It's All Just a Bunch of BS

is a technology-based research company that - in just over two years - has quickly mobilized to develop , a world-class SaaS-based scoring capability to help brands understand and navigate changing business landscapes and audience expectations. Collaborating alongside on some of the brightest minds in academia and working with some of the most well-known brands, Emotive's defines, tracks and helps strengthen audience engagement for organizations across industries. Nick Bond has made a cåareer understanding people. After graduating from the University of Calgary, Nick decided to focus his energy on the data and analytics side of the industry. Earning his stripes for the first seven years of his career in market research with Ipsos, Nick moved to FGL Sports – part of the Canadian Tire Group – to take a leadership role on the strategic marketing planning team on behalf of well-known brands such as Sport Chek, Atmosphere, and Sports Experts in Quebec. After 5 years, Nick was lured to the agency world and began his foundational work on defining, measuring, and tracking audience engagement.    

Hello BS Listeners, and welcome back to another episode. Today I am here with Dr. Jessica Tollette. Jessica is the academic director of the Bachelor in Behavior and Social Sciences at IE University. She has experience teaching courses on research methods, race, gender and education. Her research interests include race, ethnicity, immigration and intergroup relations. Dr. Tollette’s previous research examines immigration policy, immigrant integration and intergroup relations in Madrid. She has previously received several awards and grants to conduct her research, including a Fulbright grant to Spain. In addition to teaching and research, Dr. Tollette has also worked extensively with undergraduates in the realm of diversity and inclusion and pre-career and academic advising. Prior to obtaining her Ph.D., she worked as a management consultant at Monitor Group where she specialized in marketing consulting and diversity recruitment. She received her M.A. and Ph.D. in Sociology at Harvard University and graduated magna cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in Communication.

Ashley Whillans Bio: I received my PhD in Social Psychology from the University of British Columbia in November 2017 and started working as an Assistant Professor at the Harvard Business School in July 2017. During my PhD, I was a member of UBC's Public Scholar Initiative and was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. My PhD Dissertation won the CAGS Distinguished Thesis Award for being the best dissertation across the fine arts, social sciences, and humanities in Canada in 2017. In 2015 and 2018, I was named a Rising Star of Behavioral Science by the International Behavioral Exchange & Behavioral Science and Policy Association. In 2016, I co-founded the Department of Behavioral Science in the Policy, Innovation, and Engagement Division of the British Columbia Public Service Agency. I am part of the , and advise on the well-being strategy of numerous non-profit and for-profit partners. I am a member of the  at Harvard Business School, a member of the  at Harvard Chan School of Public Health, and a member of Harvard Kennedy School of Public Policy's . I am also a  at Harvard University, where my ongoing research examines the welfare benefits of alleviating time poverty among working poor women living in developing markets. ​​More broadly, my research focuses on understanding how the daily and long-term decisions people make about time and money (in their personal lives, relationships, and at work) impact well-being. My research has been published in numerous academic outlets, including the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Social Psychological and Personality Science, Health Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Journal of Social and Personality Psychology, Nature Human Behavior, Science Advances, and Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

BJ Fogg is a behavior scientist, with deep experience in innovation and teaching. At Stanford University he’s directed a research lab for over 20 years. On the industry side, BJ trains innovators to use his work so they can create solutions that influence behavior for good. The focus areas include health, sustainability, financial wellbeing, learning, productivity, and more. In 2002, he published a book entitled, Persuasive Technology, about how computers can be designed to influence attitudes and behaviors. At the time of publication this book was mostly ignored. Now, almost 20 years later, the predictions and warnings about persuasive technology were surprisingly accurate. In 2009 BJs research interests moved away from persuasive technology toward human behavior in general, especially health habits. This led to creating a new set of models and methods that comprise what he calls “Behavior Design.” In January of 2020 I shared 300 pages of new and practical uses for Behavior Design in my New York Times Bestselling book . Today he devotes about 50% of his time to Stanford and 50% to industry teaching & innovation. For him, working in both worlds makes sense: his Stanford work makes him better in industry. And what he learns in industry improves his Stanford research.​

