Behavioral Grooves Podcast

In this episode, we spoke with Aaron Snyder, Director of Special Projects at Lexicon. Lexicon is one of the largest branding companies in the world.  They are responsible for creating some of the most famous household brands including Pentium, Blackberry, Dasani, Embassy Suites and Swiffer.  What we found interesting in our conversation was the tremendous amount of science that goes into the creation of brands. We also spoke about Mad Cow Disease, how tension = attention and even had a fun conversation about our choice of toothpaste. Lastly, we enjoyed some geeky discussion about research from Zakary Tormula and Baba Shiv. 

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. 

Kurt and Tim grooved on holiday eats and lots of geeky stuff and skipped the 'what we're listening to' in this episode. More for later!

Chad Emerson founded The 421 to help people with addictions make better decisions. He focuses his comments on being "change ready" and the importance of preparing oneself for making a change in life. Chad's website www.the421.com includes more information about his Minneapolis-based agency and the work that he's doing to transform lives using behavioral sciences. 

In Kurt's and Tim's Grooving Session, we talked about the importance of considering how the application of behavioral sciences impact all of us - not just "them" but "us" too! We also discussed drop dead donuts and reminisced on some fun tunes. 

In the Behavioral Grooves first podcast, Kurt Nelson, PhD and Tim Houlihan interview James Heyman, PhD, a professor and researcher at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. Dr. Heyman's research has led him to collaborate with renowned behavioral economists including Dan Ariely, PhD, and focuses on decision making in a world with too much irrelevant information. The interview with Dr. Heyman runs from the beginning of the podcast through 38:00 minutes. At 38:00 minutes, Kurt and Tim have their Grooving Session where they discuss topics from the interview, from the Behavioral Grooves session that month and other random things that pop into their heads. 

NOTE: This is our first podcast. We didn’t know what we were doing and we ask you to keep in mind that as you listen to our very first production. Our audio quality got better. A lot better. Our questions and interview techniques have improved. By a lot. What hasn’t changed is that we interview super interesting people about super interesting topics.

We encourage you to check out other episodes like:

Episode 199: How Decision Making is Critical for Back Country Skiers and Sex

Episode 196: Living Happier By Making the World Better with Max Bazerman 

Episode 224: Why Is Noise Worse Than Bias? Olivier Sibony Explains