The science of Betsy Levy Paluck is marked by its ingenuity, scope, and purpose. One of her first major studies examined the effects of a radio soap opera on reconciliation in post-conflict Rwanda. In the lead up to the 1994 genocide, Hutus used radio to normalize violence against the Tutsis. A decade later, an NGO was hoping to use that same medium to promote peace. Paluck worked with the NGO to evaluate what impact, if any, the new program—a Romeo-and-Juliet-style story of forbidden love—had on the reconciliation movement. What Paluck learned was profound. The radio program didn’t do much t ..read more

Unearthing ancient wine cellars, finding the right places to dig, and tracing the arc of lost civilizations with Eric Cline, an archaeologist. What's the difference between a shard and a sherd? And what will archaeologists of the future make of us? [buzzsprout episode='14920369' player='true'] View the episode transcript About What It's Like to Be... In each episode of What It's Like to Be..., bestselling author Dan Heath speaks with someone about what it's like to walk in their (work) shoes. Behavioral Scientist serves as a distribution partner with episodes released every other w ..read more

We’re starting something new for Behavioral Scientist Supporters: First Fridays. On the first Friday of every month, we’ll reserve the day for conversations with Supporters.  The format might evolve over time, but we’ll start with one-on-one conversations with me, Editor-in-Chief Evan Nesterak. We’ve created a set of thirty-minute time slots that span time zones from Sydney to San Francisco on the first Friday in May. First Fridays are open to Supporters—readers who have made a monthly or annual donation to help support Behavioral Scientist’s nonprofit mission. You can become a Behaviora ..read more

Our understanding of human history is a battle between contingency and convergence. Do stable, long-term trends drive change? Or does history pivot on the tiniest details? We’re left to speculate between the two worldviews because we can’t experimentally test the past. But what if you could create multiple worlds? And what if, within them, you could not just control what happens inside but also control time? Imagine the ability to play God, pressing pause at will, even rewinding and replaying key moments. That would give us a glimpse of the inner mysteries of cause and effect with unprecedent ..read more

The loss of Daniel Kahneman looms large over the behavioral sciences. The pathbreaking and Nobel-winning psychologist has died at the age of 90. His work deepened our understanding of how the mind works and how people make decisions. In doing so, it transformed the fields of psychology and economics.  His research on biases and heuristics, conducted alongside his close collaborator Amos Tversky, challenged the dominant model of human behavior in economics, one in which people act as rational utility maximizers. Kahneman and Tversky showed that our judgments err in predictable ways (biase ..read more

In the summer of 1966, toward the end of his second year as a staff writer for The New Yorker, John McPhee found himself on his back on a picnic table under an ash tree in his backyard near Princeton, New Jersey. “I lay down on it for nearly two weeks, staring up into branches and leaves, fighting fear and panic,” he recalls in his 2017 book, Draft No. 4. McPhee had already published five long-form articles for The New Yorker and, before that, had spent seven years as an associate editor for Time. He wasn’t, in other words, new to magazine writing, but the article that immobilized him on his ..read more

Recycling captures less than a quarter of waste in the United States. Take plastics, a particularly pernicious waste material: every year, some 400 million metric tons of plastic are produced worldwide, more than the weight of all 8 billion humans combined. Less than 10 percent, by some estimates, of that plastic gets recycled. Instead, it ends up polluting far and wide, from the natural environment to our bodies (some evidence even suggests it can permeate the blood–brain barrier). The waste predicament in the U.S. grows bigger with each passing year, despite Americans’ increasing concerns a ..read more

Diagnosing what ails struggling companies, choosing the "least crappy option", and managing constant stress with Jeff Vogelsang, a turnaround consultant. What kind of personality do you need to lead turnarounds? And what does it mean to make someone "available to industry”? [buzzsprout episode='14607928' player='true'] View the episode transcript About What It's Like to Be... In each episode of What It's Like to Be..., bestselling author Dan Heath speaks with someone about what it's like to walk in their (work) shoes. Behavioral Scientist serves as a distribution partner with episo ..read more

“Why people ‘click’ with some people, but not others, is one of the great unsolved mysteries of science,” neuroscientist Thalia Wheatley and her colleagues wrote in the journal Social and Personality Psychology Compass. When we align with someone through conversation, they explained, it feels wonderful, in part because our brains have evolved to crave these kinds of connections. The desire to connect has pushed people to form communities, protect their offspring, seek out new friends and alliances. It’s one reason why our species has survived. “Human beings have the rare capacity,” they wrote ..read more

My partner, E., is responsible for taking the trash out to the curb on Sunday evenings. But on a recent Monday as I was sitting down to work, I noticed that the garbage bin next to my desk hadn’t yet been emptied. I spent a good five minutes dithering over what to do next. My thoughts went something like this: If I remind him to do it, he might expect me to remind him in the future. And if he expects a reminder, then I’ll have to add “trash day” to the long list of tasks already swimming through my brain and crowding out more important stuff. Then again, if I forgot, I’d probably appreciate a ..read more