BJ Fogg is a behavior scientist, with deep experience in innovation and teaching. At Stanford University he’s directed a research lab for over 20 years. On the industry side, BJ trains innovators to use his work so they can create solutions that influence behavior for good. The focus areas include health, sustainability, financial wellbeing, learning, productivity, and more. In 2002, he published a book entitled, Persuasive Technology, about how computers can be designed to influence attitudes and behaviors. At the time of publication this book was mostly ignored. Now, almost 20 years later, the predictions and warnings about persuasive technology were surprisingly accurate. In 2009 BJs research interests moved away from persuasive technology toward human behavior in general, especially health habits. This led to creating a new set of models and methods that comprise what he calls “Behavior Design.” In January of 2020 I shared 300 pages of new and practical uses for Behavior Design in my New York Times Bestselling book . Today he devotes about 50% of his time to Stanford and 50% to industry teaching & innovation. For him, working in both worlds makes sense: his Stanford work makes him better in industry. And what he learns in industry improves his Stanford research.​

James Elfer is Founder of Morethannow, a research practice that applies behavioral science to workplace contexts. Magda is Reader in Experimental Cognitive Psychology, the Alan Turing Research Fellow and Head of Dynamic Learning and Decision Making Lab at Queen Mary University of London. The ethos of her work has been to take a critical eye to well accepted views and challenge the status quo. As a result, her research and writing interests cover a range of areas that include decision-making, learning, problem-solving, biases, risk and uncertainty, agency and control, and the unconscious. Her work also helps to show that methods, such as nudges, designed to improve our decision-making are not reliable, are ethically problematic, and that the public have concerns about them, especially if the nudges are designed by government bodies compared to scientists.

After having spent over 20 years in Corporate America, Will Leach left PepsiCo in 2012 to chase his dreams of opening a behavioral science-focused marketing research - .  In 2017 Will accidentally found out that he had the basic elements required to write a book, so he did just that.  In 2018 he released Marketing to Mindstates.  Because of the books’ success, he formed a new company called . Mindstate Group offers behavioral science tools to help brand managers and planners develop marketing creative that gets people to listen, care, and act.

Eliq is a fast-growing SaaS provider of customer engagement and energy insights software to the utilities industry. Based in Gothenburg, Sweden and London, UK, Eliq today serve 17 utilities globally with our SaaS platform delivering energy insights and customer engagement software, such as applications for mobile and web that enable customers to benefit from smart metering by better understanding and managing their energy usage. Eliq changes the way energy utilities engage with their customers: using machine learning and a Software-as-a-Service solution for real-time monitoring and optimizing electricity use.

George Kohlrieser is an organizational and clinical psychologist. He is Distinguished Professor of Leadership and Organizational Behaviour at IMD and consultant to several global companies including Accenture, Amer Sports, Borealis, Cisco, Coca-Cola, HP, Hitachi, IBM, IFC, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Morgan Stanley, Motorola, NASA, Navis, Nestlé, among many many others. His research, teaching and consulting activities are focused on high performance leadership, high performance teamwork, conflict management, change management, dialogue and negotiation, coaching, stress management, work-life balance, and personal and professional development. He is also a Police Psychologist and Hostage Negotiator focusing on aggression management and hostage negotiations. George is Director of the , an intense six day IMD program for experienced senior leaders. He is the author of the internationally bestselling book, Hostage At The Table: How Leaders Can Overcome Conflict, Influence Others, and Raise Performance. His second book, Care to Dare: Unleashing Astonishing Potential Through Secure Base Leadership, has been nominated one of the Best Business Books of 2013 by Soundview.

Stefano Puntoni is Professor of Marketing at the Rotterdam School of Management. He joined RSM after completing a PhD in marketing at London Business School. His research has appeared in leading journals, including Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Consumer Psychology, Journal of Marketing, Nature Human Behavior, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, and Management Science, and has been featured in media outlet such as Harvard Business Review, The Times, and the Wall Street Journal.

A special episode of the one year anniversary of the show. Fifty-two weeks. Fifty-two episodes. Fifty-two experts from a range of different industries ... and their answer to the single most important question, the Big Behavioral Brainstorm: "Of all the problems in the world today, which one would you say could stand to benefit from a behavioral-based solution?”

