Hey Megan, let's do a podcast. Great idea. What

should we talk about?

In my work, I get to work and talk with and hang out

with some of the most interesting people in our field. And what I love about

this podcast is that an extended community gets to listen in on a few

of those conversations. Today I get to talk to Joy VerPlanck of

JVP Creative Solutions. And this has been

a conversation long in the making, over

several years of talking about these things and this program

and whatnot. And Joy, you've worked in some very high-stakes

environments, like the military and public safety, where behavior

under pressure really, really matters. And

you've also worked in global leadership consultancies, several

high-profile, like, thought-leader clients, and

through a lot of your work there are these

through-lines of behavior science, adult learning principles, and just

some plain-old, straight-up talk and

communication and being very straightforward. Joy,

welcome. What's keeping you busy these days? Hi,

thanks for having me. I am working in a lot

of cool aspects of Learning and Development, and one of

the things that's keeping me busy and excited these days is working

in IP development — intellectual property. So I'm working with

a lot of thought leaders who have big wonderful ideas

that haven't really been

detailed well. Maybe it's

kind of chaotic and messy in their heads, but they

know that they've got something teachable, and learnable, and scalable,

and they just need a little bit of help.

And producing some cool frameworks and learning solutions.

That's super cool. And I know I've met a few of those thought leaders that

you're working with and you're right, they're brilliant. So I love

how you're shaping that with them. That's super — that sounds like just

the best job ever. Yeah, it's pretty not bad.

So Joy, "behavioral...." "Behavioral" is all the rage, right?

And I'm totally fascinated, whether it's

behavioral science or then we get digging in deeper to subfields like

behavioral economics and behavioral political science and just

how this all explains real human

behavior, how do we make decisions, and how

does this transform how we think about

fields that have historically thought of human beings as

rational actors. Which, when I say that, "human beings as

rational actors," seems like laughably obvious, and yet that's

the history of some of these fields. And so this makes

so much sense, right?

As learning designers though, what's interesting, I find, is that we're in the business

of shaping behavior, but we don't always ground what

we're doing in behavioral science in really explicit ways. And there's

some implicit ways that we do, but maybe not

intentionally. So I'm really, really curious

how behavioral science can sharpen how we

design learning experiences. So I'd love to dig in

today on what behavioral science can offer

learning and development professionals who actually want their work

to change behavior, not just transfer information.

So let's get started. What the heck is behavioral science

and how is it valuable? Sure,

it's a mashup. It's this big awesome mashup of

fun, related things, like anthropology,

and how we developed our brains as humans

and humans who interact with each other, and

neuroscience, and psychology. And that

mashup has been used in all

aspects of the way we interact with the world.

So marketers use it all the time to get us

interested in buying something. So it just makes perfect

sense that learning designers could use this to get people interested

in learning and applying something. So if

it's good enough to get us to buy a Big Arch, which is the new

McDonald's burger that just went viral for the way

that the CEO ate it, which I'm sure was a

marketing scheme, then

we should be able to use similar techniques and bring

behavioral science into the way we do L&D. That's

so super cool. So how do you see

this shaping real-world — I mean it's one thing for, to

buy hamburgers — but like how do you see this shaping real-world

decisions, how we make them at scale and organizations, in policy, in

high-stakes environments, day to day on

the job? Right? Well,

behavioral science influences everything about why we

do what we do, the way we act, the way we behave and the decisions

that we make that lead up to the moment of action

or inaction. If there is a

barrier to somebody doing something that's really important

that they need to do, simply using behavioral science to

remove a barrier could allow the flow of information

to go from "I'm thinking about it, I'm thinking about it" to "I have

to do this" or "I absolutely should not

do this." We are... we have

the benefit of metacognition and we can think about our thinking, and sometimes

that gets in the way and, and we might just need

to look to our left and right and see that it's okay that we make

this move. So when we understand

the different things that contribute

to all of the ways we make decisions, we can influence it in

good and healthy and meaningful ways.

