Standard Deviations with Dr. Daniel Crosby

Tune in to hear: - Why is it often complicated to offer a simple and elegant solution for the common behavioral dilemmas that advisors face? - Why might psychological shortcuts potentially lead to gender bias in asset allocation? - Are there any salient differences between men and women, on average, in regards to risk tolerance? - How can we systematize the information gathering process during cli...

Tune in to hear: - What role does positive psychology play in financial planning? More broadly, what is positive psychology and how is it differentiated from the popular conception of behavioral finance as the study of bias? - What is the “three good things” intervention and why does it work? Is it applicable in a financial context as well? - What do you do when someone attributes the best things...

Tune in to hear:  - As one of the founders of the discipline of financial therapy, what light can Dr. Archuleta shed on the origin story of this unique discipline? - What are the lines of demarcation between financial planning, financial therapy and traditional therapy? Should financial planners look to make referrals, when necessary, for financial therapists or is this a largely academic discipli...

Tune in to hear: - How did Nick land on a kinder, more gentle approach, to personal finance? - What is the least conventional bit of financial advice that a reader may come across in Nick’s new book? - Nick’s new book states that most savings advice is problematic - where does he differ from the conventional wisdom with respect to savings advice? - How should we think about lifestyle creep from a...

Tune in to hear: - If Tim could personify himself as a guitar, what type of guitar would he be? - Tim thinks that engagement, performance and persuasion all begin with behavioral science and that behavioral science begins with the unconscious. What does this mean from a scientific perspective and how can we tap into these unconscious motivations? - The unconscious is pretty intensely guarded, and...

Tune in to hear: - When we narrow down the financial advisors to those who we would trust to manage our spouse’s or parent’s finances, Steve thinks that we do so largely on behavioral factors alone. Which behavioral considerations make someone a trusted advisor? - From the outside looking in (i.e. if you don’t personally know an advisor beforehand), how can one make a determination about whether a...

Tune in to hear: - Jeff is known on Twitter for his complex deep dives into the world of tax legislation - what got him interested in this in the first place? - What is keeping us from a more simplified tax code? Is it really as complicated as it appears or is there some subterfuge here where the complexity is just a feature and not a bug? - When Jeff hears politicians and everyday people talking...

Tune in to hear: - What was Drew’s experience studying under Richard Thaler like? - Drew thinks that you have to hold a willingness to be right and to be wrong in equal measure at all times - is this something that Thaler modeled in his behavior and how does he think about this in the context of his own firm? - What’s an analogy we can draw between Hank Aaron’s batting behavior and the act of pick...

Tune in to hear: - Where are we at, as an industry, in terms of the application of behavioral sciences to the world of work? Where does Jez see us headed next or what’s his outlook for the industry? - Compared to something like tech, where does the financial industry fall on the adoption curve of behavioral sciences?  - In what field might we have the next big, unexplored vertical jump for applied...

Tune in to hear: - What are some of the primary drivers of asset flows from a behavioral perspective? - Soft factors account for a lot more of clients’ decision-making process about their assets - what is the takeaway, for asset managers and financial advisors, from this revelation? - What are the three different types of trust that Herman breaks down in his book? - Interpersonal trust might be th...

Tune in to hear: - Has Kurt ever noticed a problem that isn’t ostensibly behavioral in nature that ended up being behavioral? - How can we craft a cohesive work culture without contributing to problems like group think? - From a leadership perspective, how can we open ourselves up to new ideas and not fall prey to confirmation bias? Also, if we are the person that’s going to question the status qu...

Tune in to hear: - How did Peter get started reviewing frozen pizzas? - What is it that most people misunderstand about investing? - How does Peter, as an advisor, go about crafting a vivid and salient personal vision for his clients? - How can you bring clients back to a vision of their future selves in a difficult moment? - How, practically, does Peter try to maximize anxiety-adjusted returns wh...

