Why Behavioral Scientists Need to Think Harder About the Future
Thinking carefully and creatively about the distant future can sharpen our thinking about the present, even if what we imagine never comes to pass.
January 17th, 2019
BIT
May 31st, 2018
What We Learned By Failing to Make Work Better for Female Staff
Trainings to remove bias are mostly ineffective, and can even backfire. What, then, is the way forward?
May 07th, 2018
Building Better Community Colleges through Behavioral Science
Students at community college face unique challenges but, too often, are less supported. New research suggests that behavioral science can narrow the gap.
March 13th, 2018
Lessons from Building a Behavioral Science Initiative in City Government
Here are eight lessons we learned from building a behavioral science initiative in Philadelphia’s city government.
December 05th, 2015
How Can Governments and Businesses Avoid the ‘Big Mistake?’
He talked about how often policymakers, in his opinion, not only missed the power of social norms and influence, they often inadvertently used them in a way that actually backfired.
November 03rd, 2015
The Behavioral Insights Team 5 Years On: A Conversation with Owain Service
Today, nearly 200 randomized control trials later and with their findings permeating virtually all areas of public policy, the creation of the BIT and the wedding of behavioral science and public policy might seem like forgone conclusions.
September 16th, 2015
Executive Order Formally Establishes US ‘Nudge Unit’
On Tuesday President Barack Obama issued an executive order formally establishing the White House Social and Behavioral Sciences Team while also directing federal agencies to examine how they can use behavioral science to improve outcomes for citizens across the United States.
July 13th, 2014
Head of White House “Nudge Unit” Maya Shankar Speaks about Newly Formed Social and Behavioral Sciences Team
Public reaction to the news that the White House was in the process of setting up its own “Nudge Unit” was a mix between hopeful anticipation on the one hand and big-government alarmism on the other.
April 17th, 2014
Why Not Nudge? A Review of Cass Sunstein’s Why Nudge
The field mistakenly called “behavioral economics” (mistakenly because what it is is psychology applied to domains that are the normal province of economists) has taken the intellectual and political world by storm.
March 06th, 2014
New Journal Helps Behavioral Scientists Find Their Way to Washington
When it comes to being heard in Washington, classical economists have long gotten their way. Behavioral scientists, on the other hand, haven’t proved so adept at getting their message across.