Fastic is the world’s number one app for healthy fasting. Fastic instills fascination, supporting users in achieving balance and creating healthy habits through scientific principles of intermittent fasting. Combatting trends of overconsumption, the company’s mission is to bring intermittent fasting to the masses in an easily digestible, digitized way, helping users reconnect to their body’s natural needs. Fastic’s selling point is its holistic approach to health, combining fasting with education, mindfulness, exercise and nutrition.

Matej Sucha is the founder of MINDWORX, a unique consulting company helping clients understand and use insight from psychology and behavioral economics in domains like marketing, sales, HR and behavior change. He discovered behavioral economics during his studies at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark and ETH Zürich in Switzerland. After gaining experience in the corporate world, he quit in 2015 and fully focused on MINDWORX. Nowadays they are consulting for banks, insurance companies, the telco industry and many more. Matej’s most recent endeavor is a first of its kind online Masterclass Psychology and Behavioral Economics in Marketing where he collaborated with some of the greatest minds from the field.

Ovul Sezer is a faculty member at the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she teaches Negotiations and Managerial Decision Making. SHe is a behavioral scientist and a stand-up comedian. She is passionately curious about human nature, which she studies through behavioral experiments and humor. Ovul’s research focuses on Impression (Mis)Management—the mistakes we make when we want to impress others. We all think we know how to make a positive impression, and we can easily spot the mistakes others make, but when it comes to our own missteps, we tend to be blithely oblivious. She holds a PhD in organizational behavior from Harvard University and a bachelor’s degree in applied mathematics from Harvard University.

Bob Cialdini, as he known to his friends and colleagues, is Regents’ Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Marketing at Arizona State University and President and Founder of Influence at Work. His books, including Influence, Yes! and Pre-Suasion have sold more than six-million copies and have been translated into 41 different languages and position him as undoubtedly one of the founding fathers of what we today refer to as behavioural science. His 40 years of ground breaking work on the psychology of persuasion have led to some of the most important and notable findings in social psychology and inform some of the most important modern day applications of behavioural science. In acknowledgement of his outstanding research achievements and contributions to the behavioural science, two years ago Dr. Cialdini was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and in 2019 to the National Academy of Sciences. When it comes to the scientific study of human influence and persuasion Robert Cialdini is the most cited living psychologist in the world. Steve is a Royal Society nominated author in the field of influence and persuasion science who together with Robert Cialdini and Noah Goldstein co-authored ‘Yes! 50 Secrets from the Science of Persuasion’ the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Business Week bestseller which has now sold over one million copies. Steve’s work applying behavioural science to business and public policy has featured in the national and international press including BBC TV & Radio, The Times, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Harvard Business Review and Time magazine. He was the guy who wrote the original tax letter for the UK government that has become arguably one of the most famous nudges in applied behavioural science. His popular business columns are read by over 2 million people every month. Steve is Faculty Director of the Behavioural Science Exec Ed Program at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business and a guest lecturer on MBA and Exec. Ed programmes at the London School of Economics, the London Business School and Harvard. Together, Bob and Steve, are the inspiration behind the well-known Science of Persuasion YouTube Video which has to date been viewed 12 MILLION times.

Lindsay Kohler is a reformed communication consultant who turned to behavioral science to figure out why we do what we do — especially when it comes to poor health and financial decisions. With over a decade of employee engagement consulting experience with Fortune 500 companies and an MSc in Behavioral Science from The London School of Economics, she uses that experience to help bridge the gap between theory and action to maximize performance. Lindsay's thoughts on employee engagement have appeared in many HR publications, such as Workforce, HRDirector, and CorpComms Magazine. She is currently the lead behavioral scientist at U.K. consultancy scarlettabbott. 

The formal launch of the Global Association for Applied Behavioural Scientists (GAABS). GAABS is the world’s first independent organisation representing the interests of applied behavioural scientists, primarily working in the private sector. GAABS has a clear scientific, social and non-commercial purpose. A sit-down panel conversation with the founding board members reveals the future of behavioral science. 

Pique is a quirky, funny behavioral scientist in your pocket. It's a mobile app that shows you the behavioral science behind common issues in your day-to-day life and helps you approach the issues in new ways. Each "pack" is about one topic, like conversations or time, and then each "moment" in that pack approaches the topic in a different way. A "moment" introduces an approach, teaches you the science behind the approach, and then walks you through how to implement it in your life. And each "Moment" is crafted to be engaging and maybe even make you giggle.

