Some Recent Posts

 I will use this blogpost to update on job opportunities that people send me. Obviously, no posting is an endorsement though I will try to post ones that will be interesting to the type of people who keep an eye on the blogposts. 

23rd July 2022 

Public Perceptions of Decarbonising Domestic Heat Options for Climate Change: Cardiff University School of Psychology seeks to appoint a Research Associate in the area of environmental and/or social psychology to work with Professor Nick Pidgeon (Cardiff University) and Dr Christina Demski (Bath University) on a major ongoing project as part of the UK Energy Research Centre (https://ukerc.ac.uk/). The successful candidate will administer, analyse statistically, and report a major nationally representative survey of how the public view options for the future decarbonisation of domestic heat in the UK. The research will focus upon public responses to heat decarbonisation in the light of the urgent challenge of climate change as well as the current energy bills crisis. The post would suit a statistically literate person with online survey experience (SPSS, Qualtrics) ideally nearing or recently awarded a PhD. For informal inquiries contact pidgeonn@cardiff.ac.uk or cd2076@bath.ac.uk and for post details and how to apply see Research Associate | Cardiff University (brassring.com)   

Several positions at CogCo, a really interesting new company that is employing quite a few behavioural science graduates. 

Two postdocs working with computational social science team led by Prof Taha Yasseri at UCD.

Speaking Notes Behavioural Transformations Workshop

Below are speaker notes for a talk I gave at LSE as part of the workshop entitled "Behavioural Transformations in the 21st century" on July 7th 2022. The talk itself is interactive and not fully scripted. Hopefully the notes below will help if anyone wants to source various material or follow up on any points.

What is behavioural science? Historically. Current field definitions.

How can we incorporate well-being into the evaluation of behavioural public policy? More generally, clarifying interaction between normative foundations, evidence and practice.

How can we deal with the complexity of cultural variation? Moving beyond just pointing out the WEIRDNESS of behavioural science? Global team based science.

What are the emerging ethical issues in the integration of behavioural science? How do these manifest in public and private sectors as well as NGOs?

What issues emerge when we scale behavioural science ideas? When we go from the lab or from theory to the world, what sort of dynamic feedback loops might arise? What have we learned in this regard from covid? Social representations of behavioural science.

What structures will emerge nationally and globally in these areas? BPP Journal, IBBPA, JBPA. Professional structures BSPA, GAABS, Government networks, Private Sector Networks.

References:

Banerjee, A., Banerji, R., Berry, J., Duflo, E., Kannan, H., Mukerji, S., ... & Walton, M. (2017). From proof of concept to scalable policies: Challenges and solutions, with an application. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 31(4), 73-102.

Bavel, J. J. V., Baicker, K., Boggio, P. S., Capraro, V., Cichocka, A., Cikara, M., ... & Willer, R. (2020). Using social and behavioural science to support COVID-19 pandemic response. Nature human behaviour, 4(5), 460-471.

Chater, N., & Loewenstein, G. (2022). The i-Frame and the s-Frame: How Focusing on the Individual-Level Solutions Has Led Behavioral Public Policy Astray. Available at SSRN 4046264.

Dolan, P., & Galizzi, M. M. (2015). Like ripples on a pond: behavioral spillovers and their implications for research and policy. Journal of Economic Psychology, 47, 1-16.

Dolan, P., Hallsworth, M., Halpern, D., King, D., & Vlaev, I. (2010). “MINDSPACE: Influencing behaviour through public policy” Institute for Government and Cabinet Office.

Lades, L. K., & Delaney, L. (2022). Nudge FORGOOD. Behavioural Public Policy, 6(1), 75-94.

Michie, S., Van Stralen, M. M., & West, R. (2011). The behaviour change wheel: a new method for characterising and designing behaviour change interventions. Implementation science, 6(1), 1-12.

Milkman, K. L., Patel, M. S., Gandhi, L., Graci, H. N., Gromet, D. M., Ho, H., ... & Duckworth, A. L. (2021). A megastudy of text-based nudges encouraging patients to get vaccinated at an upcoming doctor’s appointment. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(20).

Muthukrishna, M., Bell, A. V., Henrich, J., Curtin, C. M., Gedranovich, A., McInerney, J., & Thue, B. (2020). Beyond Western, Educated, Industrial, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) psychology: Measuring and mapping scales of cultural and psychological distance. Psychological science, 31(6), 678-701.

OECD (2017), Behavioural Insights and Public Policy: Lessons from Around the World, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264270480-en.