Hey guys, and welcome back to another episode of Change Wired Podcast, and I have a treat for you. You know one of those conversations when you have with a very smart person and they give you a lot of ahas and you feel like an enriched, knowledge-wise person after the conversation, but also it ends up being really fun. And after the conversation but also it ends up being really fun and after the conversation you had an amazing time, you learned a ton and you want to do something with that knowledge. So that's the kind of conversation that you are about to hear. I had an amazing time and you're going to have an amazing time, too, listening to this podcast episode with Matt Wallert.
Speaker 1Guys, what if changing culture, shifting habits or transforming a company or maybe entire world was less like crossing your fingers and more like following a recipe? My guest today, behavioral scientist, applied behavioral scientist, matt Wallard, has spent his career turning human behavior into something you can design for, just like you would design a product, a service, maybe a website page or maybe your own life. In this episode, we talk about the method Matt used and uses to change behavior at scale in organizations internally, for products and services, to help users improve their lives through changing their behaviors. We talk about why fuzzy leadership language might be killing business results and culture, and how M&Ms, the candy, m&ms, vr, boxing and parenting all hold clues for making behavior change easier. We also wander into some questions around ethics and talk about when you can change someone's behavior Should you and when enough is enough, and when it goes sideways, what do you do?
Speaker 1Where do you stop? So stay tuned for that as well. There's going to be a lot of humor and even some productivity tricks from Matt. So grab a notebook, your favorite snack hopefully not M&M's and let's get wired for change. What should?
Speaker 2people know about me.
Speaker 1Yeah, first, welcome to the show and thank you for joining me on Change Wired Podcast. Matt, it's amazing. I'm happy over the moon that you found the time to do that. I'm very excited, have a lot of questions and real fan of your work, so hopefully we'll make it also useful for the listeners, not just for my enjoyment. Renia, welcome to the show, thank you for joining me.
Speaker 2And thank you for having me. I mean, I think if we enjoy the conversation, then they'll enjoy the conversation.
Speaker 1Yeah, I also believe so. So the first question is who's Matt Wallard? And maybe brief history of Matt Wallard, how it started, what you stopped and where it's going Well.
Speaker 2I think it started the way most of us start. You know, I was born on a stormy night in 1982. No, you know, self-identity is always an interesting thing. It's interesting to see how people introduce themselves. I mean, I think in the context of this podcast, the most important thing to know is that you know I have.
Speaker 2I graduated from college in 2004 when applied behavioral science was not a thing. So I spent the first several years of my career, you know, being in rooms where people went what do you do again? And what is this science thing? And like, why do you have a scientist on staff? You know startups at the time science wasn't a big part of the startup community. It was a very design-led sort of version of the world. Scientists are much more common now. And then now to a point where, like, applied behavioral science is very much a thing. It's something most people know about, it's something commonly talked about in business. So it's been interesting to live through those times. Right, I went from doing a job that nobody knew what it was to a job that people actually want. It's amazing to me.
Speaker 2These days I talk to young people who are like oh yeah, like I came into college knowing that I wanted to be an applied behavioral scientist. I'm like, well, that's novel, right, how do you feel about that? Great, I mean, I think that's awesome. I mean I think it's lovely. It's just really interesting to see something that you had to explain at the beginning now become something that people actually aspire to do, right, it's like, I don't know, watching the popularity of a sport rise or something.
Speaker 2And there are these limited moments in history, I think, where you know, a new type of career path comes about. The best analogy for the spread of applied behavioral science is always the spread of data science, right? And I'm sure that Hilary Mason and other people also lived through a weird period of time where they're like I'm a data scientist and people are like, what's that? And now people very much like go into college with the intention of becoming a data scientist and that is a thing that they want to do. So it's not. You know, we're not alone in our, in our development, but it is certainly novel to have lived through.
Speaker 1Yeah, a question why did you decide to study that when you know nobody even knew about that, nobody talked about?
Speaker 2that. I mean, I sort of fell into it. So I'm a social psychologist by training. I came into college very much not interested in psychology, I was very much a biology guy and then. But I took an intro psych class which was awful, awful, awful. But I also took another psych class called the Psychology of Self-Control and it was taught by this really magnificent professor who really is a fantastic teacher, andrew Ward, still at Swarthmore, still a great teacher, and he, you know, was so engaging and thoughtful about how he sort of made psychology relevant to the sort of everyday lives of college students.
Speaker 2And I had a very particular experience wherein we read a paper on something called the IAT, the implicit association test, which is purports to, basically, you know it's a reaction time test, you know you're sort of categorizing pictures and words and things, and the idea is that it can detect your implicit association. So you know, if you think black is bad and white is good, like it can detect that. And I didn't disagree with the data, right, I didn't think it was falsified in so much as I sort of felt like the conclusion overreached the data, right, hey, they're drawing conclusions that I don't know are directly supported by the evidence. And Andrew said something. Professor Ward said something really fascinating to me, which was well, the field agrees with this interpretation. The field has decided this is valid, but this is science, and so there's like an orderly way for you to respond, which is to generate your own evidence. And if you want to come to my lab and run an experiment and try and generate evidence that shows that their interpretation is incorrect, that's how the science like, that's how science progresses forward, and so you're welcome to come do that, and I'm welcome. You know, I'm happy to sort of give you some guidance in doing that, which is such a lovely thing to say to a young person.
Right, like there's a version of the world where, like evil, andrew Ward says like nope, it's been proven, you're wrong. Like you know, listen to the scientists, shut the fuck up. What I love about science is it always has an orderly way to respond, which is with additional evidence, like you can always bring, you can do an experiment, you can bring evidence into the, into the conversation, and you can find out whether you're right or wrong, which is so different from so many parts of the world, right? So many parts of academia and so many parts of everyday life are about who has the most social power, or who like is the most convincing, or like is the most you know sort of knows English the best like. Whatever the fuck, it is right Whoever has power in a situation gets to determine the rules of that situation. Science is this incredibly unique part of human experience where, at least when done correctly, the powerful do not have differential power, and that is amazing to me.
Speaker 1Yeah, it is amazing, you know, and you're right, like most of the world is like this is right or this is wrong, and most of the people are not even comfortable with this idea. Like, well, maybe in this context, maybe in that context, and maybe there is a middle way, and with a lot of maybe, it's like you have to pick a side. So that's amazing. So I guess that's how you fell in love with what you decided to study.
Speaker 2Yeah, I was hooked from then. So that certainly got the science part and, of course, social psychology very much. You know, the only observational thing is behavior, right, you can't do emotions or cognitions, because we don't have any access to emotions or cognitions, like we don't actually know how anybody's feels, we don't actually know what people think, we know what they tell us, we know what they self-report, but we only know their behavior, right. And so you know, certainly the science bit I fell in love with through Andrew. The behavior bit is something social psychology brings to you. And then the applied bit I really figured out in grad school.
Speaker 2So I'm a first generation college kid.