Greg Davies is a specialist in applied behavioural finance, decision science, impact investing, and financial wellbeing. He founded the banking world’s first behavioural finance team at Barclays in 2006, which he led for a decade. In 2017 he joined Oxford Risk to lead the development of behavioural decision support software to help people make the best possible financial Decisions. Greg holds a PhD in Behavioural Decision Theory from Cambridge; has held academic affiliations at UCL, Imperial College, and Oxford; and is author of Behavioral Investment Management. Greg is also Chair of Sound and Music, the UK’s national charity for new music, and the creator of Open Outcry, a ‘reality opera’ premiered in London in 2012, creating live performance from a functioning trading floor.

Lauren Waldman, founder of Learning Pirate, is a revolutionary in the discipline of organizational learning and development. With nearly 20 years experience as a learning professional, complemented by qualifications in neuroscience, Lauren is driving the evolution of the way individuals and organizations learn and approach learning. Most sought out for her expertise in scientific learning design and her not to be forgotten experimental talks, Lauren has designed and implemented  learning for ambitious change initiatives, created remarkable learning experiences for sales and marketing teams and has worked with some of the most prominent industries (banking, hospitality, IT, retail, media) and organizations (Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines, TCS, Tokyo Disney Land, Social Bakers) around the world at home in Toronto. 

Dr. Stephen Wendel is a behavioral scientist who studies financial behavior and how digital products can help individuals manage their money more effectively.  He serves as Head of Behavioral Science at Morningstar, where he leads a team of behavioral scientists and practitioners to conduct original research on saving and investment behavior.  Stephen has authored three books on applied behavioral science, Designing for Behavior Change, Improving Employee Benefits, and Spiritual Design, and founded the non-profit Action Design Network, educating the public on how to apply behavioral research to product development with monthly events in twelve cities. He has two wonderful kids, who don’t care about behavioral science at all.

Dr. Stef Johnson is an associate professor of Organizational Leadership and Information Analytics. She holds the Andrea and Michael Leeds Research Fellowship, is the Director of the Daniels Fund Ethics Initiative, and is a 2020 RIO Fellow. She is a fellow in the Society of Industrial Organizational Psychologists (SIOP) and the American Psychological Society (APS). She has published 60 journal articles and book chapters in outlets Journal of Applied Psychology and The Academy of Management Journal. Her book just poublished with Harper Collins is called Inclusify: Harnessing the Power of Uniqueness and Belonging to Build Innovative Teams, where Stefanie shares the surprising ways the leaders undermine inclusion and provides actionable ways that leaders can pivot to build more inclusive teams.

Julia is Partner at Boston Consulting Group and cofounder and leader of BeSmart, BCG's behavioral economics and insights initiative. In this role, she brings her passion and experience designing complex system transformation through nuanced behavioral change to clients in the public and private sectors. Julia has advised and implemented transformational strategy initiatives across a range of social impact and public sector organizations, including economic development and planning, finance, labor, education, and social welfare. She works with private sector clients to integrate choice architecture and customer insights to improve the productivity, performance, and customer experience of organizations in sectors including airlines and travel and tourism, energy, IT, and telecommunications. Before joining the firm, Julia worked as private secretary to the deputy prime minister and minister of finance in New Zealand. She also led a major study to increase private capital for public services as a member of the UK cabinet office's social investment and finance team.

Maria Konnikova is psychologist and author of two New York Times best selling books,  Confidence Game and Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes. She is a regularly for The New Yorker whose writing has won numerous awards, including the 2019 Excellence in Science Journalism Award from the Society of Personality and Social Psychology.  Maria’s writing has been featured in and has been translated into over twenty languages. Maria also hosts the podcast from Panoply Media, a show that explores con artists and the lives they ruin, and is currently a at NYU’s School of Journalism. Her new book, , will be out from Penguin Press on June 23, 2020. While researching Maria became an international poker champion and the winner of in tournament earnings—and inadvertently turned into a professional poker player. What? You may be wondering? … How do the skills learned at the poker table translate to the skills required to live a better, more thoughtful and, ultimately, successful life? The Biggest Bluff isn’t about how to play poker. It’s about how to play the world.

