Building the Behavior Change Toolkit: Designing and Testing a Nudge and a Boost
While nudges and boosts can look similar in practice, their theoretical distinctions are important and useful for those building interventions.
October 18th, 2021
cognitive bias
April 19th, 2021
We Can All Be Fundamentalists, and Fundamentalism Is Everywhere
A conversation with the authors of “Minds Wide Shut” about how to avoid a destructive, and pervasive, mode of thinking that affects all of us.
April 12th, 2021
Subtract: Why Getting to Less Can Mean Thinking More
In striving to improve our lives, our work, and our society, we overwhelmingly add, overlooking another powerful option—subtraction.
March 08th, 2021
The Usefulness of Our Delusions
Rather than seek to annihilate self-deception, a better goal would be to think carefully about what it does, and ask ourselves how we can work with it.
“Natural Is Better”: How the Appeal To Nature Fallacy Derails Public Health
People tend to see “natural” as a cue for “safe.” This fallacy is a component of vaccine resistance—but we may be able to flip this inclination to encourage uptake.
January 20th, 2021
Misunderstanding Vaccine Side Effects Poses a Problem for Uptake
Side effects to the COVID-19 vaccine may deter millions of Americans from getting immunized, but those side effects are actually a sign the vaccine is working. Here’s how we can realign public perception and boost uptake.
November 02nd, 2020
How the “Last Disaster Bias” Could Be Skewing Democrat Strategy in the 2020 Election
Is the Biden campaign learning the wrong lessons from Clinton’s failed presidential run in 2016?
July 06th, 2020
What Are the Chances? Maria Konnikova’s Unexpected Poker Journey, and What She Learned
A writer and psychologist’s take on what poker can teach us all about human nature.
June 29th, 2020
How to Remedy “Better-than-Average” Effects
Believing that you are better than others has powerful implications. But do you actually know that you’re better?
April 13th, 2020
Epistemic Humility—Knowing Your Limits in a Pandemic
“Ignorance,” wrote Charles Darwin in 1871, “more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.”