Speaker 2I didn't know anything about getting a PhD, but I ended up in a PhD program and very quickly figured out this was not going to be it for me, because academia is about the pursuit of knowledge, right, it's about furthering our understanding of the universe, but it's not actually about changing anything, right.
Speaker 2And if you think about the platonic ideal, like the superpower of a scientist would be like, well, I snap my fingers and the world stays in stasis so that I can study it, right, because all of this changing, all this dynamicism just creates noise in my data, and so if I could just freeze everything and make it stay still, I would be able to study it effectively. I don't want that superpower. That's a terrible superpower, right? Or at least it was a bad superpower for me, right? What I want is the ability to like, go and make things better for people. I want Angela to live a happier, healthier life, and so I figured out quickly that, rather than this academic route, I wanted to go applied, and so science from Andrew behavior, from social psychology, and then applied from understanding that academia was not going to be the right place for me.
Speaker 1It was not going to be the right place for me. Yeah, so you know I can relate to that piece that whenever I learn something, I'm almost immediately putting it into action into my life, because for me it's like, well, if you know it, you should use it. And then at some point it was such a discovery for me that people just listen to a ton of Andrew Kuberman podcasts and then don't apply anything and they're totally happy about that. That I cannot understand. So I understand that, like applied part of it that I could never understand. Like how can you just care about knowledge but not about applicability of that knowledge and changing the world with it?
Speaker 2Well, and I think knowledge can be. I think there's an entertaining form of knowledge. I think there's a bunch of people, for example, who read self-help books in the same way. They're reading a fictional book, they like the feelings it gives them, it's interesting, they like the style of writing, et cetera. Right. In the same way, one might watch a nature documentary and know something more about whales than they knew before, in an entertaining way, without necessarily doing anything different with regard to, like you know, they don't have any ability to behave differently around whales. So I think, as long as you know that, it's fine, right.
Speaker 2If you want to read self-help books for entertainment, go nuts, right. Like, you can entertain yourself however you want. But if you're to your point, but if you're reading them so that you can have a happier, healthier life, you do have to do something with it. Like, mere knowledge almost never makes somebody happier or healthier, right? Merely knowing something doesn't tend to sort of do much for people's happiness and health. They have to put it into practice in some way. And so if the goal is entertainment, go nuts. If the goal is a happier, healthier life, kind of do something.
Speaker 1Yes, I agree with that. I want to hear to talk more about behavioral science specifically. Right, can you tell listeners what is it Like we just talked about so much about? You know why you fell in love with it and how. So what is it and why people should?
Speaker 2care. So applied behavioral science is, you know, I would think of it somewhat like a design methodology. I think each of the words mean something really specific applied right. We're trying to change stuff here. Behavior is the thing we're trying to change, not emotions or cognitions or outcomes. You know, we're trying to change behaviors that lead to those things. And then science as a design process. So not science in order to prove, not in science is in order to gather knowledge, but science in order to prove. Not in sciences in order to gather knowledge, but science in order to show what works or what doesn't work. So science is a form of efficacy, and so there's a variety of different ways that people teach approaches to applied behavioral science.
Speaker 2I teach this methodology that we created, called side strategy, insights, design, evaluation, right? So going through a four-step process of strategy is just what behavior? What will be true at the evaluation? Right? So going through a four-step process of strategy is just what behavior? What will be true at the end? Right? You know, if you think of science as a genie that can create any outcome, what is the outcome you're trying to create in a measurable, observable way? Who will be doing what right when you're successful? And you know, typically within my work, that's groups of people, consumers or whoever. But you could use it individually. I will be doing this, my wife will be doing this, my kid will be doing this, right? Insights is then the process of understanding quantitatively through data and qualitatively through observation. Why is that outcome not already true, right, and why do I want it to be true?
Speaker 2So we talk about promoting pressures things that make a behavior more likely and inhibiting pressures things that make a behavior less likely. So all behavior is a competition between these two pressures, right, the canonical example I use is always M&Ms. Right, there's lots of reasons to eat M&Ms. They're tasty and they are very visually attractive and they're well-branded and I have identity things, and you know they're iconic and all the hunger, all these things. And then there's reasons not to eat them. They cost, you know, they're not free, they have health implications. Right, they're not readily available. I have to go seek them out, blah, blah, blah. So those compete, right. And when the promoting pressures are stronger, the behavior occurs when I get hungry enough, I'll go eat the M&Ms. When the inhibiting pressures are stronger, oh, they become more expensive because of tariffs. Then I don't do it, right, because they're inhibiting pressures happen.
Speaker 2Once we understand that, then we can go into a design process. And the key to the design process is we're not changing the behavior, we're changing the pressures. That then results in behavior change. Right, so I can make them cheaper and that causes people to eat them more because it reduces the inhibiting pressure. But there's that connection between pressure and behavior. Right, it's not I lower the cost and people eat them more. It's I lower the cost and that lowers the pressure. That is cost and that causes people to eat them more.
Speaker 2Right, it's not magic doing things and having something in the world. Change is not magic. It is a structured process by which the thing that you changed had a causal relationship with the thing that that resulted. And understanding that causal relationship is the nature of science. So, strategy what are we going to change? Insights why is this happening or not happening already? Design what are we going to do about it? And then evaluation is just we can come up with lots of ideas about how to change those pressures, but we don't know they don't. We don't do them because they sound like they'll work, we do them because they actually work.
Speaker 2Right, so you know, if you're like you know, let's say you think the inhibiting pressure to you working, let's say you want to work out more often and you think the inhibiting pressure to working out more often is is showering right, meaning you get real sweaty and so you have to shower, and and so you say, all right, well, I'm going to run an experiment where I'm going to work out in the morning, before my morning.
Speaker 2I normally shower in the morning, so I'm going to work out. I'm going to get up earlier and work out before my shower to see if that, you know, not having to take a second shower at the end of the day makes a difference, and it either will or it won't right. That is a testable hypothesis. You can do it for five weeks and see if you work out more or less right. So it's not that theoretically, something will change behavior. Behavior is directly testable, directly, directly changeable, directly monitorable, and so that's that evaluation step is just hey, before you commit to doing something for the long term, before you go make a big change, you know, build a big operation to scale something, make sure it actually works first.
Speaker 1Yeah, it's like also, you know back to maybe food, because I worked a lot in food. Well, when people say, well, I'm just going to go on a diet, that sounds great. If you can do this diet, so let's list it out for a week and see how well you do, right.
Speaker 2Well, and so let's take dieting, right. So first of all, we have to be clear about the behavior that we want, right? I'm, you know, when I'm hungry I'm going to something, eat an apple, right? Well, what are all the promoting and inhibiting pressures to apples? You know people think about okay, well, I need to get the most delicious apples I can, right, promoting pressure, but I also need to make them available. So I need to move them, you know, onto the counter rather than hide them away. I need to make, you know, I need to make sure that I have a bunch of apples. I need to buy them in bulk so they're cheap, right? Like you can get people to eat a lot. You want to get people to eat apples. Put a big bowl of there. Is that, like, the apples are no more delicious or beautiful or anything than they were before? They're just really available, right, and if you make them really available, people will eat them when they're hungry, right? Or out of mindlessness or whatever.
