We are excited to share our bi-annual report, which highlights our latest efforts to advance the science of behavior change for good at scale. We are deeply grateful to our BCFG Team Scientists, staff, funders, and partners for making our work possible!

Click here to read the full report

Spring Keynote Events in CHIBE Research Seminar Series

BCFG is co-hosting two keynote events as part of the Center for Health Incentives & Behavioral Economics (CHIBE) Spring Research Seminar Series on behavioral science and health. BCFG Co-Director Katy Milkman will co-host these two events. The first event will take place from 12-1 pm ET on Zoom on 3/26 featuring Yale Sociology Professor Nicholas Christakis, and the second event will take place from 12-1 pm ET on Zoom on 4/30 featuring Harvard Economics Professor Raj Chetty. Please mark your calendar!

Register here

To register for other talks in this fantastic series featuring BCFG Team Scientists Rachel Gershon (UC Berkeley), Justin Sydnor (Wisconsin-Madison), and Hengchen Dai (UCLA), visit the CHIBE website. To watch a recording of the Fall keynote we co-hosted featuring Supreet Kaur (UC Berkeley), visit our YouTube channel.

Selected New Journal Articles from BCFG Team Scientists

1. Does Counting Change What Counts? Quantification Fixation Biases Decision-Making, co-authored by Linda Chang, Erika Kirgios, Sendhil Mullainathan & Katherine Milkman, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

2. Megastudy Testing 25 Treatments to Reduce Antidemocratic Attitudes and Partisan Animosity, co-authored by BCFG Postdoctoral Scholar Jan Voelkel, Jay Van Bavel, Christopher Bryan, David Yeager, David Rand, Robb Willer and ~75 Others, Science

3. People Judge Others More Harshly After Talking to Bots, co-authored by Kian Siong Tey, Asaf Mazar, Angela Duckworth and Lyle Ungar, PNAS Nexus

4. Detecting Drivers of Behavior at an Early Age: Evidence from a Longitudinal Field Experiment, co-authored by Marco Castillo, John List, Ragan Petrie and Anya Samek, Journal of Political Economy

Spotlighted Podcasts

1. When Harry Met Sally, hosted by Eli Finkel and Paul Eastwick, The Love Factually Podcast

2. You Share Your Gut Microbiome with Your Friends, featuring Nicholas Christakis, Science Friday

3. What Makes an Idea Interesting, hosted by Angela Duckworth and Mike Maughan, No Stupid Questions

Donate here

Visit: www.didmyfriendsvote.org and Nudge Your Friends!

Donate here

Watch here!

Visit: www.didmyfriendsvote.org and Nudge Your Friends!

Donate here

BCFG is co-hosting the kickoff keynote of a new Zoom-based Center for Health Incentives & Behavioral Economics (CHIBE) Research Seminar Series on behavioral science and health. Our Co-Director Katy Milkman will host the event where Team Scientist Supreet Kaur will present her research on Thursday, 9/19 at 12pm ET.  We hope you’ll register to join (see below for more details).  

The abstract for Supeet Kaur’s talk:

Low income individuals often experience recurrent, predictable consumption cycles: spending increases after income arrives, followed by declines in spending and calorie intake in the days leading up to the next paycheck or income receipt. We empirically investigate the role of the “planning fallacy” in such cycles among Zambian farmers, who derive their income from one annual harvest and then spend it down over the course of the year. We document that individuals underestimate upcoming spending by 50%, creating scope for under-saving. To debias beliefs, we randomize an intervention that prompts individuals to think through their future expenses associatively in categories---without providing any external information or guidance. Treated individuals increase “remembered'” expenses by 42%; as predicted by the memory literature, effects are concentrated among small, irregular, and stochastic items. Immediate spending drops and, two months after the intervention, treated households hold 15% higher savings. They subsequently enter the “hungry season”---the final months of the year when consumption typically declines sharply---with one additional month of savings, leading to a flatter spending profile over the year. Households use the increased savings to self-finance additional farm investment, resulting in a 9% increase in the next year's crop revenue. We replicate the intervention's impact on beliefs among low-income Americans, suggesting the applicability of the planning fallacy to savings behavior across settings and populations.

Register here

To learn more about this fantastic new online seminar series featuring not only Supreet Kaur (UC Berkeley), but also Gautam Rao (UC Berkeley), Devin Pope (U Chicago) and Manasvini Singh (Carnegie Mellon), visit the CHIBE Research Seminar Series website.

Selected New Journal Articles from BCFG Team Scientists

1. Social Inferences from Choice Context: Dominated Options Can Engender Distrust, co-authored by Jonathan Bogard, Joseph Reiff, & Hal Hershfield, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes

2. Bottlenecks for Evidence Adoption, co-authored by Stefano DellaVigna & Elizabeth Linos, Journal of Political Economy

3. Group Size and Its Impact on Diversity-Related Perceptions and Hiring Decisions in Homogenous Groups, co-authored by Aneesh Rai, Edward Chang, Erika Kirgios and Katherine Milkman, Organization Science

4. Friends with Health Benefits: A Field Experiment, co-authored by Rachel Gershon, Cynthia Cryder and Katherine Milkman, Management Science

Spotlighted Podcasts

1. The Science of Inspiring Young Minds, featuring David Yeager, Passion Struck

2. Choiceology’s Guide to Better Decisions, by Katy Milkman featuring Carey Morewedge, Choiceology

3. A Matter of Life and Death, by Laurie Santos, The Happiness Lab 

4. The Psychology of Identity and Fostering Social Harmony, featuring Jay Van Bavel, The Psychology Podcast

Team Scientist Eric Johnson Wins APS James McKeen Cattell Award

Congratulations to Eric Johnson on winning the 2025 APS James McKeen Cattell Award for lifetime contributions to the area of applied psychology research and addressing critical problems in society! Johnson is the Norman Eig Professor of Business and Director of the Center for Decision Sciences at Columbia University. He “has been a leader in bringing behavioral science into public policy” through his work on choice architecture.

Thank You to Our Summer ‘24 Research Assistants!

This summer, we welcomed 14 Research Assistants who got hands-on experience implementing large-scale behavioral science interventions. We’re grateful for their contributions to BCFG and their dedication to driving positive behavior change!

Donate here

A new BCFG megastudy published in Nature evaluated eight different behaviorally-informed text message reminders to boost vaccination rates among over 3.6 million CVS Pharmacy patients. Here’s what we learned:

• Experts and non-experts predicted that offering free round-trip rides to pharmacies for vaccines would more than double COVID booster rates in fall ‘22.

• But providing free Lyft rides to and from pharmacies in text reminders about boosters did no more for vaccination rates than sending vaccine reminders alone. 

• What did encourage vaccination? Overall, COVID vaccination reminders led to a  21% (1.05 percentage point) increase in COVID boosters and also “spilled over” to produce an 8% increase in flu shots. And we identified ways to improve the wording of standard reminders to make them a bit more effective.

• Here’s a visual of the message that yielded the largest estimated boost in COVID vaccinations (though notably, two other messages were statistically tied for “first place”):

Where can you learn more about our findings?

Read our original research in Nature or check out this article in Penn Today or this piece by Cornell News summarizing our key takeaways.

Thank you to our funders

This research was generously supported by Flu Lab, the Social Science Research Council’s Mercury Project (with funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Craig Newmark Philanthropies and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation), and the Wharton Behavioral Laboratory. We are also grateful for the broad funding support provided to BCFG by the AKO Foundation, John Alexander, Marc Leder, Warren Lichtenstein and Abby Schiffman and Jeremy Schiffman.

Q&A with Team Scientist Heather Royer

Heather Royer is a Professor of Economics at the University of California at Santa Barbara. She is also a Co-Editor of the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a Research Fellow at the IZA Institute for Labor Economics, and has a passion for endurance sports. 

BCFG: You’ve conducted a number of exciting experiments on incentivizing people to engage in healthy behaviors. Based on that research, what would you encourage organizations to do to encourage healthier behaviors among their employees?

