Dan Ariely

ASC posts much of their research on #psychometrics and #assessment. Here's a list of papers and presentations: https://lnkd.in/gqG7G48Y

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Great insights here on understanding or changing human behavior, including powerful reminders of the crucial considerations of situational factors or context.

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Our POV on a behavioral science approach to the classic issue of overstatement. This one applies to HCPs and healthcare research. Applicable to other areas as well when trying to estimate new product shares. #behavioralscience #npd #mrx #insights

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Just sharing a new report about how early relational health “principles” can connect with practice!

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SCIENCE-BASED PRACTICE AND THE DANGERS OF OVERREACH: ESSENTIAL CONCEPTS AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS IN EVIDENCE- INFORMED PRACTICE Lyn R. Greenberg, Kathleen McNamara, and Sarah Wilkins The authors discuss the essential elements of evidence-informed services, the scope of evidence that may be relevant, and the importance of exercising clinically and scientifically informed inference in planning services. Key Points for the Family Law Community
. Evidence informed practice requires broad knowledge and disciplined application of scientific findings relevant to separated families and children, adapted to the needs of individual families.
. There is no single form of scientific inquiry that will tell us all we need to know about court involved families; a broad range of scientific information is needed.
. Oversimplified descriptions of social science are likely to be misleading and can cause serious harm to families and children.
. All court-involved mental health professionals should be able to explain the scientific and clinical bases for their opinions, procedures, recommendations, and interventions.
. As a profession, we need to clarify categories of scientific evidence and provide better tools to judicial officers for using social science evidence. Keywords: Court-Involved Families; Evidence-Informed Intervention; Science-Based Practice. VI. CONCLUSION Evidence-informed practice requires that professionals stay abreast of, or seek out, relevant research and social science literature – not just in the specialized area of family law but also in other areas that are relevant to a particular family. They need to critically review studies for their relevance to this family and understand the cultural and societal factors that may place them at increased risk. […] This approach is consistent with the scientist-practitioner model of training in which many mental health professionals have been trained. Practitioners should always evaluate progress and adjust treatment accordingly—or end treatment—when a client or patient is not benefitting from it. Both the APA Ethics Code (2017) and the AFCC Guidelines for Court-Involved therapy (2011) address these professional obligations in greater detail. […] Any professional bringing expert information or opinion to the court should be expected to specify the limits of that information, and this should be expected of authors as well. […] Judicial officers and others who receive our information should be able to expect clear explanations of what information was considered and why, as well as a clear analysis of the risks and benefits of taking any particular course. https://lnkd.in/eSdBmrsD

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Excellent and thought-provoking Keynote yesterday by George Loewenstein (Carnegie Mellon University) to mark the opening of the Association for Psychological Science conference #aps24sf. Loewenstein spoke about tendency of many behavioural scientists to propose and test policy interventions that seek to ‘fix’ problems with individual behaviour (adopting an “i-frame”) rather than addressing the system in which individuals operate (an “s-frame”). Loewenstein explored the impact of such i-frame interventions and how they can reduce support for much-needed systemic reforms, citing a range of specific examples including policy on gun ownership, carbon footprints, obesity, car safety, and so on. He argued how highlighting individual responsibility for societal problems is a long-established objective of corporate opponents of s-frame policies (e.g., regulation and taxation). He made a compelling case for the idea that researchers advocating i-frame solutions (including 'nudge' theory) may have unwittingly promoted the interests of the opponents of systemic change. Overall, a fascinating insight into how behavioural scientists can meaningfully contribute to public policy and the implementation of value-creating system-level change. #psychology #behavioralscience #policy

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Perspectives: Moral Composition https://conta.cc/3Y68nPf

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Practical Assessment, Research, and Evaluation is arguably the best journal for research in #psychometrics and #assessment. And even better: it's free. https://lnkd.in/eTdNB2DJ