Speaker 2And so I think, being really thoughtful about the why is what makes behavioral science behavioral science? It's not just saying well, this is the danger of self-help books. A lot of self-help books say do this and it'll work Right. And then a lot of people get a message that they're broken because they do it and it doesn't work for them. And the reality is that, like hey, situations are unique, pressures are unique, and so you need to test that hey, for me this is true before you just say, all right, well, I'm going to wholesale take the recommendations of a bunch of people for people and even maybe more useful.
Speaker 1How do you perhaps use it still behavioral science in your own life to get yourself do things that you maybe not, either the things that are not easy or maybe you naturally wouldn't do, or struggling with doing?
Speaker 2Well, I mean health examples are always the easiest examples, right? Because you know it's a goal most people have. It's a goal most people struggle with. You know it can be really practical things. I'm a boxer by training and inclination. That's the way I like to work out. But you know, and I have a gym about 15 minute drive from me, probably right, but that's 15 minutes there and 15 minutes back, which is a half an hour out of my day. I have a nine-year-old, so that's time away from him. You know boxing gyms are not cheap. They also have, you know, health risks associated with them. Getting hit in the head's not great on a repetitive basis, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 2So, you know, over the pandemic, for example, I got really into VR boxing because I can do it at home, right Right after this podcast, I can like strip off this shirt and like pop on a VR headset and go right over there into the, into the gym here in the garage and, like you know, start working out. And so it's not that boxing is any more attractive than it ever was. I've just made it substantially easier for me to do in an organized way. And so it's things like that that that, you know, generally helped me, I think. On the flip side, I do it all the time in parenting, right? So there's this temptation in parenting Well, my kid is doing something that I don't want him to do, so I'll introduce punishment or new inhibiting pressure.
Speaker 2Hey, if you do that, there's going to be a consequence. If you do that, this thing's going to happen. And very often we just need to look at the promoting pressure. Why is he doing that in the first place? Yeah, right. And like, how do I short circuit that? Oh, he's acting out because he wants my attention, cool, like, how can I give him attention in more positive ways rather than creating, you know, punishments for him asking for my attention, and so that process of just starting to recognize, hey, like there are reasons that people do things. Behavior is not just random, right? Like you know, behavior comes from places and those forces can be modified such that behavior is modified.
Yes, and you know, I can totally relate to just that usefulness of behavioral science in our relationships with other people in other world, in a sense that, for example, when somebody is rude to you, you might say, well, they're just rude, you know, they're just this bad person. But instead you might think, all right, they are behaving in this way because they might have had a bad day, or in this way because they might have had a bad day, or just, you know, something happened or they didn't have good sleep. And then you got the behavior, not the person, which is entirely bad, but just the behavior, and probably in other situations that person behaves in a completely different way. Right, and that helped me to like really I don't know have better relationship with the world and people, because I don't take things personally but look at each individual case as an individual behavior.
Speaker 2And I think one of the things you said is really key. There is there's no such thing as this person is rude. Right, angela is rude. No, angela is doing a behavior that you interpret as rude. So focusing in on that behavior is really key. There's a in marriage and family therapy. We often teach a sentence structure. That is, when you A, I feel B because C and what I'd really like is D. So when you specific behavior, I have specific emotional reaction because of specific cognition, and what I'd really like is alternative behavior. So, rather than saying Angela is a rude person or Angela acts in a rude way when Angela interrupts me, okay, that's a specific behavior, right, that's a really specific thing. So, angela, when you interrupt me, it makes me feel sad because it makes me feel like you don't care about what I'm saying. So what I'd really like is for you to let me finish talking before you jump in. That's a really specific piece of feedback, right? But so much of what we do is we say things like Angela, you're so rude, or Angela when you're rude, well, what the fuck does that mean? Right, I don't know what rude means. Like, maybe I'm not interpreting. You know lots of cultures, for example, have something we call co-talking, which means they actively talk over each other and it's not considered rude. Maybe I don't see the thing I'm doing as rude. So, angela, when you're a dick is not very useful, right? Getting to that really specific behavioral part is really key, and I think that applies across lots of the examples we've used today.
Speaker 2When you say I want to eat healthier, what do you mean? You mean I want to eat less red meat. You mean I want to eat more vegetables. You mean I want more protein. You mean I want to eat less in general, like. What does that mean? There's about 80,000 versions of eat more healthy. What do you physically, literally mean? You want to have happen? Because I go back to the genie analogy Like every genie, movie is about the lesson that wishes have to be carefully formulated, right? Angela says I want to be the fastest woman alive. Matt rubs his fuzzy bald head, snaps his fingers, kills all the other women on earth. Congratulations, anna Lillia, you're the fastest woman alive. Getting precise about. Like the outcome. I want to work out more. What does that mean? I want to work out twice a week for 30 minutes. That means something real. That's something I can do. I want to work out more. I don't know. I can't engage with that because it's not. It doesn't mean anything.
Speaker 1Yes. And then also it makes easier it's sort of not being all out person, but instead like I want to work out more when maybe that means 10 minutes more than the last week, which makes the whole process of change a lot more approachable. And then, yes, you mentioned it also. Well, maybe you didn't mention, but what I heard. It doesn't then make things personal or related to identity, which makes communication with people in general easier. It means like. Again, if I say that I don't like a behavior, it doesn't mean I don't like you, I just don't like the behavior, no matter who does it right. Whereas when we say like you're rude or you're that or you're that, it's like you're attacking a person and then the person fights back because you are attacking them personally. So I feel like that's also so powerful in a social change and relationship, like in conflict resolution negotiation, when we apply this behavioral science lens.
Speaker 2It's true, because it isn't to your point. It's not even about you interrupting, it's just about people in general interrupting right.
Speaker 1Yeah, exactly, and you're just the one who's doing the behavior. And I think once I understood the whole process and this lens, it made just life so much easier. I'm like, ah, this is just the behavior. Or like with my dad he always sees something which is incorrect or could be better and at first I thought it was something wrong with me. And they're like, no, he actually does this behavior towards everything. It's not me, it's the behavior pattern. I'm like, oh, that's that made the whole relationship also easier, because I started to see it through again different lens, switching gears a little bit.
Speaker 1I'd like to also talk about business world, because this podcast has the audience, the business leaders, entrepreneurs as well, and they always say, okay, now I understand how I can apply it in my life. Like, what about business environment? And maybe, like you worked in different environments, you worked with startups, you worked with big organizations, right, so where maybe you'd like to start, I guess, maybe where you see behavioral science can be very useful in a business world in general, maybe where you see it's not applied enough and it's a big frustration because, yeah, business world is obviously a big thing. So what speaks to you and maybe what you'd like to talk more about?