Heather: Not surprisingly, money works well in incentivizing people to promote healthy behaviors like exercise. However, pitching the same program over and over (e.g., $5/visit to go to the gym) can dull participants’ interest. Instead of offering the same monetary incentive repeatedly, I would encourage companies to add novelty to their program to keep the program exciting and fresh.

BCFG: Could you describe your favorite research finding that pertains to health behavior change from the last several years and why you think it’s important?

Heather: Engaging people across all levels of interest poses a challenge for wellness incentives. An incentive that works well for “gym rats” may flounder for someone who has never been to the gym. If incentives can be personalized, then incentives may encourage all. Some recent work provides encouraging results on personalization. 

Rebecca Dizon Ross and Ariel Zucker in an interesting and exciting working paper entitled “Mechanism Design for Personalized Policy: A Field Experiment Incentivizing Exercise” run a randomized-controlled trial in India studying the personalization of incentives. They randomize participants into treatments with different walking goals (e.g., 10,000 steps, 12,000 steps, or 14,000 steps) versus a treatment where individuals can choose their step goal. Step counts are highest under the choice treatment and the cost per participant is comparable to that of the fixed step target treatments. This study demonstrates the potential promise of personalization of incentive schemes.

BCFG: We’re inspired by your personal passion for participating in endurance sports. Do you use any tips and tricks from your own research—or behavioral science more generally—to help improve your training?

Heather: Working on the behavioral side of financial wellness incentives has made me more aware of my tendency to procrastinate regarding exercise. I will start the day with the intention of exercising (I’m not a morning person!). Then I reach the end of the day and I decide that today is not the day. Knowing this, I often commit myself to attending an exercise class or swimming practice at a particular time. 

Many thanks to Heather Royer for sharing her expertise with BCFG!

Team Scientist Nicholas Christakis Elected to the National Academy of Sciences

Congratulations to Nicholas Christakis for being recognized by the National Academy of Sciences for his “distinguished and continued achievements in original research.” He is the Sterling Professor of Social and Natural Science at Yale University, where he combines his training as a social scientist and physician to study social networks, biology, and health.

BCFG Team Scientists in the News

1. Great Online Dating Profiles Emphasize Knowing The Other Person, Research Suggests, featuring Juliana Schroeder and Ayelet Fishbach, Forbes

2. The Secret to a Sustainable Workout Habit, featuring Kevin Volpp, The New York Times

3. When Patients Do Their Own Research, featuring Emily Oster, The Atlantic

4. The Research-Backed Benefits of Daily Rituals, by Michael Norton, Harvard Business Review

Spotlighted Podcasts

1. Innovation 2.0: Multiplying the Growth Mindset, featuring Mary Murphy, Hidden Brain

2. Recipe for Success, by Katy Milkman featuring Michele Gelfand, Choiceology

3. Skills Development, featuring Jim Heckman, The Economics of Flourishing

4. The Social Etiquette of Lending Money, featuring Wendy De La Rosa, Life Kit

In Memoriam: Daniel Kahneman

Nobel Laureate and beloved behavioral scientist Daniel Kahneman passed away on March 27, 2024 at 90 years of age. 

BCFG’s Co-Directors Angela Duckworth and Katy Milkman shared their reflections on the incredible impact of Danny’s work and its foundational importance to the field of behavioral science on Studio 2 from PBS and in Behavioral Scientist’s Mosaic of Memories and Lessons. Below are two of their reflections:

“One evening, more than twenty years ago [after helping Dr. Kahneman find his suitcase]… I thought to myself, Oh, it’s possible to be a world-famous genius—the most recently anointed Nobel laureate in economics, among other honors—and interact with anybody and everybody with utmost respect and dignity, no matter who they are. In the years that followed, I got to know Danny Kahneman much better, and when I did, that view was only confirmed. Confirmation bias? Halo effect? No and no. What then? Character. The world is mourning the loss of Danny Kahneman the genius, as we should, but I am missing Danny Kahneman the person.” - Angela Duckworth

“I also vividly recall talking with Danny about his experience winning the Nobel Prize. He explained to me that the best thing about winning it, by far, was how happy it made all the people around him—even his casual acquaintances. He said their joy was by far his greatest source of delight; it caught him by surprise but was truly wonderful.” - Katy Milkman

BCFG is grateful that Danny shared some time, wisdom, and joy with us during our first conference. Along with the entire field of behavioral science, we would not exist without Danny’s incredible contributions.

BCFG Co-Directors Angela Duckworth and Katy Milkman’s Q&A with Harvard Professor, best-selling author, and BCFG Team Scientist Cass Sunstein drew a crowd of well over 100 in late January (congratulations to those lucky attendees who won a signed copy of Nudge: The Final Chapter). You can now watch the event on our YouTube channel.

Struggling to achieve an ambitious goal? Try breaking it down into smaller pieces!

A new op-ed in Scientific American from BCFG Team Scientists Aneesh Rai, Marissa Sharif, Edward Chang, Katy Milkman, and Angela Duckworth shares their research demonstrating just how much breaking down ambitious goals into smaller pieces can matter for motivating productivity.

New Book Out This Week from BCFG Team Scientist Mary Murphy

Congratulations to Team Scientist Mary Murphy on the publication of her fabulous new book Cultures of Growth: How the New Science of Mindset Can Transform Individuals, Teams, and Organizations.

And Be Sure to Check Out Four More Terrific Fresh and Forthcoming Titles from BCFG Team Scientists

1. Look Again: The Power of Noticing What Was Always There by Tali Sharot and Cass Sunstein, published February 27th

2. The Ritual Effect: From Habit to Ritual, Harness the Surprising Power of Everyday Actions by Michael Norton, coming April 9th

3. The Unexpected: Navigating Pregnancy During and After Complications by Emily Oster and Nathan Fox, coming April 30th

4. 10 to 25: The Science of Motivating Young People: A Groundbreaking Approach to Leading the Next Generation for Managers, Parents, and Educators by David Yeager, coming August 6th

Spotlighted Podcasts

1. US 2.0: Win Hearts, Then Minds, featuring Robb Willer, Hidden Brain

2. Angela Duckworth Returns, featuring Angela Duckworth, Armchair Expert

3. The Key to Boosting Retirement Savings, featuring John Beshears, Behavioral Grooves

In a new article published in Nature, Kai Ruggeri and collaborators (including eight BCFG Team Scientists) found support for 89% of behavioral science recommendations based on evidence from 747 empirical papers. One surprising disappointment: the review found no support for the recommendation that policymakers should appeal to people’s desire to protect others when encouraging behavior change.

New BCFG Op-Ed: How Long Does it Take to Form a Habit?

And what does it take to turn New Year’s resolutions into lasting habits? BCFG Co-Directors Angela Duckworth and Katy Milkman—along with Kasandra Brabaw and Anastasia Buyalskya—share three science-backed strategies and a summary of their recent research with BCFG Team scientist Colin Camerer in this new CNN op-ed. 

BCFG Presents: A Conversation about the Past, Present and Future of Behavioral Science and Public Policy

Harvard Professor, best-selling author, and BCFG Team Scientist Cass Sunstein will join Katy Milkman and Angela Duckworth in Philadelphia on Wednesday, January 31st for a conversation about the influence of behavioral science on public policy past, present, and future.

We hope you can join us if you’re in town, but if not, a recording of the event will be made available after the fact on our YouTube channel, so stay tuned.

In Case You Missed It: Learn How Megastudies Can Help Shape Public Policy

BCFG Co-Director Katy Milkman recently shared insights on how behavioral science, and megastudies in particular, can help shape policy in a number of public forums. Recordings from Katy’s conversations and presentations to The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, the Social Science Research Council’s Centennial Lecture Series and the National Academy of Sciences can be found below.

1. President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, Executive Office of the President of the United States

2. What Have Megastudies Taught Us about Successfully Encouraging Increased Vaccination?, Social Science Research Council Centennial Lecture Series

3. What is the Future of Behavioral Economics and Public Policy?, National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

Olivia S. Mitchell Named American Economic Association Distinguished Fellow

Congratulations to BCFG Team Scientist Olivia Mitchell for this impressive recognition of her many important contributions to the field of economics. The full announcement is available on the AEA website.