Torben Emmerling is the Founder and Managing Partner of the leading Swiss Behavioural Science consultancy Affective Advisory. He is the inventor of the D.R.I.V.E.® framework for behavioural insights in strategy, a seasoned lecturer in Behavioural Science and Applied Consumer Psychology and an accomplished trainer and keynote speaker. Torben has over 10 years of experience in business strategy, organizational development and customer relationship management. Over the past 3 years he has been working with leading private and public organizations on implementing behavioural science insights in strategy, ethics risk and compliance, marketing, communication and public policy around the world. Torben holds an Executive Master (MSc) in Behavioural Science from the London School of Economics, and Master (Mlitt) in International Business from the University of St Andrews. He lives and works in Zurich and enjoys traveling the world for both work and pleasure.

Jason leads PwC Australia’s behavioral economics practice. He specializes in economics, evolution, and behavioral science. Previously, he was data science lead with Australia's corporate, markets, and financial services regulator, and has also worked as a lawyer and an economic policy adviser with the Australian Treasury. He has a Ph.D. from the University of Western Australia.

This is a reverse style interview with the podcast's host, Nick Hobson. In this episode, former guest from Season 1, sits down with Nick to discuss the state of the field of behavioral insights, from the personal vantage point of leaving academia and entering into practice. There's also a winding conversation talking about Nick's main line of work: the psychology of ritual and its impact on customer experience and brand engagement. Mostly though, this is a test that puts Nick in the hot seat: He can dish it, but can he take the tough interview questions? We'll see.

Caroline Roux holds the Concordia University Research Chair in Psychology of Resource Scarcity. Her primary area of research explores how reminders of resource scarcity affect consumers’ cognitions, judgment, and behavior. More broadly, her research interests focus on better understanding how pro-social values and moral considerations influence consumers’ decision making. Caroline was awarded research grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Fonds Québécois de la Recherche sur la Société et la Culture. She also was the recipient of the 2017 Petro-Canada Young Innovator Award in the Strategic Research Cluster "The Person and Society," and of the 2019 Dean’s Award for Distinguished Scholarship – Emerging Scholar. Caroline's research has been published in top marketing journals, such as the Journal of Consumer Research and the Journal of Consumer Psychology, among others. She has a PhD in marketing from NorthWestern University.

Dr. Wendy Wood is Provost Professor of Psychology and Business at the University of Southern California, where she teaches classes on behavior change. Given her research over the past 30 years, she is widely considered the world scientific expert on habit formation and change. She has published over 100 articles, and her research has been supported by Proctor & Gamble, National Science Foundation, the Templeton Foundation, and the Radcliffe Institute. Wendy is a popular speaker at scientific conferences and with a broad range of professional groups. In 2018, she gave the inaugural address in Paris for the Sorbonne-INSEAD Distinguished Chair in Behavioral Science. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, NPR, Washington Post, on radio shows like Freakonomics, and in podcasts like the People’s Pharmacy. Most recently, Wendy is the author of her new book: Good Habits, Bad Habits … a rare book, as written an academic and jam packed with solid science but accessible to just about anyone interested in why they do the things they do.

Rory is the Vice Chairman of Ogilvy, and has co-founded a behavioural science practice within the agency. He works talented psychology graduates who look for ‘unseen opportunities’ in consumer behaviour - these are the very small contextual changes which can have enormous effects on the decisions people make - for instance tripling the sales rate of a call centre by adding just a few sentences to the script. Before this, Rory was a copywriter and creative director at Ogilvy for over 20 years. Before his life-changing (for many of his fans) career at Ogilvy, Rory has been President of the IPA, Chair of the Judges for the Direct Jury at Cannes, and has spoken at TED Global. He is also an author. having written: 'The Wiki Man', and the newly published 'Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don't Make Sense.'

Cass Sunstein is the founder and director of the Program on Behavioral Economics and Public Policy at Harvard Law School. In 2018, he received the Holberg Prize from the government of Norway, sometimes described as the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for law and the humanities. From 2009 to 2012, he was Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, and after that, he served on the President's Review Board on Intelligence and Communications Technologies and on the Pentagon's Defence Innovation Board. Cass has testified before congressional committees on many subjects, and he has advised officials at the United Nations, the European Commission, the World Bank, and many nations on issues of law and public policy. He serves as an adviser to the Behavioural Insights Team in the United Kingdom. Cass is, of course, the author of hundreds of articles and dozens of books, including Nudge (with Richard H. Thaler, 2008), Simpler (2013), The Ethics of Influence (2015), Republic (2017), Impeachment: A Citizen's Guide (2017), The Cost-Benefit Revolution (2018), On Freedom (2019), Conformity (2019), How Change Happens (2019), and Too Much Information (2020).