Speaker 2Yeah, I mean. So you asked where I see it most often. I mean the closer that. You know, if we think about business, about profitability, the closer your profit is to a behavior change, the easier it is to see behavioral science as vital. So if you look at industries like banking or finance, you look at industries like health or health change, right. Those are places where it's abundantly clear that, like, if I can get people to do thing A, I make money B, right, and the farther that you get from that, hey, if I do. If I get people to do thing A, I make money B right, and the farther that you get from that, hey, if I do. If I get people to do thing A and then they do thing B, and then they do thing C, and then they do thing D and then I make money, it makes it harder and harder to make. You know, behavioral science still applies but companies are less likely to invest in it because they don't see the direct connection. So I think, if you ask me, the second question you ask me is where am I frustrated? Where do I not see it as much as I'd like?
Speaker 2I think a lot of behavioral science is very externally applied. I'm going to get consumers. I'm going to get my buyers to do a thing right. I'm going to get my users to do a thing. Valid is to say all right. Well, internally, what behaviors do I want from my employees, teammates and colleagues that I can change? Right, because so much of business, I mean you could get external behavior change perfectly right and still be miserable, right, meaning I could get every user in the world to use Uber, or I could get everybody in the world to to eat M&Ms, or I could get everybody in the world to do the behavior that is profitable for me and still be pretty fucking unhappy because the doing sucks, right, the workplace sucks.
Speaker 2And so I think a lot of behavioral science that I think gets ignored but is a really fertile place for this is internal to the company behavior change. How do I make teams that make people happy, satisfied, thoughtful, progressive, you know, have meaningful work that allows them to stay here in a positive way? So more recently, I spent a lot of my time thinking about, sort of like, how do we construct workplace behaviors that encourage the kind of environment that we want? Because I think you know we need a company to be profitable enough to survive right, we don't need to maximize profitability. We need to make sure that, like, profitability is balanced with internal desire to do things, and the nice thing is they're very nicely related, meaning if people are happy and having fun and retained, they're much more likely to do things that are user positive.
Speaker 2Right, Miserable people make miserable people. People make happy people. You want you know if you're Disney, if all of your employees are dissatisfied, there's no way you're going to serve your customers correctly. And so I think that internal behavior change, that internal applied behavioral science, that same lens applied back into the business. That's the place where I have the most energy these days and where I think there's a lot of not enough work has been done.
Speaker 1God, I can so relate. You know, I actually tried to build my whole company around that like internal behavior change, and I look at culture transformation, what is often talked about. When you talk about internal change through behavioral science plans, I'm like you want your people to be more engaged like what does it mean? How will it look like and how's your system working to optimize for that? I mean, if you want your people to like you hear a lot about people are resistant to change, how do you make them more motivated? Well, what are exact behavior like? What is exactly motivation for you? What should they do so you could see that right? And then how do you incentivize and build system like and from from that also perspective that can turn on perspective.
Speaker 2Every business needs to apply behavioral science, like you and what I would say is everybody does, everybody is trying to change behavior all the time. That's there's not. That's not new Like we know this. This is not a. This is not a novel phenomenon. I'm trying to change your behavior right now. You're trying to change my behavior right now. My kid tries to change my behavior every single day.
Speaker 2The novel bit is the is the science bit, it's the regularization of a process by which we gather evidence to do that. We are all naively changing behavior all the time, but we're doing it without evidence and we're doing it intuitively and by stepping back and saying, well, I can add formalization to process around here you can make things a lot better. Right, you know, I think about sports a lot as a good example of a place where you know you can be a pretty good natural athlete and kind of get to a certain level of skill. But in order to really go to the next level, you have to stop relying on your natural intuitive ability to do something and really understand the mechanics of the thing Right At some point. You know, if you're a boxer, you can get by on being strong and fast and sort of naturally in good shape to here.
Speaker 2But if you want to get here, you really do have to understand the sweet science. You have to understand like why does that? Like? What are the physics of that punch? Why does it mechanically work? And then how do I change my mechanics to make this thing happen? And that, I think, is you know, when you look at management and companies, a lot of what they do is the intuitive level. Angela is a good manager, so I'm going to promote her and help her rise, and then I'm going to rely on the fact that she's intuitively good, but that only goes so far. At some point, management becomes a science. You need to break down what behaviors you want to see and how you're going to create a system that causes those behaviors to be true. And that's what gets you to this next peak.
Speaker 2And so I think a lot of times people are doing the naive behavior change and the tweak, the system, the systemic change is how do I actually think about this as a process that reliably creates an outcome? Because science, what science does for us, is reliability. Right, it's not because Angela is good at this, naturally good at this, right it's. Hey. No, I can create a whole class of managers who are really good at this because I understand what makes them good at this. Right it's. Hey. No, I can create a whole class of managers who are really good at this because I understand what makes them good at this.
Speaker 1Yeah, because you define the behaviors and also, like you, you know what behaviors brings the outcomes that you actually want. And again, like, for me, everything is behavioral science. Like, whatever it is you want, you need to, you need to figure out again what it is I want in the end, like what behaviors contribute to that. And then what's the point A, what's the point B, and how do people transition from point A to point B the pressures, the environment and context and motivators, and once you have the process, it becomes more like a science, right, and you can expect predictable results. Versus a lot of leaders that I talked to, they don't want to deal with that because they feel like it's the soft, messy stuff that I can't really measure and map and that's why I'm not really going to deal with that right. So, yeah, I think, like, actually go ahead but that's an interesting like you're.
Speaker 2You're highlighting an interesting contradiction for a lot of people, which is I firmly believe that I can change my users' behavior. I believe in advertising, I believe in product development, I believe I can change people's behavior external to the company, but I don't believe I can change it internally. Right, because if you believe that, like, if marketing can get somebody to eat an M&M, then how can internal marketing get people to you know, be more inclusive or be more engaged or whatever behavior we want to get you know, like not work outside of work hours, why do you believe that you can?
Speaker 1get people to eat M&Ms but not get people to to stop scheduling meetings after five o'clock. Yeah, so I don't know, it's weird, but people have this feature that we can see how things work in one area and we don't transfer it to another area, right? We just like it doesn't always happen at all. So that's how you might have a person who is amazing in business, like it's true in everything, but in relationship they suck, even though in theory, they have all the skills they need to master this other area as well, and the word that can apply to fitness and health and everything else.
Speaker 1I also think you know where it breaks down a little bit, especially when leaders work on culture stuff, because a lot of them don't understand that culture is also created by behaviors. Like I always say this you know there is this example If you want to be a kind person or want to be perceived as a kind person, you don't need to tell me about kindness, anything. Just take kind actions and I'll believe and soon you'll also believe that you are a kind person, right?
Speaker 2so well, and, and to your point, behavior is also socially reinforcing and so kind behavior begets kind behavior, and so there's a weird you know, you create these values, you do a culture exercise, you create these values, you translate, translate them into behaviors that translate into those values. And the more people do those behaviors, the more likely it is that other people will do those like, because there's a social contagion effect. And so there's this weird cycling up and down of you know how do we get a behavior to permeate through an organization? That, I think, is really that people often forget. So I'm with you on the, you know, culture work, but so much of culture work breaks down at the first step, of side, right?