Thinkers50 Awards

Congratulations to Katy Milkman and Adam Grant for being named to the 2023 Thinkers50 list!

Selected Popular Press Coverage of BCFG Team Scientists

1. Making a Resolution? Read These Tips for Success, featuring Jay Van Bavel, Vogue

2. We Need to Focus More on the Social Effects of AI, by Nicholas Christakis, The Economist

3. Trick Your Brain Into Being Better With Money, featuring Wendy De La Rosa, The Wall Street Journal

Spotlighted Podcasts

1. The Science of Making — and Keeping — New Year’s Resolutions, featuring Hal Hersfield, Ten Percent Happier

2. Unlocking Hidden Potential with Malcolm Gladwell, by Adam Grant, ReThinking

3. Can You Really “Manifest” Success Through Positive Visualization?, by Angela Duckworth, No Stupid Questions

Please join us online on Friday, September 29th from 12:00–12:45 PM ET for this exciting discussion.

BCFG Team Scientist Stefano DellaVigna will share key takeaways from a new NAS report he co-authored on the future of behavioral economics and policy (shout out to BCFG Team Scientists Allison Buttenheim and Kevin Volpp who also co-authored the report). BCFG Co-Director Katy Milkman will moderate a discussion of the future of behavioral economics after Stefano presents.

We’re thrilled to co-host this webinar with the National Academy of Sciences and other leading behavioral science organizations.

Register

President Biden Announces the Appointment of BCFG Team Scientist C. Kirabo Jackson to the Council of Economic Advisers

C. Kirabo Jackson is the Abraham Harris Professor of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University. Congratulations to Kirabo!

New Books from BCFG Team Scientists

Decisions about Decisions
Cass Sunstein explores how we think about making decisions.
Order here: bit.ly/43CjxKx

Nobody’s Fool
Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris discuss the science behind deception for both deceivers and the deceived.
Order here: bit.ly/44J7ywg

Writing for Busy Readers
Todd Rogers and Jessica Lasky-Fink share evidence-based strategies for more efficient and effective communication.
Order here: writingforbusyreaders.com

Hidden Potential
Adam Grant illustrates how people can grow their own potential. 
Preorder here: adamgrant.net/book/hidden-potential

Spotlighted Podcasts

Choiceology
An Accidental Experiment
Katy Milkman launches Season 12 of her Choiceology podcast by discussing how real-life mishaps can translate into very informative experiments with BCFG Team Scientist Steven Levitt.

Passion Struck
Cracking the Code
Todd Rogers shares tips and tricks for effective communication from his new book, Writing for Busy Readers.

Human Centered from Stanford University
Deploying Behavioral Science on the Front Lines of Social Protest
BCFG Team Scientist Robb Willer applies insights from his research to social protest strategies in Israel.

In Memoriam: BCFG Team Scientist Howard Kunreuther

Howard was a beloved member of the BCFG Scientific Team and a giant in the field of behavioral economics. He passed away peacefully on August 1st after a long battle with cancer. He was 84 years old.

Howard is best known as a pioneering scholar investigating how people think about risk with a focus on natural and man-made disasters. He questioned why people buy too little insurance when they live on flood plains, and why they buy too much insurance when they worry about earthquakes. He wrote numerous highly influential articles, books, and book chapters with titles such as “Learning from Catastrophes” and “The Ostrich Paradox;” and he was a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science as well as a Distinguished Fellow of the Society for Risk Analysis. In 2015, he received the 2015 Shin Research Excellence Award from the Geneva Association. Howard also served on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Stories of Howard’s professional and personal impact can be found in the Wharton Newsroom and the Center for Health Incentives & Behavioral Economics Blog.

About BCFG

The Behavior Change for Good Initiative at the University of Pennsylvania is co-led by Psychology and Wharton Professor Angela Duckworth and Wharton Professor Katy Milkman. BCFG unites a world-class, interdisciplinary team of academic experts with leading organizational partners to advance the science and practice of behavior change.

We’re always interested in hearing about new areas to explore and potential collaborations. Contact us anytime.

Take a Look

ICYMI: Recordings from Behavioral Science Authors Series Guests Adam Alter and Hal Hershfield

Our last two Spring 2023 events featured NYU Professor Adam Alter (author of Anatomy of a Breakthrough) providing tips for getting “unstuck,” and UCLA Professor Hal Hershfield (author of Your Future Self) discussing how to improve your decision-making by bridging the gap between your past, current, and future selves.

Two BCFG Team Scientists Honored

Duncan Watts Was Elected to the National Academy of Sciences

This honor is bestowed upon scientists for their “distinguished and continued achievements in original research.” Congratulations, Duncan!

Ezekiel Emanuel Was Awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship

This annually awarded grant is reserved for “those who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts.” Congratulations, Zeke!

Featured Journal Articles from BCFG Team Scientists

Science
Where and With Whom Does a Brief Social-Belonging Intervention Promote Progress in College?
BCFG Team Scientists Gregory Walton, Mary Murphy, David Yeager, and their collaborators found that a 10–30 minute social-belonging reading-and-writing activity reduced the rate at which first-year college students dropped out of school.

Nature Human Behavior
Negativity Drives Online News Consumption
BCFG Team Scientist Jay Van Bavel found that click-throughs increase by 2.3% for each additional negative word in the title of an online news article.

The Journal of Consumer Research
Common Cents: Bank Account Structure and Couples’ Relationship Dynamics
BCFG Team Scientists Eli Finkel and Deborah Small found that couples who have joint bank accounts felt more aligned on their financial goals and more positively about their relationships than couples who had separate accounts.

Spotlighted Podcasts

Choiceology
The Superforecasters
BCFG Team Scientist Barbara Mellers shares her research on "superforecasting" and how to improve the accuracy of predictions.

TED Radio Hour
Future You
BCFG Team Scientist Hal Hershfield discusses how better imagining our future can improve the decisions we make today.

Hidden Brain
Your Questions Answered: Bob Cialdini on Persuasion
BCFG Team Scientist Bob Cialdini makes a guest appearance on Hidden Brain to answer listener questions about the science of persuasion.

About BCFG

The Behavior Change for Good Initiative at the University of Pennsylvania is co-led by Psychology and Wharton Professor Angela Duckworth and Wharton Professor Katy Milkman. BCFG unites a world-class, interdisciplinary team of academic experts with leading organizational partners to advance the science and practice of behavior change.

We’re always interested in hearing about new areas to explore and potential collaborations. Contact us anytime.

Is There a “Magic Number” of Days It Takes to Form a Habit?

Led by Anastasia Buyalskaya, Hung Ho, and BCFG Team Scientist Colin Camerer, our latest paper tackles this question by applying machine learning to 52 million observations of people’s gym attendance and hand-sanitizing decisions. Contrary to popular belief, we find that there is no magic number of days it takes to form a habit. Instead, it depends heavily on the person and the situation. It takes months, on average, to form a gym-going habit but only weeks, on average, to habituate to hand sanitizing in hospital settings. However, these averages mask enormous differences between people. You can read more about these findings in our just-released paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Register for Our Next Behavioral Science Authors Event Featuring Adam Alter

New York University Professor Adam Alter will discuss his new book Anatomy of a Breakthrough with Dave Nussbaum of Psychgeist Media on Friday, April 28th at 12 PM ET. Anatomy of a Breakthrough unpacks why people become stuck and the “unstickers” they can leverage to continue making progress toward their goals.

Register Here

Recordings from our previous Spring 2023 events, including the most recent discussion with Professor Uri Gneezy (author of Mixed Signals) and Professor Silvia Saccardo, can be viewed anytime on the BCFG YouTube Channel.

