Here are some quick highlights from the day and a half of excellent presentations and discussions.<\/p>\n
Panel: Designing Outstanding Customer Experiences<\/h4>\n\n- Jet.com<\/a>‘s Liza Landsman said, “We gonna exploit the hell of out of the fact that people think with their lizard brain.” I thought about my last $137 purchase on her website and freaked a bit<\/strong> wondering how much of that was me and how much were behavioral economics techniques like anchoring at higher prices (which drop as you add to your cart) and careful curation to avoid choice overload.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
\n- HBS’s Michael Norton<\/a> described how consumers and voters love transparency. Instead of progress bars, he shows how detailed activity summaries of an air travel search algorithm or Boston’s pothole repair tracker improves engagement and trust.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
![\"boston\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.decisionfish.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Boston.png?resize=600%2C400&ssl=1\")
<\/p>\n
Panel: Strengthening Motivation and Commitment<\/h4>\n\n- StickK<\/a>‘s Jordan Goldberg described how his offering addresses our present bias<\/a> by “raising today’s price of your vice.” Non-cash awards are more salient and motivating than cash because they can be visualized. And he offered this compelling slide on the power of defaults vis-a-vis organ donation policies:<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
![\"Effective](\"https:\/\/danariely.files.wordpress.com\/2008\/05\/od_plot.jpg?w=474&resize=474%2C281\" "\\"\\"")
<\/p>\n
Source: https:\/\/danariely.files.wordpress.com\/2008\/05\/od_plot.jpg?w=474<\/a><\/p>\nSpeaker: Adam Grant<\/h4>\n
Adam Grant<\/a>, author of Give and Take<\/a>, then gave a fascinating talk about three kinds of people: givers, takers and matchers, and how their dynamics affect the workplace. Givers are generally unselfish and even altruistic. Matchers will expect something in return if they do you a favor and vice-versa. Takers are basically greedy SOBs who will ruin any corporate culture. The first priority of recruiting is to avoid takers. Givers can be an organization’s greatest failures (because they let others take advantage) or greatest successes (provided they set limits to their generosity).<\/p>\nInterview: Daniel Kahneman<\/h4>\n
Next, Nate Silver<\/a> interviewed Daniel Kahneman<\/a>. Prof. Kahneman compared the Trump phenomenon with Hitler’s rise, recommended “Sapiens, a short history of human kind” and clarified that errors are not necessarily caused by biases. Noise is more important: things that should not but do affect your decision.<\/p>\nPanel: Designing for Scarcity<\/h4>\n
From this panel, we learned that:<\/p>\n
\n- Poverty reduces attentional capacity or bandwidth. The poor are very busy making trade-offs and calculating time and money opportunity costs, leaving less capacity for other decisions.<\/li>\n
- This can make them experts, much better than the more fortunate, at calculating opportunity costs.<\/li>\n
- One should communicate interest costs, say of payday loans, in terms of dollars, not percentages, to make an impression.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Panel: Measuring and Analyzing Behavior for Better Insights<\/h4>\n
The next morning kicked off with a panel on quantitative measurements. Barbara Mellers of the Good Judgement Project<\/a> taught us how to be good forecasters. We ought to:<\/p>\n\n- Make forecasts with probabilities, not words. Say “90%” not “highly likely.”<\/li>\n
- Form a team with people who are open minded, intelligent, have a high need for cognition (they like to think) and who use precise probabilities when they forecast.<\/li>\n
- Train them in probabilistic reasoning.<\/li>\n
- Make some simple adjustments in the forecast probabilities, making them more extreme.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
Panel: Politics and the Behavioral Revolution panel<\/h4>\n
Interesting points included:<\/p>\n
\n- A study involving “deep canvassing” generated sufficient empathy from door-to-door conversations to “durably” reduce transphobia.<\/li>\n
- If you want to increase political activism, don’t remind people of fiscal constraints and then ask them for money! Instead, leverage social pressure (your friends are doing it), say thank you, make it convenient and help them anticipate rewards.<\/li>\n
- If you want to change someone’s mind, begin by affirming their self-worth.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Panel: Building Trust<\/h4>\n
Some big ideas:<\/p>\n
\n- The neocortex is the seat of our social intellect (chart).<\/li>\n
- Social isolation is more dangerous to our health than a high BMI.<\/li>\n
- “People will do anything for a $5 Starbucks card.”<\/li>\n
- GlobalGiving.org<\/a> is “running tests on you all the time” (freaking me a bit more) to figure out how to make users more generous.<\/li>\n
- People will trust a company more if they can review their experience with it publicly. Even better: the company should disclose what they do well and what they do poorly.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/assets.bwbx.io\/images\/users\/iqjWHBFdfxIU\/ibn8LbKHvbxI\/v1\/-1x-1.jpg?resize=405%2C428\" "\\"\\"")