Tim Kachuriak is the founder and Chief Innovation and Optimization Officer for NextAfter, a fundraising research lab consultancy, and training institute that works with charities, nonprofits and NGOs to help them grow their resource capacity. A nonprofit thought leader, Kachuriak is the author of the book Optimize Your Fundraising, lead researcher and co-author of the Online Fundraising Scorecard, Why Should I Give to You? (The Nonprofit Value Proposition Index Study), and The Midlevel Donor Crisis. Kachuriak has trained organizations in fundraising optimization around the world and is a frequent speaker at international nonprofit conferences. Kachuriak is also the co-founder and board member for the Human Coalition, a member of the board of directors for Open Doors USA, an Advisory Board Member for the SMU Digital Accelerator, and an Advisory Board Member for the Blackbaud Institute fo Philanthropic Impact.

As a Behavioural Consulting Lead at Cowry, April helps clients to solve business problems using behavioural science. April has been studying the field of human behaviour for nearly a decade, and holds degrees in Psychology and Behaviour Change. At the University of St Andrews she focussed on how evolutionary forces have shaped modern day behaviour and conducted research on facial perception. During her master’s degree at UCL she wrote a thesis on how behavioural science could be used to enhance cyber security in the Internet of Things. Recently, April co-authored Ripple with Jez Groom, which brings to life how small nudges from behavioural science can snowball into big effects for businesses.

Rob is CEO of a behavior design and gamification consultancy called Influence Insights where he works with tech companies to make products users love through the application of behavioral science and video game design principles. He’s also a behavioral product strategist for a startup foundry called Spark Wave where he helps build products from the ground up to accelerate the pace of behavioral science and apply its insights to people's lives.

is an applied behavioral scientist who helps organizations create human-centered client experiences using qualitative and quantitative research methods and executive coaching. Silja holds a Behavioral Science Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge and has worked with industry and governmental organizations across Europe, the US and Southeast Asia. Silja uses an embodied approach to behavior change and advocates for the interdisciplinary use of therapeutic, movement-based and cognitive strategies to achieve sustainable change in behavior patterns. She also facilitates an online community of behavioral design professionals seeking to integrate the research and application of behavioral insights globally.

The physical immune is fine-tuned by natural selection to fight off nasty invaders that enter into our body. What you might now know though, is that we also have what’s called the behavioral immune system (or BIS), and BIS protects us from transmissible pathogens and parasites that pass from human to human. The Behavioral Immune System is a cluster of psychological mechanisms that evolved in our species to promote behaviors of disease avoidance. It’s especially relevant to know this in this time of COVID-19.

Aaron is co-founder and president of Trust Included, consultancy that offers scientifically validated solutions to help organizations overcome challenges and proactively meet the future through initiatives related to wellness culture, leadership, and employee experience. Aaron is a , a reviewer for the Journal of Personality and Individual Differences, a certified executive coach, and a professionally trained scientist-practitioner. His background in industrial-organizational psychology allows him to use best practices in science and evidence-based management to help organizations and individuals overcome challenges, prevent problems, and promote organizational health using a rigorous data-driven approach. He's interested in positive organizational psychology or the scientific study of the strengths that enable individuals, organizations, and communities to thrive and how these findings may be used to benefit all levels of social systems (from individuals to societies). Aaron’s proactive focus on striving for healthy individual and organizational functioning goes beyond meeting the needs of an organization, rather it cultivates opportunities for that workplace and its members to grow and thrive.