Tune in to hear: - How does technology shape the way we act? Sometimes we don’t even know the water that we are swimming in with regards to technology - how can this induce us to make good or poor decisions? - Is there a way that tech can facilitate some of the soft skills of client interaction (e.g. care, empathy and connection)? - What role should self-care, self-work and introspection play in a...

Tune in to hear: - How has Meb’s world, and domestic, travel shifted the way he thinks about investment? - What is Meb’s least popular idea about investing? - Why is it so important to codify and pre-commit to your own sell strategy? - What is Meb’s “red light, green light” approach? How does he think about market timing and tactical asset allocation? - Meb likes to give out free business ideas th...

Tune in to hear: - What are some of the flimsy tethers in peoples’ lives that keep them from achieving financial greatness? - If an advisor’s number one job is not to make you money, what might it be? - What are the 11 different dimensions of wealth that Seth’s firm lays out? How did he arrive at these? - How do these provide a helpful framework for clients during times of crisis? - How do you bal...

Tune in to hear: - How does Dr. Bookstaber think about and define risk in the most practical terms possible? - Does the way people like us talk about risk differ in an overly academic way from how people in the street think about it? - Which of the sort of commonly discussed current risks seem legitimate to Dr. Bookstaber and which might loom larger in peoples’ minds than they should? - Why aren’t...

Tune in to hear: - Dr. Portnoy says we’ve created a “Behavioral Finance entertainment complex that does very little to help real people make real decisions.” What does he mean by this? - Do you think we overlook the good behavioral finance has done because the good is subtle and simple? - What does he see as the good, the bad and the ugly of “nudging?” How can or can’t it be applied to the field o...

Tune in to hear: - Are various addictive behaviors (e.g. gambling, drug abuse) potentially symptoms of a larger societal issue? - What percentage of people in standard therapy might benefit from a finance-centric therapeutic approach? - What are some of the most common, or universal, expressions of financial dysfunction that Dr. Lutter sees in her work? - Are there some cases where having financia...

Tune in to hear: - How does non-compliance with advice, and the gap between knowing and doing, present on a macro level and impact our lives? - Is the financial services industry, as a whole, guilty of delivering advice without much regard for how it is retained and implemented? - How is the term non-compliance potentially problematic? - What are some individual characteristics of advice givers th...

Tune in to hear: - As a student of great advisory practices, what are some of the consistent themes that Jackie encounters across the board?  - Are there specific examples of advisors who have created a unique experiential piece for their clients. If so, what did these experiences look like? - Where do we get it wrong as an industry around some of the most discussed buzzwords? - What is a common m...

Tune in to hear: - Of the “36 questions that lead to love,” what are a few that Dr. Lurtz zeros in on and what makes these questions so powerful? Can these be applied in client-advisor relationships as well?  - What is the peak end rule and how can understanding it help us set better goals with our clients? - As practitioners, how can we drive home the salience of our future selves both for oursel...

Tune in to hear: - What are some different attitudes about aging and death held across the world? How particular is the western attitude about these things relative to the rest of the world? - How do these attitudinal perspectives shift the concrete outcomes (e.g. levels of happiness and fulfillment) for people who are themselves aging? - Where should one begin if they would like to start incorpor...

Tune in to hear: - Why is ESG such an important part of Rob’s financial practice? - How can we achieve financial wellness without merely paying lip service to things like environmentalism? - How can the average client strike an ideal balance of the three attributes of ESG?  - Rob grew up in Argentina during a time of extreme inflation. What did these formative years in this environment teach him a...

Tune in to hear: - Now that she has space from it, and also expertise in the field, what were some of the factors that drove her parents to such conspicuous consumption? - Where do our money scripts originate from? Are we shaped definitively by our environment & upbringing or can we forge a new path for ourselves? - How did Michelle come to a place where she was more comfortable reckoning with her...

Tune in to hear: - What in particular about the environment, including the pandemic and lockdown, contributed to the sort of fervor and madness we saw around meme stocks like Gamestop? - Risk, excitement and novelty were somewhat systematically stripped from our lives during the initial quarantine - what role, if any, did this play in the meme stock phenomenon? - How did the trading apps themselve...