<\/p>\n
Speaker: Angela Duckworth<\/h4>\n
- \n
- HBS’s Michael Norton<\/a> described how consumers and voters love transparency. Instead of progress bars, he shows how detailed activity summaries of an air travel search algorithm or Boston’s pothole repair tracker improves engagement and trust.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/p>\n
Panel: Strengthening Motivation and Commitment<\/h4>\n
- \n
- StickK<\/a>‘s Jordan Goldberg described how his offering addresses our present bias<\/a> by “raising today’s price of your vice.” Non-cash awards are more salient and motivating than cash because they can be visualized. And he offered this compelling slide on the power of defaults vis-a-vis organ donation policies:<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/p>\n
Source: https:\/\/danariely.files.wordpress.com\/2008\/05\/od_plot.jpg?w=474<\/a><\/p>\n
Speaker: Adam Grant<\/h4>\n
Adam Grant<\/a>, author of Give and Take<\/a>, then gave a fascinating talk about three kinds of people: givers, takers and matchers, and how their dynamics affect the workplace. Givers are generally unselfish and even altruistic. Matchers will expect something in return if they do you a favor and vice-versa. Takers are basically greedy SOBs who will ruin any corporate culture. The first priority of recruiting is to avoid takers. Givers can be an organization’s greatest failures (because they let others take advantage) or greatest successes (provided they set limits to their generosity).<\/p>\n
Interview: Daniel Kahneman<\/h4>\n
Next, Nate Silver<\/a> interviewed Daniel Kahneman<\/a>. Prof. Kahneman compared the Trump phenomenon with Hitler’s rise, recommended “Sapiens, a short history of human kind” and clarified that errors are not necessarily caused by biases. Noise is more important: things that should not but do affect your decision.<\/p>\n
Panel: Designing for Scarcity<\/h4>\n
From this panel, we learned that:<\/p>\n
- \n
- Poverty reduces attentional capacity or bandwidth. The poor are very busy making trade-offs and calculating time and money opportunity costs, leaving less capacity for other decisions.<\/li>\n
- This can make them experts, much better than the more fortunate, at calculating opportunity costs.<\/li>\n
- One should communicate interest costs, say of payday loans, in terms of dollars, not percentages, to make an impression.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Panel: Measuring and Analyzing Behavior for Better Insights<\/h4>\n
The next morning kicked off with a panel on quantitative measurements. Barbara Mellers of the Good Judgement Project<\/a> taught us how to be good forecasters. We ought to:<\/p>\n
- \n
- Make forecasts with probabilities, not words. Say “90%” not “highly likely.”<\/li>\n
- Form a team with people who are open minded, intelligent, have a high need for cognition (they like to think) and who use precise probabilities when they forecast.<\/li>\n
- Train them in probabilistic reasoning.<\/li>\n
- Make some simple adjustments in the forecast probabilities, making them more extreme.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
Panel: Politics and the Behavioral Revolution panel<\/h4>\n
Interesting points included:<\/p>\n
- \n
- A study involving “deep canvassing” generated sufficient empathy from door-to-door conversations to “durably” reduce transphobia.<\/li>\n
- If you want to increase political activism, don’t remind people of fiscal constraints and then ask them for money! Instead, leverage social pressure (your friends are doing it), say thank you, make it convenient and help them anticipate rewards.<\/li>\n
- If you want to change someone’s mind, begin by affirming their self-worth.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Panel: Building Trust<\/h4>\n
Some big ideas:<\/p>\n
- \n
- The neocortex is the seat of our social intellect (chart).<\/li>\n
- Social isolation is more dangerous to our health than a high BMI.<\/li>\n
- “People will do anything for a $5 Starbucks card.”<\/li>\n
- GlobalGiving.org<\/a> is “running tests on you all the time” (freaking me a bit more) to figure out how to make users more generous.<\/li>\n
- People will trust a company more if they can review their experience with it publicly. Even better: the company should disclose what they do well and what they do poorly.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
<\/p>\nSpeaker: Angela Duckworth<\/h4>\n
- People will trust a company more if they can review their experience with it publicly. Even better: the company should disclose what they do well and what they do poorly.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
- StickK<\/a>‘s Jordan Goldberg described how his offering addresses our present bias<\/a> by “raising today’s price of your vice.” Non-cash awards are more salient and motivating than cash because they can be visualized. And he offered this compelling slide on the power of defaults vis-a-vis organ donation policies:<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n