Stories, science and secrets from the world’s brightest thought-leaders. Behavioral Grooves is the podcast that satisfies your curiosity of why we do what we do. Explanations of human behavior that will improve your relationships, your wellbeing, and your organization by helping you find your groove.
Episodes
Sunday Aug 25, 2019
Alex Blau: The Implementation-Intention Framework
Sunday Aug 25, 2019
Sunday Aug 25, 2019
Alex Blau is a vice president at ideas42 with projects in consumer finance, design and decision-making, and international development. In our discussion, we focused on a new project he’s working on in the area of supervision of people after they're released from incarceration, or what we commonly refer to as parole.
The cost of incarceration and supervision is more than just social – it comes with a big price tag. Nearly $7 billion is spent annually to supervise individuals coming out of the prison system and another $9 billion is spent on incarceration. More than 4.5 million people in the United States are under supervision and government data indicate that roughly two-thirds of those released from prison will be arrested within 3 years.
Roughly 50% of the arrests are for rule violations (the other 50% for committing new crimes). Alex and his colleagues at ideas42 are researching ways to change the context of the world the parolees return to with the hope of reducing recidivism. We talked about the novel interventions they’re testing.
We also discussed a brief history of Jamaican music with an emphasis on the rich catalog of the island nation’s artists, emerging near the middle of the 20th century. In our grooving session, Kurt and Tim cover the implementation-intention framework and how reminders via association can be more powerful than specific triggers, especially when triggers are difficult to identify.
We hope you enjoy our discussion with Alex Blau.
Links
Alex Blau: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-blau-2271788/
ideas42: https://www.ideas42.org/
Annie Duke: https://www.annieduke.com/
Todd Rogers & Katy Milkman “Reminders through Association” https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/todd_rogers/files/rogers_milkman_rta.pdf
Sendhil Mullainathan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sendhil_Mullainathan
Laurie Santos, GI Joe Effect: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GimHHAID_P0
Reggae: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reggae
Ska: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ska
Rocksteady: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocksteady
Mento: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mento
Fugue: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugue
David Hussman episode #17: https://behavioralgrooves.com/episode/the-accidental-behavioral-scientist-with-david-hussman/
Kurt Nelson: @motivationguru
Tim Houlihan: @THoulihan
Check out the Behavioral Grooves website: https://behavioralgrooves.com/
Artists
Bob Marley: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhJ0q7X3DLM
Desmond Decker: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxtfdH3-TQ4
Toots and the Maytals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nqqp5XoyLE
Sunday Aug 18, 2019
Steven Sisler: Seeing People as We Are
Sunday Aug 18, 2019
Sunday Aug 18, 2019
Steven Sisler may not be a household name, but he should be. Steve is a Master Level Behavioral Profiler and the lead Behavioral Analyst at The Behavioral Resource Group. He consults on personality, career strategy, leadership strategy, culture, spiritual growth, relationship management, and temperament strategy.
We were introduced to Steve by one of our listeners and we were happy to invite him on the show. His wit and wisdom were both entertaining and rewarding in ways that only a guy who has held jobs as diverse as roofing a house to authoring seven books and speaking at conferences can be. Steve’s behavioral focus emerges from his work with personality assessments, and this brought a fresh perspective us as we rarely dive into the tools of the trade. We discussed the value of understanding who we are as individuals to help us better understand how others are. As Steve said, “We don’t see people as they are, we see people as we are.”
We hope you enjoy our conversation with Steve and we’ve shared links to many of the references – and there were many – for those unfamiliar with this field of study.
Links
Steven Sisler: https://behavioralresourcegroup.com/about-us/about-steve-sisler/
King Solomon (Ecclesiastes 9:11): https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/06/04/race-swift/
Descriptive Self: https://positivepsychology.com/self-concept/
Normative Self: https://philarchive.org/archive/SILAAN-4
The Prince of Egypt (Disney): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prince_of_Egypt
Robert S. Hartman, PhD: http://www.athenaq.com/about-us/robert-s-hartman-phd/
Axiology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axiology
Bad Players Make Great Coaches: https://www.thesportster.com/entertainment/top-15-horrible-athletes-who-made-great-coaches/
Turning into a Skid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONXHtODehHk
Dave Ramsey (radio host): https://www.daveramsey.com/
John G. Geier & Dorthey E. Downey, Aristos: http://www.geierlearning.com/aristos.html
DISC Assessment: https://www.123test.com/disc-personality-test/
Hyper Empathy: https://exploringyourmind.com/hyper-empathy-syndrome-much-good-thing/
Emotional Intelligence: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/emotional-intelligence
GI Joe Fallacy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GimHHAID_P0
Mirroring: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirroring_(psychology)
Pinky & The Brain: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinky_and_the_Brain
“Quiet” by Susan Cain: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8520610-quiet
“9 Lies About Work” by Marcus Buckingham & Ashley Goodall: https://hbrascend.org/topics/9-lies-about-work/
Meyers Briggs Personality Assessment: https://www.businessinsider.com/myers-briggs-personality-test-is-misleading-2014-6
Kimberlé Crenshaw – Intersectionality: https://blackwomenintheblackfreedomstruggle.voices.wooster.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/210/2019/02/Crenshaw_mapping-the-margins1991.pdf
Music
“A Star is Born” soundtrack: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Star_Is_Born_(2018_soundtrack)
Lady Gaga: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPJjwHAIny4
Foreigner: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSOtCMYJqOw
Electric Light Orchestra: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQUlA8Hcv4s
Queen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbvyNnw8Qjg
Dredg “The Pariah, the Parrot, the Illusion”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73Wt-jhBdtA
“Down to the Cellar”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDIVA2sDnek
“The Times They Are A Changing” by Bob Dylan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7qQ6_RV4VQ
“Purple Rain” by Prince: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9X2R_YF4Qc
“Love Will Never Do Without You” by Janet Jackson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KCvVsNstjE
“Candy Apple Gray” by Hüsker Dü: https://nl.qwerty.wiki/wiki/Candy_Apple_Grey
The Replacements: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Replacements_(band)
The Suburbs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Suburbs_(band)
Monday Aug 12, 2019
Chris Matyszczyk: Listening to Music While You Work
Monday Aug 12, 2019
Monday Aug 12, 2019
Our guest in this episode is a prolific writer and observer of the human condition, Chris Matyszczyk (pronounced ma-TIS-chick). We talked with Chris about a variety of topics including
advertising, the psychology of who we are, including an unplanned psychoanalysis of Tim’s desire to be heard as a musician. We also talked about politics and referenced Brexit, life at Google and Facebook, and, hold the phone: how World War will be won by the best nerds.