Speaker 2The thing about strategy, insights, design, evaluation is you really do have to do them in that order, right? And you can't do insights and design and evaluation if you haven't decided what behaviors matter, right, we can't just say, well, we want a kind culture. What behaviors specifically are we labeling as kindness? Right, when we say kind, what do we mean? So we at Oceans, for example, we say no one dives alone is one of our values. Right, it's about supporting other people, et cetera. But you have to say what does that physically, literally mean? That means okay. When somebody asks in the Slack channel for help, other people jump in, that is a specific physical, literal behavior that I can go measure, modify, understand who jumps in, why do they jump in, who do the people who doesn't jump in? Why don't they jump in? What could I do about those things that would cause them to jump in? Right, it's not enough to just say, well, we want a kind culture. Getting to that like okay, what does that physically literally mean is so important and so often missed.
Speaker 1Yes, and I think also it's missed because there is even the step that missing before that like, let's say, you don't just want some culture, because you just want it, you want to have a certain outcome, and then that outcome has to be narrowed down to a few key behaviors that then you can act upon. Right, and a lot of leaders have real trouble, I noticed, translating this big outcome Like I don't know, we want to be AI-first organization Like what does it freaking mean? How would you see it? That's where, like, well, we want this and this and this and maybe that also as well, and like this prioritization and knowing exactly how to translate this big, audacious goal into anything tangible. That I found where a lot of it starts to break down.
Speaker 1One more thing about behavioral science in business world. If you were I know it's a difficult thing to just choose but if you were to choose one thing that leaders sort of can start with, to apply behavioral science internally specifically, because that's something you're thinking about these days what can they start with? What can they do to do better tomorrow?
Yeah, I mean again, as I said, I think every step of science depends on the previous step of science, right? And so I depends on S, you know, d depends on I. So they have to start with behavior, and so one of the things that I always encourage leaders to do is like hey, go watch your last all hands. Where did you use fuzzy words that are not behaviorally defined, right? Where could you do better at tightening up that connection of like hey, here are the behaviors that are of interest to me, here are the things that I want to do. Like that's the part that I would encourage people to work on. Is the like all right? Like, how do you really tighten up that behavioral linkage on an ongoing basis?
Speaker 2And so you know, I think, if you're asking for one recommendation of business leaders, it's hey, you know, imagine I'm a genie and you can rub my fuzzy bald head and you can get your employees to do something. What are the three things you actually physically, literally want them to do? And then really interrogate that, like, if you received that request as a genie, how would you fuck with it? How could it go wrong? How is it in specific? How is it not right? So when a leader says, well, I want people to be more inclusive, a genie will have a field day with that right.
Speaker 1So how can I be more specific?
Speaker 2about oh, I want women to be talking at least 50% of the time in meetings. Okay, that's really specific. That's something we could do something about.
Speaker 1Yeah, and the cool thing about our world, you can now measure it with the eye. Even this podcast, right, it has like a speaking coach or something and it tells me exactly how much I've talked and I should talk for optimal result.
Speaker 2Yes, I mean computationally. Our ability to measure behavior directly has massively, massively increased. Right, you know how long did each of us talk on this podcast is something that can be measured in real time, given back as feedback, et cetera, and that just wasn't technologically possible not that long ago. And so I also think there's a flip side to that, which is that sometimes people can get bogged down in the measurement part, right? One of the things that is a hallmark of the difference between applied and academic science is we're still a business here. We need to be right enough. We don't need to be perfectly right, right, I need to be right enough. Right. In general, I want to make sure that women are talking about comparable amounts of times in meetings proportional to their attendance in the meeting. That doesn't have to be perfectly true. It has to be true-ish, right, and if I make it true-ish, that will probably power my business. I don't need every single person in the world to eat M&Ms at all times. I need some of the people to eat M&Ms some of the time.
Speaker 1Yeah, so such a great point. Also, not all the data that we have should be used should be measured right. That's meaningful data and that's also, I think, kind of a challenge to figure out what it is meaningful and what is enough. There was one question that, something that I wanted to ask about that I forgot. No, I forgot Completely, lost it. Now we're going to, if you don't mind, maybe I'll remember. Let's switch to those crazy questions that chat gpt came up before what does chat gpt want to know about from matt waller?
Speaker 1well, actually, you know, I did not specify, specify in the question or in the prompt that I wanted to ask a question about behavioral science. So it kind of like to ask what you most probably want to talk about, or it can be an interesting topic, one of the things that is not related to behavioral cycle, at least not right away cognitive offloading through satisficing that. You famously wear automated, standardized wardrobe to conserve mental energy. So, beyond clothing, actually, well, why you do it, you can explain it. But beyond clothing in leadership in your life, where do you use it and why?
Speaker 2Yeah. So let's, before we answer that question, let's make clear a couple of principles that underlie so satisficing is the idea that good enough is good enough. Right that you can set some quality bar and then you can say above that quality bar, additional quality doesn't matter. You can set some quality bar and then you can say above that quality bar, additional quality doesn't matter. The the the contra idea is maximization, right? So even if I'm eating the world's most delicious dish, there might be a more delicious dish out there and I can seek out the more delicious dish as opposed to satisficing, which says anything above a seven is good and I'm happy with anything above seven.
Speaker 2What AI is referencing is I am relatively famous for wearing the same thing, so I have a you know, I don't really buy additional clothes, it's all. You know John Varado's 40-hour blazers and Norm Shumton's shirts, and that's just what I wear in my professional life. You know there are more famous examples, like Obama eliminated blue suits because they got confused with black suits and they're basically the same. So you might as well just get rid of the blue suits because they got confused with black suits and they're basically the same. So you might as well just get rid of the blue suits right. There are lots of places that I'm a satisficer and practice this. I'm pretty automatic on food right. I have a set, you know I sort of eat a protein bar for breakfast and, like you know, I have a sort of set, you know, a Trader Joe's salad kit for lunch, and I eat the same thing every day. So there are lots of places where I try and automate that.
Speaker 2Now, I'm not saying you should try to automate everything right. Instead, the whole point is to reserve energy for the things you actually care about. So I love my son. I think my son is really awesome. I enjoy the time that I spend with my son. I want to spend mental energy there finding unique and interesting things. For us to do so by not wasting time on what am I going to eat gives me more time, more mental energy to think about okay, what am I going to do with my son today? And so I try to automate the stuff that that I don't really care about food, clothes, entertainment, whatever and really reserve my mental energy for the things I do care a lot about, right in in terms of you know uniqueness and you think well, I don't think I know that you wrote also about this in your book.
Speaker 1Start at the End, when you talked about you also want to know about, like the person or a demographic that you're working with, where do they spend, or willing to spend, a lot of their cognitive and mental energy spend, or willing to spend a lot of their cognitive and mental energy, and you want to give them information, or the amount of information, the kind according to, first, how much they are ready to spend.