Not just hamburgers. Yeah, not just hamburgers.

Well, I wrote — or "I wrote," I didn't write it — I read it

a few years ago, the book Nudge by Cass Sunstein and

Richard Thaler, who was actually my macroeconomics professor

in business school. And I'm so

glad he doesn't remember me because I did horribly in that class. But anyways, I

can still, whenever I read

that or hear him on a podcast, I think about that class and remember where

I sit. But that really got a

lot of conversation into the general population

around behavioral science, specifically behavioral economics. And I

wonder if you could share just some of

the hallmark behavioral science concepts that

might help a

learning and development professional get engaged and started.

Like what are some of the.... There's so much out there; what are two or

three?

Yeah, one of my, one of my favorites, and I think about it all the

time because it's influences me at the grocery store

and in choosing learning solutions

and everything, is the paradox of choice, also called the

tyranny of choice. And

it's basically that we like

choice, we like to have the agency to

make a decision about something, but we're going to be happier with that decision

if we have less to choose from. Totally

counterintuitive. Keep going. But if you

think about if you, if you go to the store and you want to buy

jeans and you only have three pairs of jeans and they're extremely different —

you know, this pair has bell bottoms and this pair is high waist and this

pair is tie dyed, whatever — then

the one that you pick is so significantly different from the

other two that you'll be more pleased with your decision when you

go home than if you tried on 15 pairs of jeans and they were

all quite similar and then you might second guess. So this is, you know,

it's good for marketing. But also think about how many times a day we have

to make decisions. And when we're learning something, if you're

given a test, a quiz or whatever, or

you're given the choice of how many different classes you

could choose from, when it comes time to finish up,

you'll feel more satisfied with the one you selected if you've

got limited exposure at the front end. So I think paradox of

choice is a pretty interesting one to apply beyond the yogurt

aisle and into learning and development.

So if you're thinking here, right, so I'm thinking about how I might apply this,

right? Because we like offering lots of opportunities.

But I remember once I did a cafeteria-style learning course, and

we wanted to give people the ability to personalize

their experience a little bit. So instead of having everybody in the classroom do

the same activity, we had six different

activities and

there was so much — I thought of it in terms of cognitive overload, but

now I see it in terms of paradox of choice where there

was just so many choices, and it was hard for them to pick. Where if

I had maybe just made three choices of which

activity to do, that might have

made that transition to that activity and people's satisfaction with

their choice later on a little bit more concrete. Right, yeah.

You just mentioned two different impacts. One, the choice itself

becomes easier because you're reducing the cognitive load and all the decisions

that have to go on and the biases that happen when we're under

pressure, you know, we start to default to

what we know, what we think we'll like based on previous experience,

or some other different factors. And then, yeah, in the end, I mean,

the survey comes around. What do you, what

did you think about this? "Oh, I was really happy with this choice because I

only have three to choose from." Absolutely. Well, and I think

my — yes, I would love people to be thrilled to pieces with their

learning experience, but also get something out of it and not be

so like, really frustrated with, "oh, I got the wrong choice" kind

of thing and have that be a barrier to implementation. We

do that all the time when we go to a conference and there's all

these different.... How do we choose from the courses that we're going to go to?

And then halfway through the course, you start flipping through the program and you go,

"should I have picked the one next door?" And suddenly

you're focused on, "did I make the right choice?" Instead of, "yeah, this one. This

one was clear. I'm in it and I'm learning." So, yeah, that's a

good one. Okay,

what's another one? Well, nudges. We think

of nudges — at least I did when I

first came up in the world of instructional design — as something you do

after the training and you kind of nudge somebody to re-engage after the

spacing has happened so that you can activate that retrieval

process in their brain. So you give them a little while and then you

say, "hey, don't forget to come back and practice this a little bit more." And

that is a nudge. But nudges are really a

way to reduce friction. And if

you think about nudges and all the different ways people try and

make things easier for us to make that next step faster, more

streamlined.

