Brian Amman, ecologist for the Center for Disease Control, takes a look at disastrous pandemics from a variety of television shows and movies and breaks down...

Infomercials!

soap-infused sticks of chalk

Well, if we want to sway other people to our “correct“ vision of things, we are most likely to do that by having a strong relationship with them. Ironically, it is through carefully and compassionately listening to others that we are more likely to sway their views.

Great examples of how behavioral insights have been applied to behavior change in India

Cause-and-effect statements may seem more true if the initial letters in the words are in alphabetical order because the human brain prefers patterns that follow familiar sequences.

In part four, we looked at the difference between hierarchical and collaborative conversations. Now we bring it all together and ask, “What can we do?” The answer is, a lot. There are, as it turns out, many solutions to how we can do a better job of talking to each other, and any one of these are approaches you can try in your own lives or organizations.

tips for effective negotiation

2 excellent case studies

case studies

Nearly every major challenge the United States faces—from alleviating unemployment to protecting itself from terrorism—requires understanding the causes and consequences of people’s behavior. Even societal challenges that at first glance appear to be issues only of medicine or engineering or computer science have social and behavioral components. Having a fundamental understanding of how people and societies behave, why they respond the way they do, what they find important, what they believe or value, and what and how they think about others is critical for the country’s well-being in today’s shrinking global world. The diverse disciplines of the social, behavioral, and economic (SBE) sciences ―anthropology, archaeology, demography, economics, geography, linguistics, neuroscience, political science, psychology, sociology, and statistics―all produce fundamental knowledge, methods, and tools that provide a greater understanding of people and how they live.

Discarding classical solutions such as information campaigns, it offers a much simpler alternative: make the healthy options more tempting. How? By changing their names. Several research teams in the US have tried this strategy in various school canteens and they found that making the names “seductive”, catchy or funny can induce children to eat healthier.

some of the best examples of digital storytelling that came out in 2016

There is more than one reason this is happening. But, one reason I think the alternative facts industry has been so effective has to do with a concept social scientists call the “backfire effect.” As a rule, misinformed people do not change their minds once they have been presented with facts that challenge their beliefs. But, beyond simply not changing their minds when they should, research shows that they are likely to become more attached to their mistaken beliefs. The factual information “backfires.” When people don’t agree with you, research suggests that bringing in facts to support your case might actually make them believe you less. In other words, fighting the ill-informed with facts is like fighting a grease fire with water. It seems like it should work, but it’s actually going to make things worse.

In this paper, we describe how PSI's qualitative research program developed from 2003 to 2013, and how using an interpretive approach and more appropriate data collection methods improved our consumer insight and marketing planning process.

The ARTSEDGE Role-Playing System is designed to teach students the process of creating a game, rather than focusing on game play. In this approach to the literary arts, students begin with an existing book or short story from the curriculum to create and present their own role-playing game (R.P.G.) using rules adapted from the Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition Players Handbook. Educators use The ARTSEDGE Role-Playing System to guide students in groups of 3-6 through game ideation, world building, rule making, and game running, all based on the selected source material. Students are also encouraged to incorporate visual arts, music, and theatre into their presentations.

original “jobs to be done“ article from 2008

So how is it done? We’ve found that all jobs have the same eight steps. To use job mapping, we look for opportunities to help customers at every step:

In this paper, we discussed multiple ways how behavior change interventions can backfire. We provided a framework to help facilitate the discussion of this topic, and created tools to aid academics in the study of this realm, and support practitioners to remain mindful of the potential risks.

a curated list of resources to help you on your journey into the UX of VR

Directing drivers to “think of themselves” successfully led to far more drivers switching off their idling engines: More drivers switched off their engines in the private self-focused condition (51%) compared with the baseline condition (20%). “The odds ratios revealed that drivers were 1.83 times more likely to switch off their engines in the instructive watching eyes condition, and 4.82 times more likely in the private self-focus condition than in the baseline condition,” Meleady and colleagues write.

When the growth team took a step back, they realized it wasn’t enough to trigger just any notification. They needed to “show the right things to users at the right time — creating ‘aha moments’” where the user experienced the product’s core value. Rather than indiscriminately bombard the user with notifications, they concluded that they needed to be “really thoughtful about which messages to send which users” and focus “more of [their] resources on engaging users that were likely to churn.” Taking a page from Facebook, here are 5 kinds of engagement messages that work to activate, retain, and grow customers. Highly personal and targeted, these emails show off your product’s core value, ferry your users to their “aha moments”, and get people engaging with your product and brand again and again.