Speaker 1Like to to your point, if you don't want to really think about food, it's that there is no sense for me to explore, to talk to you about like this, I don't know amazing meal or dish right, and also like, where do you find your user or whoever it is you're working with or whose behavior you want to modify, like at what point at the day? Obviously, at the end of the day, most of the people, like I don't want to have any complexity in my day. Right, I'm already at my capacity and I feel like, in behavioral sense, that can be. Well, not can be, but it is so applicable. You got to know, a, how much bandwidth the person has and, b, like what time, what part of the day?
Speaker 2Yeah, and I think in part this becomes so important because there is a big difference between. You know, the easy example for me is always computers. Right, there's a big difference between the enthusiast computer market, where I take a lot of pleasure in picking every individual component and reading about it and thinking about it and all the things right, versus the you know what you might think of as sort of consumer market, where it's like I just want a machine that works. I don't really need to know what's in it, I don't really, you know, if it was a black box and all you said was machine that works, I would totally be down with that. Right, here is the fastest thing you can buy at the price point that you want. Great, right, yes, good enough.
Speaker 1And such. You know, I think just an important, I don't know subject for people to understand that our cognitive capacities are very limited, and if you spend them on things like I don't know women spend a lot of time thinking about their makeup et cetera well then you have so much less bandwidth to think about other important things that might be a lot more important, and that's where I also feel like women are a little bit at disadvantage because they have to talk about.
Speaker 2One of the strategies of dominant groups to remain dominant is to force other people to use their mental energy in in order to in in suboptimal ways. Right, rich people stay rich by making sure poor people stay desperate. Right, if poor people have to spend all of their time worrying about how to make a bill and worrying about all of these things, they don't have any time to worry about overthrowing the rich people, right, yeah? Or coming up with their own ideas, or you know, blah, blah, blah. Luxury has always been about leisure, right, about the ability to have the time to think about the things that you want to do to move away from necessity. Do to move away from necessity. And so, absolutely, I think men have created an attention economy that causes, you know, that causes women to spend a disproportionate amount of their mental energy on appearance-based things, so that, you know, they don't think about the fact that men control more of the power and that they should probably get more of the power back. I absolutely think that that is a subjugation measure.
Speaker 2I mean, religion has used this forever. You know, most dominant religions are based on subjugation. They're both based on, you know, forcing people to think about a set of topics in order to keep them from thinking about other sets of topics. Right, If I can keep you busy about going to heaven and thinking about, you know, your individual sins, so that you don't think about society. Well, that's a pretty darn good way to control people.
Speaker 1Yes, I think I'm actually a rebel against all of this. I try to think as of few things as possible outside of my chosen circle of interest and whenever someone tries to tell me I'm like I'll think about other things.
Speaker 2Well, but it's also I mean, there's a proposition of privilege to that. Right, I'm a white dude, right, I'm allowed to wear the same clothes every day and not get shit in a way that, like, a woman, might not be able to. I'm already the part of the dominant majority, right? You and I have the luxury of, as, like, relatively naturally attractive people.
Speaker 2We don't have to think about a bunch of other things Like I don't have to work out that hard to not be fat, right, where somebody with a different weight set point, you know, if they want to fall into a social norm that is considered acceptable, they have to work their ass off to be able to try and get to that place.
Speaker 2So, you know, I always try and remain conscious of the fact that, like as someone with a lot of native intelligence and good education and was born white and male identifying and all of these things, that it makes it easier for me to sort of do things like satisficing, right, and, and you know, the only good use of privilege is the dismantling of privilege, and so I try and be conscious of my privilege at the same time that I'm trying to make sure that nobody else has to pay attention to their privilege if they don't want to yes, and I would also, I think, challenge that, that we have to necessarily think like what I'm trying to say, like, well, yeah, maybe you're not the best looking person according to society or societal norms, so who cares?
Speaker 1Like you know, my mom always tells me your hair should look this way. I'm like I don't care.
Speaker 2Yes, but the problem is so, I hear you, but society has a lot of power, so it's all well and good to say, well, I'm not going to care.
Speaker 2But if you don't get the job or you don't get the romantic partner or you don't find love or friendship or those other things, I mean we have a halo effect wherein we think that attractive people are more competent, right, and so if you're not naturally attractive and you make the decision to not fit society's norm of attractiveness, they are going to not think you are competent in the same way that an attractive person is, and that has other implications. Now you could choose that. You can say, hey, I'm comfortable with the cost that I'm paying to actively disregard how society is choosing to judge me. But as people that do fit some of the social norms, I have to be conscious of my privilege in saying oh yeah, I just don't care. Well, sure, because I cannot care and get away with it. Right, I cannot care and be fine, because I'm relatively handsome enough and I'm white and I'm male and nobody cares if I wear the same dress that I wore the week before yeah.
Speaker 1well, I think that's actually where you can also practice satisfying for you. They be in a good enough shape so you don't feel uncomfortable and then continue with the course. Yes, that's absolutely true. Yes, One thing that I also definitely want to touch upon is well, I'm going to start with charge a pity prompt, but also try to connect it to ethics, which I believe we didn't talk about, but it's very important in behavioral science. So, question being mindful of who we platform and I think it's you who mentioned this, because I haven't read it anywhere, but according to ChatGPT, you care about that. In discussing academic misconduct and the attention economy, you caution that behavioral scientists can't opt out of deciding which methods and people to amplify we should use. Well, that is not important. How do you personally decide whom to amplify, whom to ignore, and what responsibility do leaders have to ensure the ideas they platform are both ethical and evidence-based? So that is so.
Speaker 2Yeah, I mean I think that there is a proportionate relationship here. Right, the louder your voice, the greater the obligation to be right. Right or to do things in ways. And right I don't mean Well, I guess I do mean evidence-based here, but I also mean sort of ethically correct. So ethically correct and evidence-based are two versions of right. The louder you are, the greater voice you have, the more persuasive it is. The more people that are listening, the greater your obligation to do that. Well, right, if you want to scream your conspiracy theories into a forest where no one can hear, you go nuts, right.
Speaker 2But I think you know, as you have a louder and louder presence and voice in the world, you really have to be thoughtful and careful about who you platform, etc. Voice in the world, you really have to be thoughtful and careful about who you platform, et cetera. And you know that's hard. I mean it's hard to do, it requires work. You know, if we, if you think back to the promoting and inhibiting pressure, I think I don't think anybody would say I want to endorse people with bad ethics. Right, but you have to. You know you have to put in place the inhibiting pressures. You know you have to address the inhibiting pressures to putting in place people who you know might be.
Speaker 2I think you have to do the. You know there are a bunch of people who don't look at the podcasts before they appear on them and they don't you know. Go research the host and make sure this is somebody they're comfortable talking to. Right and ditto with guests. Right, matt's famous, so I'll have him on the podcast. Cool, but like you got to what else is going on there that we need to be monitoring for paying attention to, being thoughtful about.