Selected Recent Popular Press Coverage of Work by BCFG Team Scientists

The Wall Street Journal
Why It’s Now Easier to Underestimate Your Expenses and Overspend
featuring Abigail Sussman

Small Steps That Can Boost Your Retirement Savings
by Shlomo Benartzi, featuring Richard Thaler and John Beshears

The Washington Post
Deepy, Truly, Very Sorry: How Tech CEOs Talk When They Lay Off Workers
featuring Ayelet Fishbach

Harvard Business Revie
What HBO’s “Succession” Can Teach Us About Negotiating
by Francesca Gino

Hear From BCFG Team Scientists on These Podcasts

Choiceology
The Power of Do-Overs
Choiceology with Katy Milkman returns for its 11th season! In the first episode, BCFG Team Scientist Marissa Sharif shares why building emergency reserves helps people stick with their goals.

TED Business
We Need Leaders Who Boldly Champion Inclusion
BCFG Team Scientist Modupe Akinola chats with TV broadcaster and DEI leader June Sarpong about the bold changes needed to achieve a better, more inclusive workplace.

ReThinking
The Science of Performing Under Pressure
BCFG Team Scientist Adam Grant is joined by cognitive scientist and Dartmouth President-elect Sian Beilock to discuss strategies for improving performance under pressure.

About BCFG

The Behavior Change for Good Initiative at the University of Pennsylvania is co-led by Psychology and Wharton Professor Angela Duckworth and Wharton Professor Katy Milkman. BCFG unites a world-class, interdisciplinary team of academic experts with leading organizational partners to advance the science and practice of behavior change.

We’re always interested in hearing about new areas to explore and potential collaborations. Contact us anytime.

Our new paper in PNAS Nexus provides a how-to guide for conducting “megastudies,” which are BCFG’s signature research method. Megastudies allow us to do massive, team social science research projects with immediate policy relevance. We hope our guide will help others use megastudies to rapidly generate new policy-relevant behavioral insights.

What is a megastudy?

A megastudy is a “massive field experiment in which many different interventions are tested synchronously in one large sample using a common, objectively measured outcome.”

What are the benefits of a megastudy? 

Megastudies:

1. Allow for apples-to-apples comparisons across many interventions by testing them at the same time in the same population. 

2. Accelerate the pace of scientific discovery by simultaneously launching numerous tightly-controlled experiments.

3. Determine which interventions work best for whom, not just what works best on average.

4. Build bridges across diverse disciplines by pooling interventions developed by scientists from different fields.

5. Facilitate the publication of null results to share what doesn’t work, not just what does.

What are their limits?

Megastudies have limits too, including the need for massive scale and the winner’s curse. Read more here.

Register for Our Next Behavioral Science Authors Event Featuring Uri Gneezy

University of California, San Diego Professor Uri Gneezy will discuss his new book Mixed Signals with Dave Nussbaum of Psychgeist Media on Friday, March 10th at 12 PM ET. Mixed Signals exposes how incentives often create confusing signals and explains how to design incentives to achieve the best outcomes. Register below!

Register Here

Check Out Our Award-Winning YouTube Channel

Recordings from our first two Spring authors series events with Annie Duke (author of Quit) and Geoff Cohen (author of Belonging) can be viewed anytime on the BCFG YouTube Channel, which was named the 2022 YouTube Channel of the Year by Habit Weekly!

Subscribe Here

The Behavior Change for Good Initiative Is Hiring

BCFG Co-Director Katy Milkman Named One of Fortune’s 10 Innovators Shaping the Future of Health

Katy Milkman was spotlighted in Fortune’s 10 Innovators Shaping the Future of Health for co-founding BCFG, developing the megastudy approach to research, and conducting innovative experiments designed to increase exercise and vaccination.

Three BCFG Team Scientists Named to Thinkers50 Radar Class of 2023

Neil Lewis, Jr.: Neil is a behavioral scientist who studies the impact of social interventions and policies.
Nina Mazar: Nina is a behavioral scientist who focuses on topics ranging from consumer behavior to ethics to social and environmental impact.
David Rand: David is a cognitive and behavioral science expert who focuses on fake news.

Selected Recent Popular Press Coverage of Work by BCFG Team Scientists

Op-Ed: Don’t Ban Chatbots in Classrooms—Use Them to Change How We Teach
by Angela Duckworth and Lyle Ungar
Los Angeles Times
Image credit: Jim Cooke

Your Primitive Brain Doesn’t Want You to Break Bad Habits. Science Can Help
featuring Wendy Wood and Katy Milkman
Newsweek
Image credit: Malte Mueller/Getty

Don’t Just Spend Your Time—Invest It
featuring Hal Hershfield and Cassie Holmes
The Wall Street Journal
Image credit: Fran Caballero

Hear From BCFG Team Scientists on These Podcasts

How to Be a Better Human
How to Take Charge of Your Money
Wendy De La Rosa explains why talking freely about money may help us save more for our future.

People I (Mostly) Admire
The Price of Doing Business with John List 
John List shares his journey from running experiments at baseball card conventions to his new role as the Chief Economist at Walmart.

A Slight Change of Plans
The Upside of Stress
Modupe Akinola joins Maya Shankar to discuss mindsets and strategies for harnessing the beneficial powers of stress.

About BCFG

The Behavior Change for Good Initiative at the University of Pennsylvania is co-led by Psychology and Wharton Professor Angela Duckworth and Wharton Professor Katy Milkman. BCFG unites a world-class, interdisciplinary team of academic experts with leading organizational partners to advance the science and practice of behavior change.

We’re always interested in hearing about new areas to explore and potential collaborations. Contact us anytime.

Register Here

We’re thrilled to announce the Spring 2023 Behavioral Science Authors series!

This season, we look forward to hosting five amazing behavioral scientists who have written new popular press books. Dave Nussbaum, founder of Psychgeist Media, will interview each author in this series with time for questions from the audience. These events will take place roughly once a month. We hope you’ll join us for these exciting conversations!

If you’d like to attend, click the "Register Here" button to register for the Spring series. You'll receive a Zoom link for each event. If you know anyone who might also be interested, we encourage you to forward this announcement. Please also help us spread the word by posting about our events on social media. 

Our first event will feature Annie Duke, who will discuss her book, Quit, on Wednesday, January 25th from 12 - 12:45 pm ET (note, this is the only Wednesday event in the series).

Register Here

Thank you for your interest in Behavior Change for Good,

Katy Milkman and Angela Duckworth
Co-Directors, The Behavior Change for Good Initiative
The University of Pennsylvania

Do Geo-Targeted Vaccine Lotteries Increase COVID-19 Vaccination?

Our new paper in Nature Human Behavior features an analysis of the results of the Philly Vax Sweepstakes, a science-based lottery to encourage COVID-19 vaccination that we designed and executed last summer in partnership with CHIBE, the City of Philadelphia, and the Black Doctors COVID-19 Consortium. 

What was the Philly Vax Sweepstakes and why did we design it?

The Philly Vax Sweepstakes was a “regret lottery,” meaning that Philadelphians drawn randomly as winners could only accept their check if they had previously received a vaccine. (Imagine the regret people felt when they couldn’t accept a prize!)

The lottery was designed to test the effects of geographically-targeting certain zip codes with high odds of a win (though we were also curious about the overall impact of the lottery on Philadelphia compared to surrounding counties). We conducted three drawings, in which we randomly selected one zip code from the Philadelphia zip codes with the lowest per capita vaccination rates to receive half of the lottery prizes available. This increased residents of the selected zip code’s chances of winning the Sweepstakes by 50-100x compared to other residents. 

Did geo-targeting certain zip codes with higher odds of a lottery win work?

No. We found that massively increasing certain residents’ chances of winning up to $50,000 for being vaccinated did not have any estimated benefit, and we can confidently rule out that it produced even one extra vaccination per $4,690 spent. Sometimes we learn a lot from null results, and this is one such case. 

What about the overall regret lottery in the city of Philadelphia? Did it add value?

Maybe. The jury is still out on whether regret-style vaccine lotteries can be an effective tool. Results from our attempt to assess the overall impact of our lottery on Philadelphians were inconclusive. Our best estimate is that the lottery generated about 4,000 extra vaccinations in Philadelphia per week during its six week run at an average cost of $16 in prize money per extra vaccine generated. However, Pittsburgh (which had no vaccine lottery) saw a similar bump in vaccinations during those six weeks. These findings indicate more testing would be valuable.

