The Behavioral Design Podcast

By Samuel Salzer and Aline HolzwarthScience Social Sciences

The Behavioral Design Podcast episodes

April 21, 2021Lessons About the Brain with Lisa Feldman Barrett
This episode features a profound conversation with world-renowned neuroscientist and psychologist Lisa Feldman Barrett. Lisa is among the top 1% of most-cited scientists in the world, with over 240 peer-reviewed scientific papers contributing to her revolutionary research in psychology and neuroscience. Outside of the lab, she's a best-selling author and her popular TED talk has more than 6 million views. TLDR: Lisa is a rockstar 🤘.
We cover several interesting topics, including why your brain is not for thinking, how prediction becomes reality, why most people are wrong in how they think about emotions, the best type of chocolate (spoiler: dark), and much more. Enjoy!
Links and resources:
Lisa's website and Twitter

Latest book: Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain

Previous book: How Emotions are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain

Some of Lisa's selected journal publications and research papers

Lisa's TED Talk: You aren't at the mercy of your emotions -- your brain creates them

Jim Coan describing his heart attack on his Circle of Willis Podcast

Dharmakīrti buddhism
Books referenced:
Margaret Atwood books: Cat's Eye, Oryx and Crake & The Edible Woman
Stuart Firestein books: Failure: Why Science Is so Successful and Ignorance: How it drives science

Support the podcast by joining Habit Weekly Pro 🚀
The song used is Murgatroyd by David Pizzaro.
55 min
April 07, 2021Mindful Behavioral Science with Clare Purvis
This episode features an insightful conversation with Dr. Clare Purvis, Director of Behavioral Science at Headspace. Clare is a clinical psychologist with extensive experience working in health technology, translating clinical evidence into commercially viable, engaging, and innovative digital products.
We cover several interesting topics, including how Clare transitioned from academia to the start-up world, how we can building systems of behavior change in organizations, what makes a good onboarding, and how to design for mindfulness. Enjoy!
Links:
Clare's website and LinkedIn

Clare is the founder of WELL, Women Entrepreneurs & Leaders Laboratory, which is the first professional organization for women clinicians and scientists leading the way in digital health.

Aline's previous interview with Clare

Habit Weekly Pro 🚀
48 min
March 24, 2021The Behavioral Science of Policy and Organizations with Nina Mažar
This episode features an insightful conversation with the fantastic Nina Mažar. Nina has been part of founding BEworks, BEAR (Behavioral Economics in Action at Rotman center), and the World Banks' behavioral science team. She is currently professor of marketing and co-director of the Susilo Institute for Ethics in the Global Economy at Boston University.
We cover several interesting topics, including how Nina got started in the field, three pieces of advice for starting a behavioral science unit, nudging for diversity and honesty, plus what to get next time you're ordering Balkan food. Enjoy!
Links:
Nina's website, LinkedIn and Twitter

Nina's TEDx talk on honesty and intentions

Habit Weekly Pro 🚀
Timestamps
00:23: Episode overview
01:41: Interview begins
02:02: Nina details her background in behavioral science
04:29: How Nina’s work in both industry and academia shaped her view on behavioral science research
08:49: Nina discusses setting up the World Bank’s behavioral science unit
11:59: Nina’s advice on setting up a behavioral science team in an organisation
Get shared buy-in within the organisation

Data collection capacities and well-functioning internal systems

Have a legal team on board
17:01: Reflecting on studies on dishonesty and nudging people via signature at the top
22:04: Why is the “bad apple” narrative so persistent?
24:16: How can behavioral science help counter discrimination and racism?
28:22: Countering gender bias in news reporting in Sweden via transparency
32:42: Underrated vs Overrated
Revealed preferences

Rationalisation

Replication studies

Crotian cuisine

Bosnian cuisine

Place’s Nina has lived

Origami
39:02: How Nina applies behavioral science in her own life
41:03: Concluding remarks
–––––
Timestamps & shownotes compiled by Keith Broni 🏆
The song used is Murgatroyd by David Pizzaro.
–––––
44 min
March 10, 2021Building Habits with Wendy Wood
This episode is special. It features a conversation with the world-renowned habit researcher, Wendy Wood. Wendy has devoted the last 30 years to researching how habits work and recently published the fantastic book Good Habits, Bad Habits.
The episode is packed with insights, and we cover all things habits, from the difference between habits vs. routines to the impact of reward and context on habit formation. If you're curious to understand habits better, this episode is for you!
Links:
Wendy's website (where you can find here book) and her Twitter

Wendy's labs habit research

Habit Weekly Pro 🚀
Key points:
Changing attitudes is often not enough – even when we change people's attitude, their behavior doesn't always follow. And it's the behavior we care about, what they do.