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Are greater difficulties in stopping short-form videos like TikTok linked to brain mechanisms? Today I read an interesting paper about brain and TikTok: "Viewing Personalized Video Clips Recommended By TikTok Activates Default Mode Network And Ventral Tegmental Area " Authors: Conghui Su; Hui Zhou; Liangyu Gong; Binyu Teng; Fengji Geng; Yuzheng Hu I wrote a summary to share with you: It has been reported that short-form videos, those under 15 seconds on platforms like TikTok and YouTube, are harder to stop watching than long-form videos, which typically last around 15 minutes. One reason for this is the use of highly personalized recommender algorithms tailored to each user’s interests and viewing patterns. This personalization, combined with the novelty and immediate rewards offered in a shorter time frame, likely leads to more addictive viewing behaviors and a perceived lack of control over viewing habits. The current study is one of the first to examine problematic watching behaviors specific to short-form videos, particularly TikTok, and the brain mechanisms associated with watching videos supported by personalized recommendation algorithms versus non-personalized videos. In the first part of the study, researchers developed a 20-item Problematic TikTok Use Scale in China. The second part involved an fMRI study with 30 adult participants aged 18-30, who underwent neuroimaging sessions while viewing personalized versus non-personalized short video series. It should be noted that most participants did not exhibit problematic behaviors related to controlling their short-form video watching. The fMRI results suggest that the default mode network—a group of brain regions involved in processing self-relevant information—was more highly activated when participants watched personalized videos compared to non-personalized ones. This activation was combined with deactivation in brain regions crucial for self-control, such as the anterior cingulate cortex and caudate, and greater activation in reward-processing regions like the ventral tegmental area when watching personalized videos. This helps explain why people report greater difficulty controlling their viewing behavior when watching personalized short-form videos: they are more engaging, more self-relevant, more addictive, but harder to stop as reflected in brain activation patterns. 🤔 I suggest that another aspect of short-form videos that was not the focus of this study but is of great interest to the general public is the concern surrounding instant gratification. The frequent dopamine surges from watching short-form videos could lead to dysregulation of the brain's dopaminergic reward system, leading to problematic behaviors in other areas. 💡 Future studies could explore this by comparing brain function in individuals with severe short-form video addiction.

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There is a new report on the Safety of Advanced AI - here my AI-assisted review of the report. https://lnkd.in/eQ99Ww_M

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This week's blog post is an important one for an election year: How to detect lies based on verbal ambiguity. It's one important way that the Intuitive Mind keeps us from making costly mistakes! https://lnkd.in/evM6hni

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I recently had the pleasure of interviewing veteran political strategist Mike Podhorzer for my podcast Cross Tabs. Mike has deep experience in the progressive and labor movements as a strategist and pollster, and he shared with me - as he does with his readers on his Substack, Weekend Reading invaluable insight into the many flaws inherent to how we conduct and interpret political polls. Some of the key limitations we discussed include: * National polls don't reflect our actual federalist system where state and local elections determine outcomes, and the Electoral College selects the President. Regional differences in political views are erased. * Polls taken far in advance of elections don't account for the context and information voters rely on closer to voting day. Issues and candidate views can shift dramatically up to the last minute. * Hypothetical questions about future voting intentions or how voters feel about a possible future policy agenda don't accurately predict behavior when people can't imagine those policies coming into being and can't predict how they'll feel when Election Day comes. * Media outlets often prioritize polling "horse race" coverage over understanding what is salient and believable to voters. * When you combine these factors with other forms of polling error (sample, nonresponse, mode) national polls in particular can distort our understanding of the electorate, and mislead campaigns and commentators (and voters!) on what motivates different voter groups. For those working in politics, campaigns or analyzing elections, understanding these limitations is crucial for avoiding false assumptions. You can listen to our full conversation on Cross Tabs to learn more. #polling #strategy #surveys

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This is an interesting commentary on how to integrate behavioral science into the rapidly evolving landscape of anti-obesity medications; https://lnkd.in/dJGPeJiR

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This week, please allow me to introduce you to the first chapter of The Cambridge Handbook of Healthcare Productivity, Efficiency, Effectiveness (co-edited by Shawna Grosskopf, Vivian Valdmanis and me), titled “Overview of Performance Analytics for Healthcare with Examples in R,” coauthored by Zhichao Wang and I. It's abstract is provided below: “The goal of this chapter is to introduce the reader to the wide range of methods used for performance analysis in healthcare. Specifically, we will start with a brief outline of what we refer to as the basic analytics of healthcare performance analysis, with an emphasis on hospitals. Although relatively simple, such basic performance analytics are popular approaches in practice: They are useful for exploring and presenting the data before proceeding with more sophisticated methods, and they provide a bridge for communication between practitioners and academics. To facilitate the discussion, we also provide brief empirical illustrations using real data sets as well as supply the relevant R codes of the examples. We then briefly describe other major approaches for performance analysis in healthcare as a primer for the following chapters.” We hope you and your students and colleagues will find it useful in their research and teaching!... And any feedback is very welcome! #Productivity #Efficiency #Economics #HealthEconomics #HealthStatistics #HealthEconometrics #OperationsResearch #ManagementScience #MachineLearning #BigData #Healthcare