Where can you learn more about our findings? 

Our takeaways from this work were featured in a Science Magazine mid-October roundup of the most important research published in other journals, an op-ed in The Philadelphia Inquirer, an article in Nature Outlook, an interview on the Freakonomics, M.D. podcast, and a panel for the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

What partnerships made it possible to design and implement a city-wide vaccine lottery?

We’re grateful to the amazing team of BCFG scientists and staff who collaborated on this project (Linnea Gandhi, Sean Ellis, Heather Graci, Dena Gromet, Rayyan Mobarak, Alison Buttenheim, Devin Pope, Ala Stanford, Richard Thaler, and Kevin Volpp), our funders, and the City of Philadelphia for partnering with us on such an ambitious undertaking.

Don’t Miss the Last Fall Event from the Behavioral Science Authors Series

Harvard Professor Max Bazerman will discuss his new book, Complicit, with Dave Nussbaum of Psychgeist Media on Friday, November 11th at 12 PM ET. Complicit is a call to action that we can all help prevent wrongdoing. We hope you’ll join us for this important conversation!

Register Here

In case you missed any of our earlier fall events, the recordings from conversations with UCLA Professor Cassie Holmes (author of Happier Hour) and NYU Professor Dolly Chugh (author of A More Just Future) are now available on the BCFG YouTube Channel.

Selected Recent Popular Press Coverage of Work by BCFG Team Scientists

• Introducing the Future Perfect 50: The Scientists, Thinkers, Scholars, Writers, and Activists Building a More Perfect Future, featuring Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak, Vox

• How to Spend Time on What You Value, featuring Ashley Whillans, The Atlantic

• Ensuring Your Products Aren’t Used for Discrimination, by Michael Luca et al., Harvard Business Review

• Understanding and Overcoming Belonging Uncertainty, featuring Greg Walton, Behavioral Scientist

Hear From BCFG Team Scientists on These Podcast

Passion Struck: Max Bazerman and Don Moore on How to Empower Others to Make Better Choices
Max Bazerman and Don Moore discuss findings and case studies from their book Decision Leadership. 

Choiceology: So Much in Common: With Guests Samantha Futerman, Anaïs Bordier & Kareem Haggag
Kareem Haggag talks with Katy Milkman about how susceptible we are to changing our preferences. 

Dare to Lead with Brené Brown: Brené with Adam Grant and Simon Sinek on What’s Happening at Work
Adam Grant joins Brené Brown and Simon Sinek to discuss the current state of the workplace, including some disconnects between scientific-backed suggestions and managerial practice.

Follow @BehaviorChange to stay up to date on the latest from BCFG.

About BCFG

The Behavior Change for Good Initiative at the University of Pennsylvania is co-led by Psychology and Wharton Professor Angela Duckworth and Wharton Professor Katy Milkman. BCFG unites a world-class, interdisciplinary team of academic experts with leading organizational partners to advance the science and practice of behavior change.

We’re always interested in hearing about new areas to explore and potential collaborations. Contact us anytime.

Behavior Change for Good Fall Newsletter

In this newsletter, we’re featuring an exciting just-published paper by our team describing a simple, free nudge that increased volunteering at a terrific non-profit. We’re also excited to announce the return of our Behavioral Science Authors virtual event series beginning 9/23.

Wishing you a wonderful fall,
Katy Milkman and Angela Duckworth
BCFG Co-Directors

A Potent Nudge to Boost Volunteering

Our new BCFG paper led by Wharton PhD student, Aneesh Rai, came out this week in the Journal of Applied Psychology. It presents the results of a massive field experiment implemented in partnership with Crisis Text Line (CTL)—a nonprofit organization that provides free crisis mental health counseling. We tested a small nudge to break down a big, 200 hour yearly volunteering goal that CTL presents to all crisis counselors.  In one experimental condition, messages went out to counselors encouraging them to volunteer 4 hours weekly to reach their 200 hour goal. In another, those messages encouraged counselors to volunteer 8 hours every two weeks to reach their yearly goal. Messages to a control group encouraged counselors to meet their 200 hour yearly goal without specifying a weekly or biweekly objective. By breaking a big goal down into smaller, bite-sized chunks (4 hours of volunteering per week or 8 hours every two weeks), our nudge produced an 8% increase in hours volunteered during our three month field experiment. Encouraging counselors to pursue a slightly more flexible volunteering goal (working 8 hours every two weeks) also produced somewhat more durable benefits.

Aneesh is on the management job market this year and we’re very proud that he started his journey at Wharton as a BCFG research assistant. Please join us in congratulating him on leading this terrific paper with BCFG team scientists Edward Chang, Marissa Sharif, and us (Angela and Katy)!

Announcing the Return of Our Popular Behavioral Science Authors Series

Our popular Behavioral Science Authors series will be back this fall thanks to a partnership with Psychgeist Media. This virtual series on occasional fall Fridays from 12 pm - 12:45 pm ET will feature interviews with an incredible line-up of BCFG Team Scientists about their new books (led by Psychgeist Media Founder Dave Nussbaum). We hope you’ll join us!

Register Here

Q&A with Cassie Mogilner Holmes, BCFG Team Scientist and Author of Happier Hour

Cassie Holmes is a Professor of Marketing and Behavioral Decision Making at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management, and author of Happier Hour: How to Beat Distraction, Expand Your Time, and Focus on What Matters Most.

1. What are the costs of being time poor and how can we become richer?

So many of us feel time poor—like we have too much to do and not enough time to do it, which leaves us less healthy, less kind, less confident, and from the stress of it, less happy.

Yet, research also shows that to get more time, the solution isn’t to do less (at least, not of the things that matter). Rather, spending time in ways that expand you can make you feel time rich. Here are three ways to combat your time poverty:

#1 - Get moving – Exercise is an effective way to increase your self-efficacy (i.e., your confidence in being able to accomplish all that you set out to do). So, by carving out the time to exercise, you’ll feel you have all the time you need to accomplish what matters.

#2 - Practice acts of kindness – We’re all prone to hurried stinginess with our time. When rushing, we don’t slow down for others. Yet, our experiments show that because helping another makes you feel surprisingly accomplished, giving time can give you time—making you feel like you have more of it.

#3 - Experience awe – Studies show that feeling a sense of awe can expand not just your perspective, but your sense of time. So, go ahead and forge a deep sense of human connection, step outside into nature, or book tickets to that upcoming show.  
By following these tips, you’ll see that in reality, for you to be happier, you have all the time you need!

2. How can we identify more worthwhile ways to spend our time?

How you choose to spend your time has a significant influence on your happiness. I suggest tracking your time for at least one week—writing down for each half-hour what you’re doing, and rating how that activity made you feel on a 10-point scale. There’s a helpful worksheet on my website and more detailed instructions in my book, Happier Hour.

Be as specific as you can. For instance, instead of “work,” I’d write, “working on book” or “faculty meeting.” Or instead of “family time,” I’d write “coffee date with Lita,” or “picking kids up from school.”

With this rich source of individualized data, you can then precisely identify not only which activities are your happiest, but their common features.

You may find (like me) that getting outside for a solo early-morning run or having a cup of coffee with one of your favorite people are your happiest moments. Or you may find (unlike me), that getting together with lots of energized people for a spin class or cocktails are what sparks energy for you. Your happiest activities are worth devoting your hours.

Congratulations to team scientist Emily Oster for being named one of the TIME 100 Most Influential People of 2022!

Selected Popular Press Coverage of Work by BCFG Team Scientists

• The 4-ingredient Recipe for Getting Things Done, by Katy Milkman with Ayelet Fishbach, CNN

• ‘We are Incapable of Learning From the Past’, with Richard Thaler, Morningstar

• 5 Ways to Deal with the Post-vacation Blues, with Laurie Santos, CNN Travel

• Why Situational Leadership is More Relevant Than Ever, by Don Moore, Entrepreneur

Hear From BCFG Team Scientists on These Podcasts

Choiceology: Fail Better
Katy Milkman talks with Lauren Eskreis-Winkler about how failure affects learning. 

