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Health & Medicine

Can Behavioural Insights Help Us Improve Our Relationship With Ourselves?

While it’s true that self-confidence partially comes from the feeling that the people around us approve of us (something we can’t control), what we can control is how much emphasis we place on others’ opinions. Several of the thoughts that undermine - if not entirely diminish - our self-confidence come from systematic errors in judgement. Despite being commonly applied to economic decision-making, behavioural insights may explain how we, at times harshly and irrationally, judge ourselves.

By |2022-11-01T02:03:14+00:00November 1st, 2022|Categories: Health & Medicine, Society & Everyday Life|Tags: , , , , , , , |
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Designing More Equitable Digital Health Interventions

Effective digital health interventions may need to address a broad set of barriers in order to help a diverse population change behaviors. Layering the Double Diamond model of design with a behavioral design process ensures the inclusion of a comprehensive set of behavior change techniques in an intervention. Coupled with personalization technology, this approach can make digital health more equitable.

By |2022-09-12T06:26:37+00:00August 8th, 2022|Categories: Health & Medicine, Technology & Digital|Tags: |
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Relatively Tempting: Calorie Difference, Self-Control and Food Choices

Obesity has become a health crisis in many countries. Some governments have begun to mandate the display of calorie information on fast-food menus. However, research has offered mixed results regarding the effect of calorie information on consumed calories. This may be partly explained by two opposing forces: the calorie content of food alternatives and the relative calorie distance between food items. New research reported here suggests that the impact of calorie information depends on the relative magnitudes of these two variables.

By |2022-02-17T05:24:19+00:00September 13th, 2021|Categories: Health & Medicine, Marketing & Consumer Behavior|Tags: , , , , , |
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Tell Me Why! Explanations for Ambiguity in Health Decision Making Affect Treatment Choice

Medical treatment decisions are often rife with ambiguity. Exact probabilities for things like side effects or treatment success rates are frequently unknown. But why is this important? Because decision making research has shown that ambiguity can systematically alter the choices people make. We investigated how providing different explanations for the ambiguity in a treatment decision context affected willingness to adopt a treatment with an ambiguously described success rate. When the explanations involved elements that the person was knowledgeable about or could control, people were more interested in an ambiguous treatment.

By |2022-05-26T06:59:13+00:00August 30th, 2021|Categories: Behavioral Theory & Insights, Health & Medicine|Tags: , , , , , , , |
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National Identity and Public Health Behaviors During Covid-19

In a massive international collaboration including more than 200 researchers, we examined the adoption of public health behaviors and support of public policy interventions during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. We found that individuals who identified more strongly with their nation reported greater engagement in public health behaviors and greater support for public health policies. This result was later replicated using aggregated behavioral data.

By |2022-02-17T05:51:59+00:00June 8th, 2021|Categories: Cross-Cultural Perspectives, Health & Medicine|Tags: , , , , , , , |
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Do Lab Studies Replicate in the Field? The Case of Simplified Nutrition Labels

There is a growing concern that the academic literature, because of publication biases and other limitations of single-shot, lab-based studies, overstates the power of nudges in real life. We examined this issue in a 10-week RCT in 60 supermarkets comparing 4 front-of-pack simplified nutrition labels. The good news is that the ordering of the nutrition labels was the same as in published lab-based studies. The bad news is that our effect sizes were, on average, 17 times smaller than in the published literature.

By |2022-06-30T01:20:06+00:00October 6th, 2020|Categories: Behavioral Theory & Insights, Health & Medicine, Marketing & Consumer Behavior, Research Methods|Tags: , , , , , , , , |
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Behavioral Economist, Behave Yourself

Using cognitive mechanisms (commitment, loss aversion, social norms and suchlike), I hacked myself to boost my motivation for exercise and healthy habits, get in shape and lose 15 kilos (33 pounds)… all in a record six months.

By |2022-02-17T06:09:45+00:00January 15th, 2020|Categories: Behavioral Theory & Insights, Health & Medicine, Society & Everyday Life|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , |
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Exerting Self-Control ≠ Sacrificing Pleasure

In the typical self-control experiment, participants are given a choice between a hedonic vice-food (e.g., chocolate) and a utilitarian virtue-food (e.g., fruit). Choosing the hedonic vice is interpreted as a self-control failure. We argue that self-control failures are better captured as choices that violate one’s long-term goals and induce regret. Accordingly, the consumption of hedonic food is not necessarily a self-control failure, and self-control does not necessarily entail a trade-off between pleasure and health. Our conceptualization has far-reaching consequences for consumers and policy-makers who try to help consumers exert self-control.

By |2022-02-17T06:10:33+00:00December 4th, 2019|Categories: Health & Medicine, Marketing & Consumer Behavior|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , |
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Why Talking Calories Defeats the Point of Nudging

A frequent misconception we hold is believing that what makes food healthy or unhealthy is the number of calories it contains. We know that soda is unhealthy and has a lot of calories and that chamomile infusion is healthy and does not have a lot of calories.

By |2022-02-17T06:24:48+00:00April 14th, 2018|Categories: Health & Medicine, Marketing & Consumer Behavior|Tags: , , , , , |
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A Run-Down of the CEGA Behavioral Economics in Global Health Conference

“How can we use behavioral insights to nudge individuals into better health decision making?” This is one of the fundamental questions that inspired the third annual Conference on Behavioral Economics (BE) in Global Health at UC Berkeley, organized by the Behavioral Economics in Reproductive Health Initiative (BERI) at the Center for Effective Global Action (CEGA).

By |2022-02-17T06:50:12+00:00September 30th, 2016|Categories: Cross-Cultural Perspectives, Emerging & Developing Economies, Health & Medicine|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |
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