Michael Inzlicht is a Research Excellence Faculty Scholar at the University of Toronto. His primary appointment is as Professor in the Department of Psychology, but he is also cross-appointed as Professor at the Rotman School of Management. Michael conducts research that sits at the boundaries of social psychology, cognitive science, and neuroscience. Although he has published papers on the topics of prejudice, academic performance, and religion, his most recent interests have been in the topics of self-control, where he borrows methods from affective and cognitive neuroscience to understand the underlying nature of self-control, including how it is driven by motivation. Michael completed his B.Sc. in Anatomical Sciences at McGill University in 1994, his Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology at Brown University in 2001, and his postdoctoral fellowship in Applied Psychology at New York University in 2004. He has published more than 100 peer-reviewed and edited two . His work has been featured in around the world, including The New York Times, The Globe and Mail, BBC News, TIME, The Daily Telegraph, and the CBC, among many others. His research and teaching have been recognized with the Wegner Theoretical Innovation Prize, the SPSSI Louise Kidder Early Career Award, the Ontario government's Early Researcher Award, the ISCON Best Social Cognition Paper Award, the Principal's Research Award (University of Toronto Scarborough), and the UofT Scarborough Professor of the Year Award. He is currently an Associate Editor of Psychological Science.

Ali Fenwick is Managing Partner and head of Behavioral Insights at LEAD TCM&L and Professor of organizational behavior at Hult International School of Business. By using the scientific method and modern-day data science applications, Ali and his team at LEAD TCML run behavioral experiments and design behavioral interventions for business organizations, educational institutions, sports teams, government, and non-government agencies. Ali specializes in the application of behavioral interventions for business improvement, government policy design, communication effectiveness, talent management, mobile application design, and psychographic profiling. He’s led research and commercial teams in Automotive, Telecom, Healthcare, Pharma, Banking, Food Ingredients and Higher Education. In the field of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Ali enables startups and organizations to incubate and accelerate innovation. Through the provisioning of education, keynotes, hack-athons, organizational design, stakeholder meetings, and people management, he supports organizations to build a culture for innovation and transform creative ideas into practical solutions. Ali has an MBA from Rotterdam School of Management and a PhD in OB from Nyenrode Business University.

We tend to like people who are prototypical or representative of the group. In the context of organizations, this social bias means we like leaders who we think are gold standard examples of the group we work for. This in itself isn’t a bad thing, per se. But in terms of leadership selection in current organizations, there’s a backfire effect. Consider: the prototypicality bias, as it’s called, is a mental heuristic, a quick rule of thumb we apply to decide whether we like or dislike or are accepting or not of another individual, like (in this case) a leader who we think is a defining character of the group. Heuristics, as you know, are prone to systematic error: So, do we always want to select leaders who are prototypical?

  Charlotte Blank is one of the world’s first “chief behavioral officers.” As CBO of Maritz, Charlotte leads Maritz’s practice of behavioral science and innovation. She forges the connection between academic theory and applied business practice, by elevating the use of field research to advance our understanding of human behavior in the modern marketplace.  Charlotte has led programs in consumer psychology and global branding during her ten years in the media and automotive industries, including various marketing roles for General Motors, and new product innovation for Turner Broadcasting. She earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology from Emory University, and an MBA from Harvard Business School. Ever-curious about what “makes us work,” Charlotte is a frequent contributor to PeopleScience.com.     

We are a goal driven species. So much so, my hunch is that even the earliest homo sapiens were juggling lists of hunter-gatherer type to-dos, multi-tasking their way through the African Savanah. And of course as we know now, modern humans are doing more things at the same time than ever before. So the question becomes, How do we navigate between multiple goals happening at once? How do we toggle on and off all the different decisions that need to be made, and what factors are important to consider when purusing one goal over another?

Richard is a highly experienced practitioner, speaker and writer on behavioural science in business  with a focus on communications and technology… , Richard is VP of BVA Nudge Unit UK, the founder of the consultancy Communication Science Group, and a board member of the Association for Business Psychology. He has been featured on BBC radio and in HR Magazine, delivered training at Google and Ofcom, and guest lectured for City University and Cass Business School. Over his career Richard has successfully addressed behavioural challenges as varied as getting people to stop smoking, join the armed forces, drink spirits rather than wine, turn up to school, pay for university tuition, submit their taxes, buy flatpack furniture, and take public transport – to name a few. His strategy for the #XTL campaign (a social media campaign addressing domestic violence) won the Global Festival of Media Campaign of the Year in 2014, and he also led strategic development of the world’s most successful stop smoking mobile app (My QuitBuddy). Previously he co-developed the first training program for behaviour change communications at the COI in 2010, and since then has conducted training for call centre personnel, marketing directors, press officers, media planners, creatives and everything in between. He is a frequent conference speaker, and now works as a consultant for major brands including HSBC and Southeastern Railways. 