EconTalk: John List on Scale, Uber, and the Voltage Effect
John List discusses why some great ideas scale and some don’t.

The Happiness Lab: “Are We Born to Work? Or Born to Live?”
Laurie Santos has a conversation with Cassie Holmes about time, purpose, and the pursuit of happiness.

We have a new Twitter handle!

Follow @BehaviorChange if you don’t already, to stay up to date on the latest from BCFG.

About BCFG

The Behavior Change for Good Initiative at the University of Pennsylvania is co-led by Psychology and Wharton Professor Angela Duckworth and Wharton Professor Katy Milkman. BCFG unites a world-class, interdisciplinary team of academic experts with leading organizational partners to advance the science and practice of behavior change.

We’re always interested in hearing about new areas to explore and potential collaborations. Contact us anytime.

Register Here

We’re delighted to announce the launch of the second year of the Behavioral Science Authors event series. This year, Behavior Change for Good will be partnering on our popular event series with Psychgeist Media, a nonprofit organization that helps behavioral scientists share their research with the public. The 2022-23 event series will be hosted by Psychgeist Media founder Dave Nussbaum.

Just like last year, this series will feature interviews with BCFG Team Scientists (and soon other authors as well) who have written new books aimed at a popular audience. These events will take place roughly once a month on Fridays from 12 pm-12:45 pm ET. We hope you’ll join us for these exciting conversations!

If you’d like to attend, click the "Register Here" button to register for the series. You'll receive a Zoom link for each event. Please feel free to forward this announcement to anyone who might be interested.

Our first event will feature UCLA’s Cassie Holmes,who will discuss her new book, Happier Hour, on Friday, September 23rd from 12:00-12:45 PM ET.

Thanks for your interest in the work we do at The Behavior Change for Good Initiative,

Katy Milkman and Angela Duckworth
Co-Directors, The Behavior Change for Good Initiative
The University of Pennsylvania

Register Here

Behavior Change for Good Spring Newsletter

Happy Spring!

In this newsletter, we’re thrilled to share the results from our biggest megastudy yet, which examined nudges to encourage vaccination among 680,000 Walmart pharmacy patients.

We also hope you’ll join us for our Spring events with BCFG Scientists about their hot-off-the-presses behavioral science books. And please check out our interview with BCFG Scientist Linda Babock about the benefits of saying “no.”

Katy Milkman and Angela Duckworth
BCFG Co-Directors

A 680,000-person Megastudy of Nudges to Encourage Vaccination in Pharmacies

A new BCFG megastudy was published in February in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. We partnered with Walmart to test 22 different types of SMS reminders aimed at boosting flu vaccination rates among 689,693 pharmacy patients. Overall, the SMS reminders increased flu vaccination by an average of 6.8%. The top-performing message stated that a vaccine was “waiting for you.” These insights can and have been used to inform flu and COVID-19 vaccination campaigns.

Regression-estimated impact of each of our megastudy’s 22 intervention conditions on flu vaccine uptake at Walmart by December 31st, 2020. Whiskers depict 95% CIs without correction for multiple comparisons.

Behavioral Science Authors Brought to You by BCFG

We hope you’ll join us for our last two Friday virtual chats with BCFG authors. Register here.

If you’d like to check out our previous 2022 events with Ayelet Fishbach (Get It Done) and John List (The Voltage Effect), you can catch them below.

Behavioral Science Authors Series: Ayelet Fishbach

Behavioral Science Authors Series: John List

Q&A with Linda Babcock, BCFG Team Scientist

Laurie Weingart, Lise Vesterlund, Linda Babcock, Brenda Peyser

1. You’ve studied gender differences in the workplace that can harm women’s career advancement. In your new book, The No Club, you focus on “unrewarded work.” Could you explain what unrewarded work is and why it’s a problem?

Unrewarded work or non-promotable tasks (NPTs) are important to the organization, but don’t advance a person’s career. They are often tasks that are less central to the organization’s mission, are done behind the scenes, and can be handled by many people. Taking notes at meetings, training new hires, planning the office party, or serving on an organization-wide committee are all NPTs. Each is important, but they won’t count in an employee’s next performance review, no matter how well they are done. I show in my new book, jointly with Brenda Peyser, Lise Vesterlund, and Laurie Weingart, that independent of occupation and rank, women spend more time doing unrewarded work than men do.  This creates a series of problems for women. Since there is only so much time in a day, women have two options to complete these NPTs—either work longer hours or do less of their promotable work. Both options are bad. Long work hours spill into personal time and lead to both physical and emotional stress, creating work/life imbalance. Less time on promotable work means fewer opportunities for a woman to demonstrate her value to the workplace. And, to compound the problem, once a woman is pigeon-holed as the go-to person for NPTs, it becomes harder to imagine her promoted to the next level.

2. Could you walk us through what a No Club is and how it can reduce unrewarded work?

Let me start at the beginning. Over 10 years ago I sent four of my friends (Brenda Peyser, MJ Tocci, Lise Vesterlund, and Laurie Weingart) an email asking if they’d like to meet up and talk about our difficulties in saying no to things we ought to. I was overloaded with things like serving on the IRB or agreeing to (yet another) search committee outside my department, when I already had a slew of other university committee assignments. My friends had the same problem and we realized we needed to support each other to get our work lives under control. We called ourselves the “I just can’t say no club” which we renamed in celebration—after learning to say no—the “No Club.”  We met monthly to try to understand why we were doing so much work outside of our core job responsibilities of research and teaching.

We learned a lot more than we expected. At first, we thought we were the problem because we couldn’t say no. So, we spent a lot of time figuring out how to say no without feeling guilty or looking like we weren’t “team players.” Our No Club was indispensable to us in navigating tricky situations and avoiding backlash. Once word got out, other clubs sprang up. Most are focused on helping members better manage their time at work. Learning when to say no and how to do it is core to what No Clubs do.

But we soon realized that while our solutions helped us, they just shifted the NPT to another woman, and that wouldn’t do. That’s when we recognized that the root of the problem was not us. Organizations have a lot of non-promotable work that needs to be done and this work is often a “public good” that suffers from free-rider problems. We, like other women, had become the go-to people expected to do this work. Rather than an individual problem or “woman” problem, it was an organizational problem about how to allocate and reward work. That led us to broaden our focus to address the root-cause of the problem and write our book, The No Club, to shed light on how organizations can change the allocation of NPTs in both small and more systemic ways.

3. Beyond a No Club, what particularly promising behavioral science insights do you think could be applied to reduce the harms of unrewarded work?

In our book we identified decision traps—dare I say, “sludge,”—that unfortunately push us to say “yes” when we are asked to do non-promotable work. Recognizing and eliminating this sludge can help us make better decisions about how to spend our time.

Some examples of sludge are:

Feeling social pressure to decide immediately. Unless the task is something that needs to be done today, your best defense is to impose a waiting period before you respond with an automatic “yes.” I use the 24-hour rule: I can say no to anything straightaway, but I have to wait at least twenty-four hours before saying yes. So instead of saying “sure,” I tell the requester “I’ll get back to you.”

Underestimating the time involved. The planning fallacy is alive and well when it comes to NPTs. Far too often, we think we can knock it out in thirty minutes, when the task is actually hours’ worth of work. If you’ve ever painted a room in your home you’ll understand the concept of miscalculating how much time a “small” task will take. I multiply my first guess by 4 to more realistically assess how long a task will take me.

Failing to consider your opportunity costs. Because opportunity costs aren’t as salient, they get underweighted in our decision making. Saying yes to an NPT means fewer hours for promotable work or less personal time. Lise’s rule is to visualize herself telling her children “Laura and Jacob, I know I’ve been working late all week, but I am going to spend this Saturday and Sunday commenting on a research paper of someone I barely know rather than going to the park with you.” Problem solved.