All of this got started because we saw an article Chris wrote that caught our attention. It was a topic we have discussed in the past: Music and its relationship to getting work done. Is music a stimulant to creativity or is it a buzz kill? Does it enhance the work experience or drown it out? You’ll have to listen to see what Chris has to say about this.
In our grooving session, we focused on the dynamics of why we connect so easily with some people and others, not so much. And we also covered some of the challenges of a digital, high-social-media age where the lines of work and life might be more like how our ancient ancestors live: it’s just life. Or is it?
We hope you enjoy our conversation with Chris. And please share your thoughts with us and stay in touch.
Links
Chris Matyszczyk:https://www.zdnet.com/blog/technically-incorrect/ and https://www.inc.com/author/chris-matyszczyk and https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-matyszczyk-935b604/
Brexit: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/brexit.asp
John Cleese: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Cleese
Fawlty Towers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcEws7il4EY
On Privacy: “Privacy and human behavior in the age of information,“ by Alessandro Acquisti, Laura Brandimarte, and George Loewenstein https://www.cmu.edu/dietrich/sds/docs/loewenstein/PrivacyHumanBeh.pdf
Marvel comics: https://www.marvel.com/
Work-Life Balance was Episode 59 with Jeanie Whinghter and Afra Ahmad: https://behavioralgrooves.com/episode/jeanie-whinghter-and-afra-ahmad-balance-vs-harmony/
Charlotte Blank: https://www.linkedin.com/in/charlotte-blank-52554a2/
Roger Dooley: https://www.rogerdooley.com/
Kurt Nelson: @motivationguru and https://www.linkedin.com/in/kurtwnelson/
Tim Houlihan: @THoulihan and https://www.linkedin.com/in/tim-houlihan-b-e/
Check out the Behavioral Grooves website: https://behavioralgrooves.com/
Cold Play: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coldplay
Pink Floyd: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_Floyd
Ludwig Van Beethoven: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_van_Beethoven
Beethoven’s Violin Concerto: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Cg_0jepxow
Monday Aug 05, 2019
Scott Jeffrey: On Justifiability
Monday Aug 05, 2019
Monday Aug 05, 2019
Because we're taking a little break, we are republishing one of our favorite episodes: a conversation with Scott Jeffrey, PhD from Monmouth University in New Jersey, recorded in December 2017. Our conversation was so engaging that we wanted to make sure no one misses out on it. The original audio from this was only our third podcast we’d ever recorded, and it was a recorded with the simplest tools available. That said, we hope you enjoy the content.
In this episode, we discuss the concept of justifiability with one of its earliest researchers, Scott Jeffrey, PhD. Scott was early among researchers, including Itamar Simonson at Stanford, to note that part of what makes a thing a 'reward' is its difficulty to be justifiable. In other words, the best reward is something that we would NOT justify spending our own money on.
Scott took an interesting turn with his theme song and we had also talked about how employee engagement platforms are 'dollarizing' the relationship between the employer and the employee. Scott also brought up Max Bazerman's "Arguing with Yourself and Losing" model which coaxed a spirited discussion among us.
We groove on holiday eats, since we originally recorded this in December and lots of geeky stuff in this episode. We hope you enjoy.
Links
Scott Jeffrey, PhD: https://www.monmouth.edu/directory/profiles/scott-a-jeffrey/
Justifiability: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/8da9/c17cecfba7806e00a966009c67e11f14e13f.pdf
A Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith: https://www.ibiblio.org/ml/libri/s/SmithA_MoralSentiments_p.pdf
Cognitive Misers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_miser
Dragon’s Den: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragons%27_Den
Max Bazerman, PhD: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/profile.aspx?facId=6420
Dan Ariely, PhD: http://danariely.com/
Source Attribution: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attribution_(psychology)
Behavioral Grooves: https://behavioralgrooves.com/
Kurt Nelson: @motivationguru and https://www.linkedin.com/in/kurtwnelson/
Tim Houlihan: @THoulihan and https://www.linkedin.com/in/tim-houlihan-b-e/