The average person rarely distinguish between habits, behavior, intentions, beliefs and attitudes. "It's all all the same, all part of me and my decision making". It's important to differentiate these things as our brains consist of different systems that helps us accomplish different things.

There's a habit learning system designed specifically to pick up repetition of behaviour in a given context that generated some form of reward. We can think of reward as not money, but what makes you feel good. Habits are the context response associations that you form in memory, when you repeat a behaviour, often enough for the for it to become automatic. Additionally, routines are simply sequences of habit.

We can can change people's attitudes and beliefs for short periods, but these changes can disappear once they go back to real life if we fail to change the system. We need to understand the broader influences on someone's behavior in order to design contextual cues and rewards that helps them respond in new ways long-term.
Timestamps:
00:16: Episode overview
01:33: Interview starts
02:00: Wendy details her background and how she got started researching habits
03:55: Differentiating habits and behavior
06:50: Distinguishing between routines and habits
08:10: The automaticity of bias associations compared to the automaticity of habits
10:50: Can one-off trainings really be used to create new habits
13:16: Changing day-to-day environments and systems to change habits
16:28: Sam tells an anecdote about the influence of context on habits
18:30: The temporal dynamic of habit activation
20:42: Recurring contextual associations with a habit
21:27: Internal states as context cues for habits
23:52: Incentivising habits with rewards
26:54: Case study: encouraging use of an office’s stairs over an elevator
29:40: Best way to incentivise new habits
33:57: How is frequency related to establishing a new habit
35:30: The generalisation of habits
37:10: Overrated vs Underrated
Having a car

Experience sampling

Behaviorism

The clean plate club

Paris

The marshmallow study

Sidewalks

Rituals

Mise en place
44:47: What bad habit has been Wendy’s greatest nemesis in her personal life
47:36: Concluding remarks

–––––
Timestamps & shownotes compiled by Keith Broni 🏆
The song used is Murgatroyd by David Pizzaro.
50 min
February 26, 2021 Behavioral Design 2021 - State of the Field
The Behavioral Design 2021 state of the field report is out 🎉 The report provides a combination of perspectives and opinions from 20+ leaders in the field on the state of behavioral design and where we're headed. Listen in on this special episode where...
53 min
February 24, 2021 Behavioral Finance with Dan Egan
This episode features a fun conversation with the wonderful Dan Egan. Dan is the Director of Behavior Science and Investing at the innovative fin-tech company Betterment and is truly an authority on all things behavioral finance.We cover several...
35 min
February 10, 2021 Psychology of Engagement with Amy Bucher
This episode features a fantastic conversation with is Amy Bucher, VP of Behavior Change Design at Mad*Pow and author of Engaged: Designing for Behavior Change. The book offers a wonderful exploration of how we can incorporate behavioral design into our...
49 min
January 27, 2021 Behavioral Science Fiction with Samuel Salzer
This episode features an interview with Behavioral Strategist, Author, and perhaps most importantly, co-host of this podcast – Samuel Salzer 🎉Aline puts Sam in the hot seat. The episode covers everything from behavioral science fiction, to why IKEA is...
1 hr
January 13, 2021 Changing Digital Health Behavior with Aline Holzwarth
This episode features an interview with Aline Holzwarth the new co-host for this podcast 🎉Aline is an applied behavioral scientist, specializing in digital health research and scientifically informed product design. She's also the head of Behavioral...
1 hr 13 min
December 31, 2020 The Science of Rituals with Nick Hobson
We all have our different rituals and that's what we'll explore in today's episode with the wonderful Nick Hobson.Nick has not only long studied the rituals of our everyday lives, but he also runs a successful consultancy helping organizations to better...
56 min

About The Behavioral Design Podcast

From the publisher's feed

How can we change behavior in practice? What role does AI have to play in behavioral design? Listen in as hosts Samuel Salzer and Aline Holzwarth speak with leading experts on all things behavioral…

Share The Behavioral Design Podcast

Sign up to save your podcasts

The Behavioral Design Podcast

The Behavioral Design Podcast episodes

About The Behavioral Design Podcast