Netflix does it all the time: "You've just finished Watching this. We've got another one

right here for you." Next episode. I don't

even have to click the button, right?

I don't even have to find the remote! So what if we start doing that

in learning and development where you know, we

— and applying normative social influence to that as well.

Imagine if your LXP has all these different

things that people just like you already loved.

You know, I mean, on Amazon,

it's... they've got that best seller thing there for

a reason. That's a nudge of

normative social influence. Like we're going to put this right in front of you and

provide you with something that's going to make it really easy for you to make

this decision. It's all about speeding up our decisions.

What I love — this concept, right? Nudges and

they exist within an architecture of choices, choice architecture. And how

do I, as the designer of

an interface or an experience or a decision for

others to make, how do I nudge them? Suggest

the path that is healthy,

useful for them, productive for them, in a way that still gives

them agency, right? And that's...

they still choose. I

haven't reduced the choices they have, but I've made it

really easy for them to make a choice that's good — that I might think

is good for them, right? I love the example.... And

maybe we can figure out some learning-related

examples, right? So in the, you know, when you put

bananas next to the checkout in a cafeteria, people buy

bananas. If you put candy next to the checkout

in the grocery store, people buy candy. I would not otherwise

buy candy in the grocery store if it wasn't

conveniently placed by the cash register, right?

And I am a sucker for peanut M&MS. I will just say it, right?

And because they're right there, I do not seek them out, right?

And so it's part of that architecture. I have the choice.

So if we think about, from a learning perspective, what are some of the

things we can design

in that might help nudge us in a productive direction?

Well, to your point, you opt out, you

recognize that there is candy right there. And you

have — they could even put it in your, you

know, in your basket. We're just

going to start every basket with a bag of peanut M&MS. You

have the ability to take it out and leave it anywhere in the store that

you like. That gives you the sense of agency.

You still have the autonomy. "This is my choice. I'm going to

leave it in here." But they've just made it really

easy. So we can do the same thing. We can do the

opt out instead of the opt in. Instead of having people

proactively seek something. I love it. A few

years ago, we built, for the American Spinal Injury Association,

their flagship course on how to conduct a

particular assessment for spinal cord injured patients. And

so we had this flagship course. To certain audiences, they had to pay for it,

for certain audiences it was purchased for them or free of charge for them.

And that's what they came for. That's what they came to ASIA, the American

Spinal Injury Association, that's what they came for.

But there were some other programs that ASIA thought would be really, really useful, including

the pediatric considerations version and a

spasticity assessment that were related, but probably things

that people wouldn't seek out. So we just

bundled them. If you bought the flagship course, you got the other

two, right? And did everybody take them? No,

but they had the option. It was right there in their learning plan for them

and it was free. So we made it easy for them to get that information.

If they had to go hunting through the LMS to find it, you can be

darn sure they would never have taken that. Right? well,

you know, the whole normative social influence aspect of it could have

nudged that a little bit further as well. Okay, so you've now

talked about normative social influence, but not yet defined it. I know you have a

Decision Lab article on it. What is it?

How does it work? How do we use it as a force for good?

Yeah, it's basically going along with the norms

because, well, you want to be cool, don't you? I want to

be cool. I need to... I need help.

But that,

that's essentially it. When you, when you observe people

around you doing somethin, and oftentimes

you might look because you're unsure

—"might this be a class that I want to take?" "Oh, wow,

I mean, most of the people at my level in the organization have already taken

it. I guess this is for me." It

can also influence how you feel about. "Wow, most people just

like me loved this class." As you go into it, you're

kind of primed to love it because, well, if I don't, I

might be different. What's wrong with me if

everybody else just like me took and loved this course

and I didn't? You know, that's kind of why

a lot of Yelp reviews end up — once you get a lot of

five star reviews, you're going to get a lot more five star reviews.

