The Cost-Effective Power Of Psychological Nudges
Spearheaded by UCLA’s Shlomo Benartzi, and including Beshears, Thaler, Sunstein, and the Wharton School’s Katherine Milkman, among others, the group settled on four areas of particular interest to nudge units in the United States and United Kingdom—retirement savings, college enrollment, public health interventions, and energy consumption. They then identified a single metric of success in each of the four areas and reviewed every paper that was focused on that success metric and that was published in a top academic journal in the last 15 years.
July 19, 2017
-Forbes
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The 1 Mistake We All Make When It Comes to Serious Decisions
“It’s a very robustly studied phenomenon,” Katherine Milkman, an associate professor at The Wharton School of Business, told TODAY. “It can lead to an enormous number of traps.”
June 17, 2017
-TODAY
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Adopting Financial Habits That Stick
“The third most popular resolution for 2017 was making better financial decisions. If your goal is to become a better steward of your hard-earned money, what does it take to improve your odds of succeeding once you decide to make some positive financial changes?”
June 7, 2017
-Forbes
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3 Easy Steps to Turn Around Those Abandoned New Year’s Resolutions
According to a study published by Katherine Milkman in 2014, bundling temptations helps us overcome “time inconsistency,” the notion that we all tend to value immediate rewards much more than future ones.
April 27, 2017
-HuffPost
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Even Work-Life Balance Experts Are Awful at Balancing Work and Life
Recent surveys show that overworked Americans put work-life balance near the top of their wish lists — but if the experts can’t seem to manage it, how can the rest of us ever hope to? According to Katherine Milkman, at least part of the problem with work-life conflict is simply the overly optimistic way we humans tend to plan (or, worse, not plan) for the future.
March 28, 2017
-The Cut
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5 New Year’s Resolutions You’ll Always Break And How to Change That
“TODAY talked with two experts, including Katherine Milkman, to find out which resolutions are hardest to keep, and how you can still tackle them.”
December 30, 2016
-TODAY
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Why We Think We Can Keep Those New Year’s Resolutions
“It can be hard to overcome the inertia of inaction or bad habits, but the positive expectations about “next week,” “next month,” or “next year” might help people to get going. Indeed, researchers have found that people do at least take the first step on these new beginnings.”
December 29, 2016
-Scientific American
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Why Objects Can Be More Meaningful Gifts Than Experiences
“Studies show that even arbitrary, nonessential objects can become powerful cues for memory. Which goes to show it’s not just priceless family jewels or heirlooms that make for memory cues; they can be anything imbued with meaning. Earlier this year, psychologists Todd Rogers and Katherine Milkman published a paper demonstrating this neatly.”
December 23, 2016
-Vox
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The No-Fail Way to Motivate Yourself to Go to the Gym, According to Science
It can be hard to motivate yourself to go to the gym after a grueling day at the office. Use temptation bundling to help get you off the couch and back on the treadmill.
December 7, 2016
-Reader's Digest
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Katherine Milkman ’04 Studies Why We Do What We Do—and How to Change It
An overview of Prof. Milkman’s research and undergraduate career at Princeton for the Princeton Alumni Weekly.
October 26, 2016
-Princeton Alumni Weekly
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Want to Make Better Decisions? Try ‘Temptation Bundling’
The idea is to link a want (in the study, listening to audio versions of page-turners such as the Hunger Games books) with a popular should (working out at the campus fitness center). If getting on a treadmill were the only way to hear the next chapter in the novel, would you be more likely to get off the couch and go to the gym?
October 21, 2016
-New York Magazine
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September Is Your Second-Chance January
People don’t just use these landmarks to organize the memories of their lives; we use them to organize memories of ourselves, too, something they call “temporal self-appraisal.” Maybe you did not make a ton of progress over the summer on the book you’re writing (or whatever), but that was summer you. This is September you!
September 1, 2016
-New York Magazine
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Making a Backup Plan Undermines Performance
An interview with Professor Jihae Shin of the Wisconsin School of Business, and Professor Katherine Milkman of the Wharton School on their research on the impact of backup plans on overall performance.
September 2016
-Harvard Business Review
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Why Making a Backup Plan May Set You Up to Fail
Jihae Shin and Katherine Milkman’s results showed that those who made those backup plans ended up performing worse on the task at hand. And the researchers’ follow-up questions showed that this was due, at least in part, to a diminished drive for success.
August 17, 2016
-The Washington Post
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“Plan A” Works Better When There Is No “Plan B”
The best-laid plans are those that don’t include backup plans. In a series of studies, Jihae Shin and Katherine Milkman found that when people make a backup plan for their goals, their performance on the primary goal can suffer because they tend to put less effort into achieving the primary goal.
August 16, 2016
-The Wall Street Journal
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A “Stop In Your Tracks” Hack For Forgetfulness
To help conquer the challenges of forgetting to do something, Katherine Milkman and co-author Todd Rogers find that the key to remembering may actually be something completely unrelated to your intention – and something that stands out from the routine of everyday life.
August 15, 2016
-Knowledge@Wharton
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The Downside To Being Prepared For Failure
Human beings are naturally loss averse. On the one hand, back-up plans are useful fail-safe measures. On the other hand, back-up plans can become excuses—leading people to give-up before failure is even apparent.
August 5, 2016
-Boston Globe
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The Long-Term Effects of Tracking Employee Behavior
Recent research by Hengchen Dai and Katherine Milkman has found that tracking employee behavior with regards to hand washing can increase hand hygiene compliance but after employee tracking stops, compliance levels dropped below the rates before tracking was implemented.
July 18, 2016
-Harvard Business Review
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It’s Tough To Make Good Health Choices, But Science Can Help
Simply wanting to change certain behaviors that we know raise the risk for health problems isn't enough to get most of us to follow through, but University of Pennsylvania’s Katherine Milkman has a concept known as “temptation bundling” to help make positive behavior changes.
July 7, 2016
-NPR
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The Simple Brain Trick That Will Transform Your Memory
Calendar alerts, notes, and even the old-fashioned string-around-the-finger work occasionally, but they don’t always provide the reminder at a time when you need it most, and they’re so common that they are easily overlooked or ignored. A new report published in Psychological Science finds that using reminders by association is a better method for remembering.
June 15, 2016
-Fast Company
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