The Behavioural Insights Team
has now posted the videos from the plenary sessions, individual streams
and workshops from the London Behavioural Insights Conference BX2015.
So, no excuse for not catching up with all the latest material from behavioural
economics and behavioural insights as applied to behaviour change interventions
and policy. Click here.
If you don’t have time to watch all the videos, following,
as a public service (we were there, in real time), is our pick of the quotes
from the sessions which we attended.
Reasons to be humble
“When we observe behaviour that we don’t understand, it can be because
people actually know things that we don’t.”
Rachel Glennerster
“The poor are largely unseen.”
Eldar Shafir
Women Are Missing…and here’s what to do about it
“Between 100 million and 160 million girls and women are ‘missing’
because of sex-selective abortion, mistreatment and abuse.”
“Seeing is believing. If we don’t see women as CEOs or men as
kindergarten teachers, we don’t believe it’s possible.”
“When it comes to tackling gender inequality, rather than change
people’s minds, we should change the environment in which people live and work.”
“We have known for over 60 years that a selection interview is a poor
predictor of future performance. And panel interviews are even worse because of
groupthink.”
“Don’t establish a prescriptive norm by how you describe things, such as
the lack of women in certain fields.”
Iris Bohnet
The Curse of Knowledge strikes again
“Writing is an act of pretence and craftsmanship.”
“The curse of knowledge is the biggest barrier to clear writing.”
Steven Pinker
How reciprocity can beat the market
“There are six universal principles of social influence: reciprocation,
liking, scarcity, social proof, authority, commitment.”
“If a change is small, it’s more likely to be implemented by the people
who you are asking to do it.” (although it could bring major results)
“Reciprocity is about more than the traditional economic tit-for-tat
model based on exchange. And it’s better if you go first, because people will
want to give in return.”
“You should always think about what you can give that helps meet the
needs of your audience.”
“Ernest Hemingway’s bet-winning short story, told in six words: ‘For
Sale: baby shoes. Never used.’ “
“Start with a broad smile.”
Robert Cialdini
Multi-tasker? Yeah, Right.
“Multi-tasking is a myth. We can’t do more than one thing at a time.”
Marjorie Stiegler
Insights and Advice from Daniel Kahneman
Advice to those trying to influence policy makers: “What is preventing
people doing the things that you want them to do? When you implement the policy
who will be the losers and what will they do to you?
Advice to students: “Be less about (the) literature and more about life.”
Advice to everyone: “Don’t study
anything that isn’t interesting or fun. Don’t worry so much. And know when to
give up.”
Answering a question from
Steven Pinker on whether de-biasing should be part of the curriculum:
“It should be possible to give people the chance to slow down and reflect
on what they are doing. But people can’t be reflective all the time. For
decision making, structure is a good thing. But this isn’t the same as
de-biasing.”
“A lot of decision making in firms and in government is of very poor
quality. It has evolved, it has not been designed.”
Daniel Kahneman
The Power of Search and the trouble with economics
“If people are interested in economics, you can be pretty sure that the
economy is in trouble.”
From Google search results, “The strongest correlations with “Hardest
Place to live in America” are disability, diabetic, blood pressure, antichrist
and the rapture.”
Hal Varian
The thin line between honesty and dishonesty
“People normally only take a maximum of four free candies from a
malfunctioning (experimentally fixed) vending machine, because five would be
stealing.”
“People invite their friends to join in because of reverse social proof
– if they do it, it makes it ok that you’ve done it.”
“Corruption is not about knowing that something is wrong – it’s about
putting it into a place where you don’t care about it.” (e.g, not in the box
marked ‘family’).
“Once you are in a corrupt environment, where the work takes place under
different rules, behaviour changes very quickly.”
“The incidence of corruption and cheating is pretty similar across the
world. But culture changes the domains in which corruption happens.”
“We think of ourselves in binary terms – we are either good or bad.”
“The logic of confession from the standpoint of an economist: if we can
get absolution, why not cheat more. Even on the way to the church.”
“The standard models for understanding corruption are based on cost
benefit analysis: the consequences of actions. But it’s actually more to do
with rationalisation in the moment.”
“Whistleblowers are more likely to be women, because they aren’t part of
‘the boy’s club’ and aren’t betraying the group.”
“Drunk driving kills people, so we legislate to prevent it. But there
are many other ways of killing people that we tolerate. Why?”
Dan Ariely
Markets are looking out for the naïve consumer – it could be you (some
of the time)
“Consumers can be naïve or sophisticated, but not all the time. Even
sophisticated consumers make mistakes, and markets are good at finding the
instance when that mistake is made.”
Paul Heidhues
Firms are not black boxes
“Because firms are run by humans, they may not always profit-maxmimise.”
“Regulatory remedies rely on people acting in certain ways. If these
don’t happen, bad outcomes follow.”
“Behavioural economics can be incorporated into the market.”
Amelia Fletcher
Why mindless eating can be a good thing
“It’s easier to change your eating environment than to change your
mind.”
“We don’t know what we like, and we don’t know why we do what we do.
Both of which are opportunities to change behaviour.”
“In the US, it’s possible to predict a person’s weight based on about
nine observable variables in their kitchen. If a cereal box is visible, they
are likely to be 20lb heavier than their neighbours.”
Brian Wansink
Last but not least – a few concluding gems
“When it comes to food, the less you pay, the more you get.”
Unidentified contributor
“If you have to go out of your way to think about healthy eating, you
won’t do it.”
Sam Kass
“The average British male is eating 200 calories a day more than he needs.”
Alison Tedstone
“It’s important to learn from failure. It’s not just about saying ‘When
it works, it’s all down to me and my colleagues. When it doesn’t work, we blame
other factors.” You should not be afraid to create a situation in which
interventions might fail – you could even give 3 “fails” a year to put in the bank”
Andrea Schneider
“The ancient Greeks were familiar with ‘weakness of the will.’ People do
not always do what’s best for themselves.”
Daniel Gordon