I wonder how that connects with like

Keller's motivation theories and whatnot around,

you know, "people who, people who succeed in this

class do these six things" or "people who learn a

lot in this learning program are, you know, they're the ones who participate in

the discussion boards" and things like that. Is that aligned with

normative social influence? Sure, yeah. We are

motivated by things that keep us safe and keep us cool

in the sense of socially accepted as part of a group of people

that we identify with. If our in-group is doing

something, it is safe for us to do something similar.

So if the norm in an organization becomes,

"oh, we all, you haven't taken that class yet? We've all, we've

all taken that class." And then somebody is going to

be like, "oh my gosh, I'm going to be out. I'm going to become part

of the out-group." And so their motivational driver is based

on a basic human need to get along in a group.

Because we are driven to be accepted by our.... This is,

this is like middle school. It is, it's a bit of peer

pressure. Okay, that's fair. That's fair.

So can we, can we

intentionally design this as a way to help

people adopt new skills and apply them on the job?

Yeah, of course. And actually, applying the

skills is interesting. Most — a lot of

people in our line of work have heard about social learning,

and social learning theory has turned into this whole different idea

of, well, "it's in an LMS, if people liked taking the

class, then they'll give a thumbs up." And then it's, you know, "you can thumb

up somebody else because they took a class and you can congratulate

them." And that's social learning. No, it is not. Social learning theory is that

we learn by observing other people doing that thing. So you can

even just create a

normative social influence around application of

skills. If you see enough

people using that new, you know, ticket

system and you go, "well, I guess

I have to use this new ticket system. I haven't

taken the course yet, but I'm just going to watch somebody else do it." And

so you can put people in an environment

where they are observing each other, learning

and practicing new skills, and accelerate it that way. Yeah,

it's all about just looking left and right and seeing what we're all doing.

Okay, that's fair. That's fair. Which is hard to do when we

work from home because I don't, I don't have anybody left in my left and

right. It's a whole other layer, probably for a

conversation for a different day, but a whole other layer of what this

disaggregated work environment might do

here. So

I've often heard that people will say one thing

and do something different. So maybe they conform

publicly, but not in the real world

or not privately. Can you talk about what

that is first? Because I've seen you mention that, but we haven't talked about

it yet today. What is this difference between conforming publicly and

privately and what that

implies for learning design? Yeah,

there's, there's some research that shows that they

conform privately too. So even if you go along with the group

and say "we all watched the same movie and this is what we

got out of it," or "this is what happened in the end" and everybody's saying,

"well, you know, so and so got exited"

or whatever, so

this is how the movie ended, and you watched it and you

go, "I don't think that's what I saw." But you observe so many people

around you in agreement that you not only

conform in that moment and say, "this is what I got out of the learning."

"This is what I saw in the movie." "This is what I experienced in this

moment." But later on, you'll actually have a different memory that

aligns with the norm. So if we're not careful, if

we don't invite people to challenge all the time, there is a

possibility that people will go along with the norm

and misremember, misunderstand something, some component of that learning.

So I think it's really important to build in challenges

where you answer questions before you

can see other people's

responses. This is kind of the

way we break out of

groupthink. In different ways, you can

solicit feedback and answers, and you can

even create challenges where, you know,

everybody's gonna share what they learned; what can you find wrong

with it? And

make that part of the learning that there's an expectation that

you are here to challenge each other. I mean, that is a big time cultural

norm and it's not easy to do because it's a lot

easier to just go along with the group. But yeah,

if you're intentional about soliciting people's

input before they have a chance to be influenced by others,

then there's a better chance that you'll get

real answers no matter what the group is going

along with. So it

feels like — for a learning & development leader

and they're trying, we're trying to shape performance, we're trying to

shape leaders, we're trying to shape culture —this can

either be, and this by either normative

social influence or larger behavioral science, either like a

force for good or a force for evil. I mean, should

we be worried about it? Should we be using it intentionally? Should we be talking

about it? Should we not be talking about it?

