Kelly Schmidtke on behavioural activation for positive change (United Kingdom)

Hygiene & infection prevention network

On the episode is Kelly Schmidtke.
Dr. Kelly Schmidtke is a psychologist and a PhD in experimental psychology. She is currently an assistant professor at Warwick Medical School in England. She is the author of several book chapters and research papers.

On decision making
"Our brain doesn't make decisions, we make decisions, as people. And we have to own our decisions, not cast them off to our brain did all the hard work for us [...] You're the holistic thing."
On population behaviour
"My research drifts more towards population problems, how can we influence population behaviour to drift one direction we deem desirable and stop drifting the other direction we deem undesirable."
On MINDSPACE
"MINDSPACE is an acronym used to describe nine different ways you can nudge people: 1) Messenger, 2) Incentives, 3) Norms, 4) default, 5) salience, 6) priming, 7) Affects, 8) Commitments, 9) Ego these are nine different tools.
On nudging
"A nudge isn't an aspect of our choice environment that exists out there and influences us one way or another. I think a nudge has to be intentionally put there to drift your behaviour in one way or another"
"Fun nudges: "small plates are often recommended to people who try to lose weight. These can work on two levels. 1) perception - visually triggering your mind, 2) practical - you can only get the amount of food (that can be) on the small plate unless you stand up again and refill the plate. This is an example of nudging as long as you're in control of the amount of food. Remember, nudges are supposed to be about your free choice."
"My favourite example of a nudge is like Shore Drive, which is a road in Chicago that has BIG turns that people often miss if they don't pay attention. [...] When you drive, you use the lines as an indicator for how fast you drive, so what they did was shorten the lines, so people would think they drove faster when approaching a turn. Now perceptually, as you drive, it looks for you like you're driving faster, and you'd hit the brakes and drive the appropriate speed through the turn."