Ignoring the impact on your other work. A task with a short deadline will trump a task with a longer one—no matter how insignificant it is. The big tasks—strategic, important work—rarely are as time sensitive, so taking on an NPT likely means that you will put off these big initiatives. Laurie found that putting deadlines—even artificial ones—on her promotable work helped her avoid doing this.

Forgetting about the future you. Affective forecasting biases are definitely at play here. In the future, when your schedule is wide open, today’s yes doesn’t seem so bad, but later on when it is time to do the work, you will be just as busy as you are right now. Failing to consider this comes from focalism—when we think about the event, like doing an NPT, we fail to account for all the other things we will be doing. Here’s the trick we learned from Richard Thaler: Imagine the request to do something in the future is actually to do it tomorrow.  Would you be as excited to do it tomorrow as you think you will be in the future? Probably not!

Getting caught up in the diva moment. What happens when you are so flattered to be asked to do something that you are blinded to the downside? We named this the “diva moment,” since we felt like divas when someone chose us for an important (though sadly, non-promotable) task. Remember, you can still have a diva moment even if you say no—you were asked!

If you are a woman, recognize that you have internalized the expectation that you will say yes. We all expect women to take on the work that no one else wants to do. When asked to volunteer, recognize that your discomfort and reluctant willingness to once again take one for the team stems from you internalizing that expectation. Brenda replaced a far too frequent response of “Happy to” with a proposal of taking turns on the work no one wanted to do.

Selected Popular Press Coverage of Work by BCFG Team Scientists

• Managing a Polarized Workforce, Julia A. Minson and Francesca Gino, Harvard Business Review

• Yale's Happiness Professor Says Anxiety Is Destroying Her Students, Interview with Laurie Santos, The New York Times Magazine

• The Two Things to Do When the Stock Market Gets Crazy, featuring Hal Hershfield, The Wall Street Journal 

• Can’t Stick to Your New Year’s Resolutions? It’s Not Just a Willpower Issue, featuring Wendy Wood, The Washington Post 

• How Americans Can Save Money When Choosing a Health Insurance Plan, featuring Amya Samek, George Loewenstein, and Justin Sydnor, CNBC

Hear From BCFG Team Scientists on These Podcasts

Short Wave: Daily Habits During the Pandemic: What to Lose and What to Keep?
BCFG Co-Director Katy Milkman digs into habit change. 

The AI Health Podcast: The Economics of AI — Stanford's Dr. Susan Athey on How AI Shapes Markets
BCFG Team Scientist Susan Athey details how artificial intelligence (AI) is changing the economy. 

Startalk: Social Networks and Ending the Pandemic
BCFG Team Scientist Nicholas Christakis talks with Neil deGrasse Tyson about pandemics and social networks.

About BCFG

The Behavior Change for Good Initiative at the University of Pennsylvania is co-led by Psychology and Wharton Professor Angela Duckworth and Wharton Professor Katy Milkman. BCFG unites a world-class, interdisciplinary team of academic experts with leading organizational partners to advance the science and practice of behavior change.

We’re always interested in hearing about new areas to explore and potential collaborations. Contact us anytime.

Behavior Change for Good Winter Newsletter

Happy New Year!

Our big news is a paper just published in Nature introducing a new way of doing applied behavioral science research.

We're also looking forward to more events with BCFG Scientists who've penned popular press books about behavioral science in 2022! Read on for more details...

Katy Milkman and Angela Duckworth
BCFG Co-Directors

A New Method for Conducting Social Science Research at Scale: The Megastudy

A paper introducing BCFG's pioneering "megastudy" approach to applied behavioral science research was recently published in Nature.

We define a megastudy as a massive field experiment in which many interventions are evaluated simultaneously on the same objective outcome in the same population. The megastudy approach allows dozens of ideas proposed by a diverse array of scientists to be tested at once, accelerating discovery and making possible direct, "apples-to-apples" comparisons of different interventions. We partnered with 24 Hour Fitness on the 61,000-person megastudy presented in this paper, testing the efficacy of 53 different programs designed to increase gym attendance. To learn more, read the great New York Times or CNN coverage of our work.

Behavioral Science Authors, Brought to You by BCFG

Join us again in 2022 for our Friday virtual lunch chats with BCFG authors. Register here.

If you'd like to watch our fantastically popular Fall 2021 events featuring Jay Van Bavel (The Power of Us), Eric Johnson (The Elements of Choice), and a panel including Dolly Chugh (The Person You Mean to Be), Bob Cialdini (Influence, New and Expanded), and Wendy Wood (Good Habits, Bad Habits), check out the recordings on our YouTube channel here.

Selected News Coverage of Work by BCFG Team Scientists

• Why Many Americans Underestimate Who Is Most Concerned About The Environment, Neil Lewis, Jr., FiveThirtyEight

• The Psychology Behind Meeting Overload, Ashley Whillans, Dave Feldman, and Damian Wisniewski, Harvard Business Review 

• The Myth of Tribalism, Dominic Packer and Jay Van Bavel, The Atlantic

• The COVID Externalities Have Changed, Emily Oster, The Atlantic

Books by BCFG Team Scientists to Help You with Your New Year's Resolutions

Did you make a new year's resolution? If so, these books by BCFG Team Scientists could help you achieve it. Fischbach's Get It Done received a rave review in the Wall Street Journal earlier this month (penned by fellow scientist Michael Luca), Milkman's How to Change was named one of the top 8 books of 2021 for healthy living by the New York Times, and Wood's Good Habits, Bad Habits is a modern classic on forming good habits and breaking bad ones, as conveyed in this feature-length New Yorker piece.

Spotlight On Team Scientist Kevin Volpp

Last summer, BCFG Team Scientist Kevin Volpp’s heart stopped while he was eating at a restaurant, and he went without a pulse for 14 minutes. Incredibly, Kevin not only survived but came out of the hospital without brain damage or other serious health problems.

Kevin’s case was remarkable, but why? His doctors credit a combination of quality CPR, fast emergency response, and Kevin’s physical fitness. At the time, Kevin was training for an Ironman 70.3 — a race that involves swimming 1.2 miles, cycling 56 miles, and running 13.1 miles. He was in his best physical shape since his mid-20s. He also happened to be sitting next to two squash coaches who were trained in CPR.

Recently, Kevin shared his story with the American Heart Association to help expand awareness of how important CPR training can be and how critically important it is to take care of your cardiovascular health. Read his whole story here.

A BCFG Virtual Briefing on Tactics Tested for Encouraging COVID-19 Vaccination

On November 5th, BCFG and the Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics (CHIBE) hosted a 1-hour briefing on the latest behavioral science research from our centers on encouraging COVID-19 vaccination. Watch the event here.

Hear More From BCFG Team Scientists in These Podcasts

A Slight Change of Plans: The Science of Grit
BCFG Co-Director Angela Duckworth joins Team Advisor Maya Shankar to discuss how to be gritty, when to be gritty, and why it matters no matter what you're striving for.

The Indicator from Planet Money: How to Keep Your New Year's Resolutions
To celebrate the new year, BCFG Co-Director Katy Milkman shares her advice on how to hit the ground running in 2022 with a fresh start.

People I (Mostly) Admire: Why Is Richard Thaler Such a ****ing Optimist?
BCFG Team Scientists Richard Thaler and Steve Levitt discuss the past, present, and future of nudges.

Hidden Brain: Choose Carefully
BCFG Team Scientist Eric Johnson unpacks the important, and often overlooked, factors that influence our decision-making.

About BCFG

The Behavior Change for Good Initiative at the University of Pennsylvania is co-led by Psychology Professor Angela Duckworth and Wharton Professor Katy Milkman. BCFG unites a world-class, interdisciplinary team of academic experts with leading organizational partners to advance the science and practice of behavior change.

We’re always interested in hearing about new areas to explore and potential collaborations. Contact us anytime.

Register Here

Our virtual author series (previously Authors@BCFG) is back for 2022 with a fresh new name. We hope you’ll join us for this fantastic line-up of authors discussing their recent popular press books about behavioral science.

