Behavioral Grooves Podcast

Elspeth Kirkman is responsible for BIT’s work on health, education, and local government. Prior to this role, she oversaw the establishment and growth of BIT’s North American office from New York. She has taught behavioral science at Harvard, acts as an expert advisor to a number of global institutions, and serves as a Senior Fellow for Casey Family Programs, advising on the applications of behavi...

Shlomi Ron is the CEO of the Visual Storytelling Institute. He co-founded the institute after 20 years of digital marketing with some of the largest brands in the world. Its purpose is to help business leaders rise above the noise through the power of storytelling and the effectiveness of visual media.   Shlomi is an author and his latest book is “Total Acuity: Tales with Marketing Morals.”  In it...

Stephen Wendel, PhD is an applied behavioral scientist who studies how digital products can help people take action more effectively. He currently serves as Head of Behavioral Science at Morningstar, leading a team of behavioral scientists and practitioners who conduct original research on saving and investment behavior.   Steve has authored “Designing for Behavior Change,” “Improving Employee Ben...

[NOTE: This episode is republished from #50 in January 2019.] Robert Cialdini, PhD  is counted among the greatest psychological researchers alive today and his published works have been cited thousands of times. His New York Times best-selling book,  Influence , from 1984, is considered a classic for classroom and corporate use alike. He is an ardent author and a passionate professor, and his work...

[NOTE: This episode is republished from #74 in June 2019.] This episode is a discussion on the principle of scarcity. Kurt and Tim attempt to illuminate the power of this very fundamental effect in behavioral science with some real-world examples. Simply put, the scarcity effect is that people want more of those things they can have less of. It’s terribly powerful and is evident in many aspects of...

[NOTE: This is a republished episode from #99 in November 2019.] Katy Milkman is no ordinary behavioral scientist. She’s a Professor of Operations, Information and Decisions at Wharton. She has a secondary faculty appointment in the University of Pennsylvania’s Medical School in the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy. She’s Co-Director, with Angela Duckworth, at the non-profit Behavior...

[NOTE: This episode is republished from #92 in October 2019.] Goals are often misunderstood. Goals are much more than just objectives that are handed down to subordinates. Rather, goals are self-determined in the best cases, and at the very least, are set collaboratively to get the most out of them. We discuss Goal Setting Theory (GST), results from research that Tim conducted, and we address the...

Caroline Webb, a Senior Advisor at McKinsey, is an executive coach, author, and speaker specializing in insights from behavioral science to improve our lives at work. Her book on that topic, How To Have A Good Day, has been published in 14 languages and in more than 60 countries. One of her past jobs was to contribute to the world economic forecast, and she is fluid in her ability to speak with au...

Margaret Robinson Rutherford, PhD, is a clinical psychologist in private practice with more than twenty-five years of experience treating individuals and couples for depression, anxiety, and relationship issues.  She also offers her compassionate and commonsense therapeutic style to the general public through her popular blog and podcasts, with the goal of decreasing the stigma around psychologica...

We saw an article in the Wall Street Journal titled “When Workers Can Live Anywhere, Many Ask: Why Do I Live Here?” and it got us thinking. Millions of white-collar workers have been displaced from their offices and are being told they are on indefinite work-from-home status. And many of those workers are opting to leave the big cities where the virus has been most aggressive. In addition to the t...

Elizabeth Gilbert, PhD is the Head of Research at PsychologyCompass, a content platform that uses insights from psychology and neuroscience to teach people how to be happier and more productive. She has a PhD in social psychology from the University of Virginia and a postdoctoral fellowship at the Medical University of South Carolina. And she’s been engaged in the replication of studies that were,...

John Bargh, PhD is a Professor of Psychology and Management at Yale University. His name may be familiar because of the replication crisis, but there is so much more to John Bargh than a couple of experiments that were challenged during replication. John has authored more than 100 peer-reviewed articles, chapters in over 30 books, and he founded The ACME lab at Yale in order to research the uncons...

