Behavioral Grooves Podcast

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 emplo...

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 t...

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 wh...

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 l...

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...

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...

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....

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...

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 o...

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...

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...

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”:...

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 congressw...

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 o...

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 im...

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 th...

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...

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 s...

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 ma...

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 marketi...

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 topic...

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 effec...

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 Universi...

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 Econo...

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 d...