You know what I wanted to sort of jump into here, this just whole question of ethics and it being so difficult to work around. Because, speaking to your favorite example of M&M's, I studied nutrition science and for me M&M's is not something anyone should be promoting like, at least not in their form and shape as right now, with a bunch of sugar and all of that stuff. Right, but that's my opinion, right. And I believe that people don't want to be eating all the M&Ms they could be eating, but their interest is to eat just enough to get the satisfaction they need and then move towards something which is, you know, more balanced eating. So where do you draw the line, meaning what do you promote, what do you inhibit, and what is ethical, what is not ethical? Because, again, even with M&M's, yeah, I as a company want to sell more, but actually if I think about my user as a human with well-being goals, I should design my product so they eat less at any sitting, so then they can stop easier and, you know, eat something better.
Speaker 2Well, but this is where maximalization sort of comes in. So, first of all, I would say part of ethics is making sure they're not impinging on people's individual autonomy, and so you and I can think M&Ms are't get them. So in general in the US about two-thirds of people get a flu shot, about one-third don't. If you look at the one-third that doesn't and you interview them, about half of them meant to but didn't, right, meaning they had the intention of getting the flu shot and for a variety of reasons they didn't end up getting it. Changing their behavior so that their actions line up with their intentions is ethically unambiguous, right? It is very easy, you know, if Angela wanted to get a flu shot and she didn't, making the world configured such that when she wanted to get a flu shot she did get a flu shot is unambiguously good. Where it runs into more trouble is the people who say, hey, I had no intention of getting a flu shot in the first place. Well, that's a different story, right? If you accurately understand the risks and benefits of flu shots and you make a conscious decision not to do it. You know, I have to respect that individual autonomy while also making sure that you have all the sets of facts that allow you to potentially revise that decision in the future podcast, to talk about exactly what ethics that we're doing.
Speaker 2The key that I always try to get people to think about is one do people's intentions and actions line up? Meaning, if somebody didn't intend to eat a whole bag of M&Ms and you did a bunch of things that caused them to eat a whole bag of M&Ms, well that was not their original intention and that's problematic, right? So I think making sure that the intention-action gap doesn't become sort of like out of whack is key, right? The other thing that I always guide people to is you know, you have to be careful that an action doesn't come at the expense of another intention. Meaning I intend to eat M&Ms, I also intend to not get diabetes. So those two intentions are in conflict with each other other and I need to resolve that conflict in the right way. And the biggest piece of this is just being explicit, right. If people accurately understand what an M&M is and accurately understand the degree to which it's a trade-off with developing diabetes type 2 diabetes then people can make their own decisions about where they are comfortable on that trade-off.
Speaker 2This is why science has to be done in the open. The easiest ethical test in the world is would you want your mom to know? And if you wouldn't want your mom to know, that's a real fucking problem.
Speaker 1Yeah, I guess where I personally have a problem is, like, let's say, mobile technology, right, that the companies want to keep your attention there and there is not a lot of mindfulness, no matter what you say.
Speaker 1And, yes, or you might think that I'm choosing it, but at the end of the day, the technology becomes addictive and you're not choosing it anymore and so your actually intention is to use it less, and I had a bunch of clients like that, but like, I still keep doing it. Right, why is that so? Or you want to eat less chocolate, but they actually use food scientists to design the product that way, so it's harder for you to stop, right, and that's where, like, where do we draw the line? Or you put the products that are not that great for people right in front of the people or at the cash register, and you know that that promotes buying without you know too much thinking, and in some countries they started to put healthier food there. But that's where you know, where is the responsibility? Because for me, you still can give people freedom of choice, but you don't have to make it the easiest and I don't know addictive choice.
Speaker 2Yeah, I mean to your point, freedom of choice is a weird phrase, right. Like you know, you can get a bunch of sort of libertarians to die on the hill if people should be allowed to take illegal drugs and do whatever the fuck they want, and as long as they know the consequences and are willing to bear the consequences, they can do whatever the hell they want. I think that's, to your point, quite dangerous, right. We live in a society, you know. I think benevolent paternalism, you know, has some positive features, right, we have to be careful about making sure that we are doing things that maximize the collective and global good. I really like utilitarianism, right, and it's like classical sense of like. There are utils and we are trying to maximize the utils across people, right, but I also think there's a lot of individual choice here.
Speaker 2Do I particularly want to go work at Mars and sell M&Ms? No, I don't particularly want to do that. I don't know that that's congruent with my values, but is it congruent with other people's values? Potentially, right, and what I would say is all society is about conflict, right? So on the one hand, there's the behavioral scientist trying to sell more M&Ms and on the other hand, there's the behavioral scientist trying to get people to stop eating M&Ms right. And that that tension is okay right.
Speaker 1And that you know the soul of society is won and lost on that tension yeah, I would disagree and argue about that for a lot longer, but I want to be mindful of your time.
Speaker 2But do disagree. I mean let's, let's. I think it's worth getting into it. Right, like you know it is. Let's take the jewel as a great example. Like, uh, vaping getting people to vape instead of smoke is almost certainly good for them. Getting people who don't do anything to start vaping is almost certainly bad for them. Right, and so, as a behavioral scientist at at Juul, there is room to to work on one behavioral problem and not the, and to to fight the other behavioral problem. I don't want new people to start Juuling, but I do want people who are smoking to start dueling. Like there are rules and ways that you can navigate these tensions, but at some level they're unresolvable. I mean, if everybody believed the same, like, we're never going to get to a world where everybody believes the same thing, and capitalism is built on the fact that people have different preferences. So bring in the argument. What nobody ever eat, m&ms no, that's not what actually.
What I'm advising, what I'm thinking about is designing a system where the choice which is known to be more pro well-being promoting, like let, eating a mindful amount of sugar from the perspective of human biology and thriving is better. Like you can't say that eating an unlimited amount of sugar is beneficial for anyone. And if I ask it, like I don't know, I have never met a person who said I was happy that I ate all the sugar and made myself sick. Like I don't know, maybe there are such people. We all enjoy sugar. There is no doubt about that.
Speaker 1Back to your like about vaping and cigarettes, right? Well, cigarettes, for example, are quite inaccessible in most parts of the world, in a sense that you have to like go to a specific place in the store and it says cancer on the store, right. And you can't be a certain age to buy it in most places, right? So we design all of these barriers to make sure that the person understands that there is responsibility with this choice. And they still can make the choice, but it's more difficult. So the same is like M&M's.
Speaker 1Now, I'm not saying you shouldn't maybe make an M&M's a candy. What I'm saying is, now that we know that people tend to overeat. If you get a whole bag, let's maybe not sell people a whole bag or make it a lot more difficult to buy it. And also there were those experiments where they just separated M&M's, for example, in smaller bags, and people ate less because there was this friction, right, so give them the bag. But also because your socially responsible company also put that big bag into smaller bags, even though it will create, I don't know, more packaging for you.
Speaker 1But now every time the person wants to eat more, they have to make additional choice to actually eat more of that. So what I'm not saying let's just eliminate. I don't know this or that. I'm saying things that we know to be not that great for over-consuming, and we know we are not that good at managing that. Let's make them more difficult to over-consume, but you still can do it right. So that's what I mean. That I don't agree with, like trying to use a food scientist to make people eat more, even though we know it causes so much trouble down the line.