Howard Friedman is a data scientist, health economist, and writer with decades of experience in both the private and public sectors, as well as academia. He is widely known for his work as a statistical modeler and he currently lives in New York City and teaches at Columbia University.  Howard's new book, Ultimate Price: The Value We Place on Life, is about how the monetary values assigned to our...

On May 25, 2020, a white Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd, an unarmed black man, by holding him down with a knee on his neck for over 8 minutes. This was done while three other officers either helped in holding down Mr. Floyd down or stood by watching.  Mr. Floyd’s death is an unimaginable horror as it was not the result of a split-second or hair-trigger decision, but a callous, calc...

Chris Pfeiffer is a Senior Business Analyst at Tegra Analytics. Chris specializes in salesforce effectiveness in the life science industry, which includes incentive compensation, targeting and segmentation, sales force sizing and optimization, statistical analysis, and business intelligence.  Chris graduated from The Johns Hopkins University, where he received his Master of Science in Government A...

Dan Hill, PhD is an internationally recognized expert on the role of emotions in politics, business, sports, and popular culture. He pioneered the use of facial coding (the analysis of facial expressions) in market research and has done work for over half of the world's top 100 consumer-oriented companies. He’s even received seven U.S. patents related to facial coding and he is an author on top of...

Claire Bidwell Smith is a licensed therapist specializing in grief and the author of three books of nonfiction, most recently ANXIETY: The Missing Stage of Grief. She has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, and a variety of other publications.  She received her Master’s Degree in clinical psychology from Antioch University, and has recently transitioned her therapeut...

Kristen Berman is the co-founder of Irrational Labs and co-founder and principal at Common Cents Lab,  a non-profit behavioral consulting company, with Dan Ariely. They work focuses on the financial well-being of low-to-middle-income Americans. She was also on the founding team for the behavioral economics group at Google and hosts one of the top behavioral change conferences globally, StartupOnom...

Stephen Curtis, PhD is a Clinical Psychologist with a doctorate in Neuroscience Experimental Psychology. He specializes in Performance Psychology with professional and college athletes, musicians, and corporate leaders to help them reach their highest levels of performance.  Steve is the author of the proprietary Clarity Survey which has become a business research best practice instrument with For...

Gary Latham, PhD is the Secretary of State Professor of Organizational Behaviour at the Rotman School of Management in the University of Toronto. His research in the field of organizational psychology has yielded over 200 peer-reviewed publications and he has written several books on the topic of goal setting. He and his lifelong research partner, Ed Locke PhD, are responsible for Goal Setting The...

Mariel Beasley is the Co-Director of the Common Cents Lab at the Center for Advanced Hindsight at Duke University. She works on applications of behavioral research, primarily in the financial services sector and public policy arena. She holds a Master of Public Policy degree from Duke University and her previous work experience includes a variety of nonprofits and charitable foundations.   As the...

Samuel Salzer is a leading behavioral strategist and habit expert, having worked with organizations across Europe, Australia, and North America. Among other things, he’s one of the first Chief Behavioral Officer's (CBO) in tech, applying insights from behavioral science and behavioral economics to build user-centered and habit-forming products and services.  At the forefront of the emerging field...

Kaveh Yazdifard is the Chief Innovation Officer at Sahab Pardaz located in Tehran, Iran. He is also the Director of Urban Innovation for the city and COO of Avatech Accelerator, a firm focused on empowering business startups through a values-driven culture.  While much of Kaveh’s work is focused on collaborating and creating value through Innovation, we were particularly interested in speaking wit...

Gretchen Chapman, PhD researches how we make decisions about vaccines. She is a Professor in the Social & Decision Sciences department at Carnegie Mellon University and works across disciplines in both fields of judgment and decision making as well as health psychology. She is the recipient of an APA early career award and an NJ Psychological Association Distinguished Research Award, a fellow of A...

Jules Nolan, PhD is a psychologist, speaker, and author. She is the president of the Minnesota School Psychology Association and chairwoman for the Human Diversity Committee for the International School Psychology Association.  Her research, which has been conducted and published internationally, focuses on behavior, achievement, and wellbeing for school-aged children. She consults with parents an...