Yeah, all of those things. Yes, it,

it is a force for good or a force for evil.

I would say if it comes from a good place and you're genuinely trying to

help somebody learn something that's good for them and good for their job,

then it's not for evil.

Manipulating somebody into

becoming a smarter person, becoming more skilled

at their job, is that really manipulation or are you just trying to

remove a barrier to their optimal performance?

I have at one point in my career developed

an empathy-based learning solution, like how

to teach people how to care about other people. And somebody asked

me, like, if you're teaching people how to show that they care,

are you potentially helping people manipulate

others? And I'm like, by teaching them how to be empathetic? I mean, maybe,

but at some point they're going to pretend

so much that maybe they'll get good at it, maybe they'll get comfortable with

it. So yeah, I mean,

I think it's fine. Like all

things. There's positives and negatives, right?

So, okay, I'm gonna make our lightning round

then. A little bit of normative social influence.

What's a book that smart people like us and

like you might be revved up about?

What, what are you reading these days? What's interesting to you?

I just finished a book called Good Awkward by Henna

Pryor, and it was a great book.

It was validating,

encouraging, it was strategic and tactical, and

there was a little bit of behavioral science in it, but it wasn't overly sciency.

It was just a very enjoyable read. I loved it. Oh, that sounds

fascinating. Good Awkward. Tell me, what's — I mean, I...

there's a whole lot of awkward. So

tell me.... It's actually

maybe your superpower.

Recognize it in the right ways and use it to your

strategic advantage.

I love it. I love it. Do you fidget

while you work? Do you listen to things, do things,

eat things? I just kind of like love how people's brains work.

Right. I sometimes forget to eat. I'll get stuck in work all day long

and forget to eat. And then just — so, no, I'm not

that good at that. And I, I'll listen to music in the other

room until it stops playing, and then I'll listen to a podcast when I

when I need a brain break. And

so I, lately I've been into a lot of behavioral science podcasts. I

go between the Growth Ready podcast,

Adam Grant's podcast, Diary

of a CEO. It's just, you know, people

talking at me. To you,

to you. Right. They're right there with me. It's me.

I'm their audience. Podcasts are all the rage these

days. Everybody's doing it. You want to be cool, don't you?

See how that works? Well, okay, right.

Seriously, I, I started this. I didn't want to do a podcast, didn't want to

do a podcast, didn't want to do a podcast. Then all of a sudden, all

these cool people are doing podcasts. Alright, I should do a podcast. Normative social

influence. Joy, thank you. This,

as always, has been a fantastic conversation and I always

learn something from you. I'm always challenged to

be a better learning designer and better leader by talking to you. So thank you

so much. Same. Thank you. See you soon.

So how'd that go, Megan? I'm so glad we had a chance

to re-do that. That was actually the second time we recorded this podcast

and usually we don't do that, but a few weeks

ago, when Joy and I first got together to to podcast, not only

did we go off on a bunch of really fun rabbit holes and tangents and

loose ends and stuff — there were a lot of loose ends, and I

really wanted to tie them back, but of course, in the middle of it, the

guy who's walking the dog shows up and so my head got somewhere else and

it was really just good to — I appreciate the patience

that Joy had with

me in re-recording it. So behavioral

science is something that I'm super excited about. It's really,

really interesting. Once you start learning about it, you see it everywhere

in the world. And so I'm glad to have just a

few tidbits and pieces from her here today.

And we'll drop the book references

that she and I made during this if people want to dig in and do

some more. This is Meg Fairchild and Megan

Torrance, and this has been a podcast from

TorranceLearning. Tangents is the official podcast of

TorranceLearning (as though we have an unofficial one). Tangents

is hosted by Meg Fairchild and Megan Torrance. It's

produced by Dean Castile and Meg Fairchild, engineered

and edited by Dean Castile with original music

also by Dean Castile. This episode was fact

checked by Meg Fairchild.