The psychological cost of nudging: Julian Jamison

In today’s episode, we are joined by Julian Jamison, a professor of Economics at the University of Exeter and an affiliate at the Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) and Jameel Abdul Latif Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL). Prior to this, Julian spent 9 years in the public sector working for the United States government as Section Chief of the Decision-making and Behavioral Studies group and as a Behavioral Economist for the Global INsights Initiative at the World Bank (now known as the Mind, Behavior and Development Unit, or eMBeD).

Julian holds a B.S and M.S in Mathematics from the California Institute of Technology and a Ph.D. in Game Theory from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His academic work focuses on the interaction between individual preferences, decisions, and well-being, and on institutional policies, including explicit welfare tradeoffs. He uses a wide range of methodological approaches, including mathematical theory, lab and field experiments, formal rhetoric, surveys, and large administrative data analytics. Julian’s work has been featured by The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, The Wall Street Journal, National Public Radio, Forbes, Foreign Policy, The Washington Post, Bloomberg, and The Economist.

In this episode, we discuss:

• Julian’s experience working as a behavioral scientist at the World Bank eMBeD unit.
• Working in academia and working in industry: pros, cons and lessons.
• The need to distinguish between behavioral obstacles and behaviorally-informed interventions
• How the fear of ambiguity makes behavioral science more challenging to adopt within organizations.
• Why measurement tools are critical in any study.
• Why the behavioral science we of our decade is different from what has been studied before
• Julian’s hope for the future of behavioral science: Integrated into our approaches in a way that is complementary rather than a separate field
• The need for specialization in behavioral science