Course Number: S S 302D
Course Title: Using Behavioral Science to Change the World
Semester/Year: Spring 2022
Instructor Name: David Yeager
Description
The 20th century was defined by humanity’s ability to invent a pill, vaccine, or device to overcome our biggest challenges. As the current COVID pandemic makes clear, those days are not over entirely. But, in this century, the most serious threats to human health and well-being are largely driven by individual and collective behavior choices we all make every day—whether we persist in school, maintain healthy diets, wear face masks, save for retirement, put our phones away while driving, use energy and other resources responsibly, and adhere to basic ethical standards. Consequently, behavioral science has emerged as a major new frontier in the policy sphere. Behavioral interventions are policies or programs that are designed to influence individual behavior choices in ways that benefit individuals, the organizations they are part of, and/or the broader society without the use of any significant economic incentives (e.g., fines, subsidies). Instead, to shape behavior, behavioral interventions rely on a sophisticated understanding of the psychology that drives people’s decisions—usually by tapping into underappreciated and powerful internal sources of motivation, by alleviating hidden psychological barriers to the desired behavior, or a combination of these.In the past decade, large numbers of governments at every level (e.g., US, UK, City of Chicago), social entrepreneurship ventures (e.g., the One Acre Fund, Innovations for Poverty Action), major corporations (e.g., Bank of America, Pepsico, Google, Facebook, Uber, Morningstar Financial), and non-governmental organizations (e.g., the World Bank, the World Health Organization) have launched their own in-house behavioral science teams to conduct research to inform the design of new policies and programs. And countless other organizations are making use of outside behavioral insights consultants (Ideas 42, Behavioral Insights Team, BEworks, Behavioral Sight) to inform key decisions in a wide range of domains.
Diversity and Inclusion
This course will be challenging and we all need to feel safe and included if we are to embrace that challenge. As such, it is essential that we create a positive learning environment where diverse perspectives are recognized and valued as a source of strength. I ask that you join me and your fellow students in creating a classroom culture based on open communication, mutual respect, and inclusion. Disagreements and debates are fine and can even be good. But I ask that you focus on the arguments, not the person, and that you seek to understand, not characterize.
Goals
The goal of this course is to provide you with the basic knowledge and experience necessary to competently design and evaluate new behavioral interventions as a working professional in a social entrepreneurship venture, traditional for-profit firm, government agency, or NGO. This course is also appropriate for any student who plans to work in a more traditional policy-making or management role and simply wants to have a solid grounding in relevant behavioral principles. This course is intended to prepare you to actually design your own interventions to influence the behaviors you care about in contexts you are interested in. This course is appropriate for students with interests in a wide range of social, policy, or business goals. In the table below, I list some common professional interests, the sectors they are most commonly associated with, and example behaviors or related outcomes that a behavioral intervention might target. This is meant to illustrate the broad applicability of the skills you will develop in this course and the wide range of substantive domains you can choose to focus on in developing your own actual intervention designs, which you will be doing in this course.
Required Texts
A series of articles, books, and book excerpts will be assigned. Purchase the required books and as many (or as few) of the optional books as you choose. Used copies are fine and it doesn’t matter which edition you get. All additional reading materials will be posted on Canvas. The readings for each week should be completed before the class meeting noted in the syllabus.
Required books:
Handbook of Wise Interventions, Gregory M. Walton and Alia J. Crum (Eds.), Guilford Press. New York. *Note: Available for free through UT libraries.
Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein, Penguin Books. New York *Note: Used copies are available online.
Optional books (relevant readings will be posted as PDFs on Canvas):
Influence: The Science of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini, Harper Business. New York
The person and the situation: Perspectives of social psychology by Lee Ross & Richard Nisbett, McGraw-Hill series in social psychology. London
Course Requirements
Participation: 35% of final grade
- 10% - Discussion questions
- 10% - Conceptual toolkit journal entries
- 10% - Feedback on other students’ work
- 5% - Active participation in class, collaboration with peers, etc. In order to gain full credit, you must share your thoughts in class (either live or in the chat) and in groups.
Short-form intervention proposals: 30% of final grade
- 5% - Initial Week-4 concept proposal
- 10% - First short-form proposal draft of final project
- 15% - Second short-form proposal draft of final project
Final Proposal: 35% of final grade
A top-notch final proposal will include:
- A thoughtful and realistic conceptual analysis of the problem and how your proposed intervention is expected to ameliorate it
- An innovative proposed intervention approach (described clearly) with the potential to be effective
- A clearly-defined, measurable outcome and a realistic plan to measure it
- Carefully crafted intervention materials that bring your intervention concept “to life” for the participant. (It can be helpful to ask people you know to review your draft materials and give you feedback.)
Instructor Bio
Dr. Yeager is interested in understanding the processes shaping adolescent development, especially how social cognitive factors interact with structural and physiological factors to create positive or negative trajectories for youth. He is also interested in learning how to influence these psychological processes, so as to improve developmental and educational outcomes for youth.