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What are key recent discoveries in the intersection of social robotics and psychology? Today I read an interesting review paper: "A Review of Recent Research in Social Robotics" Author: Thomas B Sheridan #psychology #robotics I wrote this summary to share with you: The paper provides a brief review of the literature on social robots. The author explains that research on social robots has only begun in recent years. I found surprising as a psychologist, since I would have expected a longer history of studying social robots. The review explains that the goal of social robots is to interact socially and emotionally with humans to provide assistance. 💡 The review introduces key papers that have made important discoveries about social robots, such as - humans respond to a robot's touch and speech - people do not necessarily prefer embodied robots over VR robots, - how humans interpret robot movements - how robots understand human emotions and personality, and - in some cases, humans prefer to disclose certain information to robots rather than to other humans. 🤔 I think this would serve as a good brief review for someone new to the field of social robots who wants to know the key papers and researchers. I appreciate that the author highlights the potential for interdisciplinary research between psychology and social robotics. 🙌 It will be exciting to see future work addressing questions around what humans prefer, accept, and trust when interacting and collaborating with robots, through collaborations between psychology and social robotics.

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📢 Exciting News: New Publication Alert! 🚀 I'm thrilled to announce the release of my latest article with Drs. Alex Schoemann and Gokhan Yagiz: "How and Why to Follow Best Practices for Testing Mediation Models with Missing Data" in the International Journal of Psychology! In this piece, we explore the critical importance of handling missing data in mediation models and provide practical insights into the best practices for doing so. Key highlights include: -- Understanding different types of missing data (MCAR, MAR, MNAR) -- Effective strategies like Multiple Imputation and Maximum Likelihood Estimation If you’re working with mediation models or interested in refining your data analysis techniques, this article is for you! 👉 Read the full article here: https://lnkd.in/edkVz9KA Glad to be working at ECU College of Health and Human Performance and with Alex again 🙂 #DataScience #StatisticalAnalysis #MediationModels #MissingData #ResearchInsights

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Correcting ChatGPT about Peter Kinderman, British Psychological Association, and Anti-Semitism. It is important to address the harms of Kinderman's characterization of British psychiatrists as Nazis. Let's combat people who trivialize the Holocaust by calling psychiatrists #Nazis, as well as the fashionable #antisemitism in the field of psychology. #BritishPsychologicalSociety #criticalthinking https://lnkd.in/egkigWUG

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Do numbers bias our decision-making? This is the question explored in the article "Does Counting Change What Counts? Quantification Fixation Biases Decision-Making" by Linda W. Chang, Erika L. Kirgios, Sendhil Mullainathan, and Katherine L. Milkman. Their study examines quantification fixation, a bias where people give undue weight to numerical information over qualitative data in decisions, even when the qualitative aspects are equally or more important. The authors conducted 21 experiments involving over 23,000 participants across hiring, charitable donations, and policy decisions. One striking example involves hiring decisions: participants were more likely to favour candidates with quantified attributes, such as test scores, over equally important qualitative attributes like leadership skills. This bias happens because numerical data is seemingly easier to compare, making it feel more reliable, even when it isn’t. So what can we do about this? The researchers suggest a few practical steps. First, make sure to give equal weight to non-numerical factors when making decisions, and storytelling and visual prompts can help highlight these. It's also helpful to step back and think about what the numbers really tell us - and what they might miss. The takeaway? Numbers are useful tools, but they're just part of the story. While numbers offer clarity, they can oversimplify complexity. Researchers should design methods that balance quantitative and qualitative inputs, ensuring decisions reflect the full picture. Quantification is a powerful tool, but it should complement and not overshadow the rich, nuanced aspects of decision-making. Interested to read more? Link to the full article in comments. 

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