Vittorio Gallese’s work on mirror neurons and Kurt and Tim’s first-ever song based on a behavioral science principle: Loss Aversion. We hope you enjoy our conversation with Liz and please refer us to a friend if you like this episode. Links Liz Fosslien: http://fosslien.com/ Liz & Mollie’s book: No Hard Feelings: The secret power of embracing emotions at work. https://www.lizandmollie.com/book/ Liz’s article on how economists say I Love You: 14 ways an economist says I love you http://fosslien.com/heart/ National Affairs: https://www.nationalaffairs.com/ Project Aristotle: https://rework.withgoogle.com/print/guides/5721312655835136/ Vittorio Gallese, PhD: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vittorio_Gallese William Kahn, PhD: “Psychological Conditions of Personal Engagement & Disengagement at Work” https://journals.aom.org/doi/abs/10.5465/256287 Thaler & Sunstein, Nudge: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nudge_(book) Loss Aversion (Kurt & Tim’s video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyeRNVSWJAI&t=4s Tears for Fears – “Shout” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ye7FKc1JQe4 Bob Dylan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Dylan Cat Stevens (now Yusuf Islam): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_Stevens Kurt Nelson, PhD contact: email [email protected] or Twitter @motivationguru or LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/kurtwnelson/ Tim Houlihan contact: email [email protected] or Twitter @THoulihan or LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/tim-houlihan-b-e/ Subscribe to Behavioral Grooves: https://behavioralgrooves.podbean.com/