We'll be starting off the new year with Ayelet Fishbach (Professor at The University of Chicago), who will discuss her new book, Get It Done, on Friday, January 21st from 12:00-12:45 PM ET.

You can register for the series by clicking the "Register Here" button. Please forward this announcement to anyone you think would be interested in joining!

Register Here

Behavior Change for Good Fall Newsletter

Happy Fall! We’re excited to share our team’s latest work, including preliminary results from our COVID-19 vaccination sweepstakes in Philadelphia. We also hope you’ll join us for our new virtual series launching this fall: Authors@BCFG. You’ll find more details below!

Katy Milkman and Angela Duckworth
BCFG Co-Directors 

New 2021-22 Behavior Change for Good Virtual Event Series: Authors@BCFG

We’re thrilled to announce the launch of our new virtual event series: Authors@BCFG. This series will feature interviews with BCFG Team Scientists who have written new books aimed at a popular audience. We hope you’ll join us for these exciting conversations! Register at https://bit.ly/3l4SSC6.

COVID-19 Vaccination Sweepstakes: Results Released

BCFG has released the results of its evaluation of the Philly Vax Sweepstakes, a unique city sweepstakes that we designed in partnership with CHIBE. The evaluation released in August suggests that vaccine lotteries are not a particularly effective means of motivating inoculation at this stage in the pandemic. These results added critical fuel to the argument that encouraging vaccination will require more aggressive policy tools than lotteries: “An Experiment Evaluating the Impact of Large-Scale, High-Payoff Vaccine Regret Lotteries.”

Selected News Coverage of Work by BCFG Team Scientists

• The results of Philadelphia’s COVID-19 vaccine lottery? ‘Discouraging’, WHYY

• Dr. Judd Kessler Awarded the 2021 Vernon L. Smith Ascending Scholar Prize, Wharton News

• More Than Nudges Are Needed to End the Pandemic, Richard Thaler, The New York Times

• How addicted are people to social media? We found a way to measure it, Hunt Allcott, The Washington Post

• Emily Oster, the Brown economist, is launching a new data hub on schools and the pandemic, The New York Times

Spotlight On Team Scientist Olivia Mitchell

Dr. Olivia S. Mitchell is the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans Professor, as well as Professor of Insurance/Risk Management and Business Economics/Policy; Executive Director of the Pension Research Council; and Director of the Boettner Center on Pensions and Retirement Research; all at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

BCFG: Much of your research is on retirement savings. How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected people’s retirement savings decisions?

Olivia Mitchell: We explored the initial impact of the pandemic on the economic wellbeing of Americans age 45-75. To assess how this group was affected by COVID-19, we evaluated their financial fragility, by which we mean the capacity to meet an unexpected mid-size expense within a month’s time. In addition, we examined the roles played by financial literacy, income and shocks to income, and other factors related to financial fragility. In our survey, 18.9% of respondents reported themselves to be financially fragile, indicating that even with the promise of substantial stimulus payments, about one in five older respondents reported they could not handle a mid-size unexpected expense.

BCFG: Were there differences across demographic groups?

Mitchell: Interestingly, younger respondents under age 60 were more fragile than older ones, while the oldest group (age 70+) was the least financially fragile. This is likely because the oldest group depends more heavily on Social Security income and hence is less susceptible to earnings and unemployment risk. Women were 10 percentage points more likely to report themselves as fragile (25.8%) compared to men (15.6%), while African Americans were 15 percentage points and Hispanics 10 percentage points more likely to be fragile than Whites. It is also interesting to note that self-reported financial fragility was inversely related to financial literacy, suggesting that financial literacy could help people better prepare for unexpected expenses.

BCFG: You recently did another study on financial knowledge and financial well-being among American women. What did you learn?

Mitchell: We found that financial knowledge is quite low among White women, with only 21% able to answer all three very basic financial literacy questions we posed. Black and Hispanic women scored even lower, with only 9% of Black and 13% of Hispanic women deemed financially literate. These low scores were in part attributable to many “do not know” responses to the financial knowledge questions. We believe that women often lack confidence in their answers, and it could also indicate that they were aware of what they did not know. Awareness of their lack of knowledge could spur participation in financial education programs and knowledge acquisition.

On average, financial well-being (FWB) scores were quite close for Black, Hispanic, and White women yet the factors contributing to these outcomes were not the same.

BCFG: How so? What differed across these demographic groups?

Mitchell: Earning a perfect score on the financial literacy questions was strongly positively related to greater FWB for White and Hispanic women, yet for Black women it was negative. Interestingly, all three groups of women reported being offered financial education at similar rates: 24% of Whites, 28% of Blacks, and 27% of Hispanics, and conditional on having been offered it, about three-quarters of each group participated. Nevertheless, the resulting financial literacy differences indicate that this education did not improve all groups’ FWB equally.

We also learned that, for White women, unemployment was negatively associated with FWB, yet it was not significant for Black or Hispanic women.

BCFG: What do you think explains this?

Mitchell: One possible explanation is that having a job has less of a positive effect on FWB for Black and Hispanic women. That is, even when they are working, Black and Hispanic people have less access to employer-sponsored benefits including healthcare coverage and paid time off. Family structure also has different impacts on Black, Hispanic, and White women. For instance, Black and Hispanic women were more likely to have financially-dependent children, yet this did not strongly contribute to lower well-being. By contrast, though White women were less likely to have financially-dependent children, when they did, the children contributed to a larger negative impact on mothers’ FWB. This might arise because some parents will limit their own consumption to save for their children’s education, while in other cultures, parents may instead expect that children will provide for them in retirement. The negative association between financially-dependent children and FWB for White women suggests that this group is more heavily influenced by the first pathway. The lack of significant correlation between financially dependent children and financial well-being for Black and Hispanic women suggests they tend to be more influenced by the second pathway.

BCFG: What applications of your recent research are you most excited about?

Mitchell: Our results show that a “one size fits all” approach is unlikely to address financial well-being deficits across the board, in view of the very different patterns we have uncovered. Instead, targeted programs are likely to better serve people who differ in terms of financial sophistication. Specifically, financial education programs must direct more attention to the specific needs of Black and Hispanic women in terms of their financial well-being. For example, a financial education curriculum can inform participants about the costs associated with alternative financial services or credit cards, but it will succeed better if it acknowledges the particular constraints facing Black and Hispanic women, such as access to lower-cost credit. Programs could be designed with the knowledge that Black and Hispanic women may have economic needs and perspectives about personal finance that differ from those of White women.

*This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Learn more about Olivia's research here.

Books: New Releases Written by BCFG Team Scientists

We're pleased to share four new books written by Team Scientists. In The Family Firm, Emily Oster offers an economic framework for optimizing parenting decisions. Nobel prize winner Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein reboot their best-selling book, Nudge: The Final Edition. Cass Sunstein also dives into the negative effects of red tape on people's well-being and how to counteract it in Sludge. And Jay Van Bavel teams with Dominic Packer in The Power of Us, to explain how much the groups we belong to shape our identities.

Hear More From BCFG Team Scientists in These Podcasts

Freakonomics: All You Need is Nudge
Team Scientist Richard Thaler talks with Stephen Dubner about how his nudge theories have held up over time, and why Thaler believes nudges are more important to behavior change than ever.

People I (Mostly) Admire: Sendhil Mullainathan Explains How to Generate an Idea a Minute
BCFG Team Scientists Sendhil Mullainathan and Steve Levitt talk on Steve's popular podcast about why machines can't replace human intelligence and why it is important to value good ideas generated by others before developing your own.

Hidden Brain: You, But Better
BCFG Co-Director Katy Milkman talks with Shankar Vedantam about how, even though change can be hard, it is possible to teach our brains to change our behavior for good.

About BCFG

The Behavior Change for Good Initiative at the University of Pennsylvania is co-led by Psychology Professor Angela Duckworth and Wharton Professor Katy Milkman. BCFG unites a world-class, interdisciplinary team of academic experts with leading organizational partners to advance the science and practice of behavior change.

We’re always interested in hearing about new areas to explore and potential collaborations. Contact us anytime.