Speaker 2I mean, I think there's two ways to resolve that tension. One is there are behavioral scientists on both sides competing. So one is the fact that, as hard as someone is trying to sell you M&Ms, there's someone trying to make sure that you don't eat M&Ms, right? There's some healthy food manufacturer that's saying eat an apple instead, and there's a vested economic interest and, like, there's capitalist drive on both sides of that. Apple growers want you to eat more apples, m&m manufacturers want you to eat more M&Ms and they compete to see which one is true. This is the essence of capitalism, and so the idea is that, like, these checks and balances will provide the right market incentives to cause this to be true. The other perspective on it is it is not. If you are Mars, it is long-term bad for you as a company. If you look at profit margins over time, it is long-term bad for you as a company to only sell people an unlimited member of M&Ms that they eat all of the time time, because those people will die very quickly and you won't have a consumer over time, right? So this is why diversified companies actually tend to help us with ethics, because they can profit across a wider range of behaviors. So you look at a company like Coke, where the majority of their products Coca-Cola, the majority of their products, are what you think is not particularly healthy, versus Pepsi where they have a much wider range of brands across the health spectrum, right? So at the same time they're selling sugar water. They're also selling fortified, you know, nutrient drinks in third world countries, right, they can profit on every part of the spectrum. And so one of these ways that ethics gets, you know, these ethical quandaries get resolved is by having diversified companies that look at maximal longevity, right, that say hey, a really long-term. And you know, I've always tried to work at. One way to resolve the individual ethics is to work at companies where that's true. So if you look at something like Clover, where you know if you make people healthier it's good for them, they're happy about it, it's good for your bottom line because you as an insurance company don't have to pay as many medical claims, and it's good for the government who's footing the bill, because they don't. You know they want people to be healthier in general and they're happy to pay you to make that true. And so you can align incentives across your business to get the socially beneficial behavior to line up with the company, beneficial behavior right at scale.
Speaker 2Banking is another easy example. Right, you can make a bunch of money on consumer banking fees. Right, but the long-term best thing that makes you money is actually getting that person to be rich. Right, the more money that Angela has, the more money I make as a bank, because the more money that pumps through my cycle and system. And so it's actually much better on a long-term basis to make you financially in a good place than a bad place. Basis, to make you financially in a good place than a bad place.
Speaker 2And so that's where I say you know, a lot of the resolution of the ethics that you're pointing at is about long-termism. Right, it's about saying, hey, if I expand the profit-making view, it's much better to do A than B, and this is where the stock market has killed us, right. This notion of quarter-over-quarter returns right. Hey, every quarter I have to make more money than I made last quarter, tends me to make very suboptimal long-term decisions. Right, because I want a jacket. Right, until it comes off the rails. Companies that report on longer periods you know, don't ignore profitability in the short term versus the long term tend to make more what you would think of as ethical decisions around behavioral science.
Speaker 1Yeah, just like people, you know, if you think long term, a lot of things turn out better.
Speaker 2Eat less M&Ms if you think long term.
Speaker 1Yes, I am a believer that we can create the world where everyone can benefit and we can think long term, and that's what kind of like what I want to dedicate my work to, because I don't, yeah, just, I think we're at the point where we can see that this way of thinking just doesn't work, where you take short-term view and expect long-term to thrive in society, as you know global civilization. So yeah, but I think that's possible. That's all I'm saying. And M&M's again, I'm not against M&M's, I just I love chocolate. Actually. What I'm saying is we should create a system where we can enjoy it and, at the same time, have a lot healthier population in general. So, that being said, that's, I think, a good note to conclude our conversation. So to, as a last, maybe parting, thought, advice is there anything that you'd like our listeners to leave with? A question, I don't know, an assignment, a thought to ponder about?
Speaker 2Oh, I mean, I think that we've you know we've had a great and fulsome discussion. I do think thinking about the ethics is a good homework for people to think about, like, hey, what does it mean to change somebody's behavior, and what responsibilities am I taking on when I do that? Because you know as much as what I teach is about the how right, it's sort of an undifferentiated how, meaning when I'm helping you figure out how to change behavior, I don't know what behaviors you intend to change, and the reality is that those might be negative behaviors. You could work at Juul and be getting kids to vape, right? Science is agnostic to outcome. Instead, it's only humans that can choose outcome. So science as the process makes us powerful, but it's up to us to decide how we use those powers. And I think, leaving it on a note of hey, you got to be thoughtful about how you choose to use those powers, absolutely right.
Speaker 1Yeah, that's a great way to finish this podcast, this conversation. So people now have this knowledge about behavioral science but apply it with, I don't know, ethical what are you going to do about it, folks? Now you know what are you going to do about it. Folks, now you know what are you going to do. Yeah, and thank you, matt again. So much. And the last question where can people, should people go to learn about your work, more about behavioral science? Where do you want people to connect with what you do?
Speaker 2I'm an easy guy to find. You know Matt Waller is a unique name and it's true on most platforms MattWallercom. We just made our you know we had a paid behavioral science course. That you know. We have this sort of policy where once something you know, once we recruit the development costs, we make it free. So that's now free, so we have a nice you know free course.
Speaker 2Yeah, and I recommend it highly because I did you know I'm a pretty easy guy to find. I'm happy to help. I do open office hours in the world because I believe that, like, equitable access to science is really important to me. But I think more important than trying to access me is, you know, accessing yourself. Right, if you have the choice between a half an hour talking to me and a half an hour thinking about, like, what behaviors do you want to change and how are you going to do it, probably that's the better behavior. It's a better half an hour, but I'll be around if you need me.
Speaker 1Yeah, so again, I'm going to link your course and the website and maybe a couple of other things that Judge Ubitikan suggests. You never know. But thank you so much, matt, again, for your time, for your passion for behavioral science and scientific method, and I don't know if you ever use this phrase, but you also have this scientific, compassionate or empathetic scientific activism, something like that. I just love the idea. I think maybe it was in one of your talks, but also, yeah, just thank you for your work. That's what I'm trying to say, and being a scientist who also cares about making the world better, so thank you empathetic, scientific activism, right, empathy.
Speaker 2Empathy says I believe you, right. Empathy says I believe that things are true in your universe. Science says and then I will try and understand why they are true. And then activism says I'll try and do something about it. Right, and so the analogy that we always use for people is like a spider web. So when you walk into a spider web and other people can't see it, but you start freaking out and doing this, empathy is believing that you're not crazy, that you walked into a spider web, even if I can't see it. Science is saying and because I believe you, I'm going to go find the spider web. And activism is saying I'm going to do something about it, so you don't walk into it again.
Speaker 2That's such a cool concept.
Speaker 1Yeah, empathetic, say it again.
Speaker 2Empathetic, scientific activist. Scientific activist, I believe you. Yeah, I will act on the things. I will go find out about the things that you believe and then I will do something about it.
Speaker 1Yeah, such a cool concept. So thank you for creating it and actively promoting it and living it. And again, thank you so much for your time. It was an amazing conversation.