Fake news is a problem. It's a problem on the internet. It’s a problem in our politics and public discourse. It’s a problem in ad campaigns. Generally, it’s a problem for society and the businesses or organizations that are involved, for better or worse, mostly mostly big tech and social media. So the question on everyone’s mind these days: How does fake news, or misinformation, spread so rapidly and so far?

Nancy Duarte is a communication expert who has been featured in Fortune, Time Magazine, Forbes, Fast Company, Wired, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Cosmopolitan Magazine, and CNN. Her firm, Duarte, Inc., is the global leader behind some of the most influential visual messages in business and culture. As a persuasion specialist, she cracked the code for effectively incorporating story patterns into business communications.  Duarte, Inc. is the largest design firm in Silicon Valley, as well as the fifth largest female employer in the area. Nancy has won several prestigious awards for communications and entrepreneurship and was recently honored in Watermark’s “Women Who Have Made Their Mark” ceremony. Nancy has 30 years of experience working with global companies and thought leaders, and she has influenced how the world perceives some of the most important brands and entities, including Apple, Cisco, Citrix, Food Network, GE, Google, HP, TED, and the World Bank. Her Ted talk has over 2 millions. Nancy is the author of 6 books, which include her latest called ‘DataStory: Explain Data and Inspire Action Through Story.’

We’ve come to know these two things. First, our modern work environment, with its constantly dinging and pinging technologies and open office designs, makes us more susceptible than ever to the distractions of multi-tasking. And second, we hear again and again, all about the dangers of multi-tasking and how we all need to be focusing our absolute attention on one thing at a time. But is that always the case? Given that we have such an instinctive pull towards jumping between tasks, wouldn’t that suggest that there’s some adaptive use to thinking in that sort of way?

Christian Hunt is the Founder of Human Risk Limited, a Behavioral Science (BeSci) Consulting and Training Firm specializing in the fields of Risk, Compliance, Conduct & Culture. He was formerly head of Behavioral Science at UBS, a role specifically created for him, and coming out of a related position as Head of Compliance and Operational Risk Control UBS Asset Management. Prior to this, Christian was the Chief Operating Officer of the Prudential Regulation Authority, a subsidiary of the Bank of England responsible for regulating Financial Services. Christian is also the host of a great podcast called the Human Risk Podcast, a show to help BS practitioners, researchers, and innovative thinkers in the field of compliance, risk, and culture.

When it comes to differences in cultural experiences, the general distinction is between individualistic culture and collectivistic culture. The former being tapping into our individual selves and the latter tapping into our relational or interdependent selves. Geopolitically and ethnically, these generally map onto Western vs Eastern cultures. But our psychology can toggle between the two and either (or both) can manifest themselves in more local teams, groups, and workplace organizations. So, here’s a question: When it comes to team performance and creativity in workplace groups, which one leads to better working outcomes? 

Nate Andorsky is the co-founder and CEO of Creative Science, a company using behavioral economics to build technology and digital strategies for today’s most innovative companies. Nate in his role of CEO helps blend behavioral economics, design and technology to facilitate social innovators move people to action, empowering clients to dream bigger by creating digital experiences, which at their core are human experiences. Prior to Creative Science, he was a team member at the Startup America Partnership, a nonprofit led by Steve Case to help build entrepreneurial communities through the US. He geeks out about technology and the ways it can motivate people to do good. Nate has been featured in Forbes, Huffington Post, and Inc. Magazine.

There are generally two tpyes of goals: Maintenance and Attainment. Keeping a bank balance at a set point (maintenance goal) versus hitting a target savings (attainment goal); keeping a running list of current clients (maintenance goal) versus hunting down business and generating new client leads (attainment goal). The problem is, we’re biased towards attainment over maintenance goals, even when the latter is objectively easier. Why? There’s nothing more the brain loves than to close the gap between where we are now and where we want to be later. And that’s how attainment goals work: resolving the discrepancy between the current and the future. So what to do?