Why I will still read Thinking Fast & Slow again and again and why I trust Prof Dan Ariely.

I always think it's fascinating to see how behavioural scientists, just like everyone else, are as susceptible to their own mental shortcuts and subconscious biases.

Recent events and conversations, such as videos telling people to stop reading the lifelong works of a Nobel prize winning academic or commentators questioning the ethics of one of the most humble of behavioural scientists, have fizzed across the social media communities in the last few weeks.

I've been fortunate to have been working in behavioural science for quite a while now and over that time, I've been fortunate to meet both Professor Kahneman and Professor Dan Ariely.

I met Professor Kahneman, when he was on his book tour for TFAS, as we were hosting one of the UK launch events for the book with #ogilvychange (as it was called then).

I also met Professor Ariely in pre-pandemic times over a quick breakfast, as he was in town for a School of Life event and we had a great chat over a coffee.

From my experiences, you couldn't meet more humbler Professors who showed the utmost humility and a keen interest to listen to the work we were doing.

One of my favourite and well used pieces of work from Professor Ariely, is a paper he and the team produced around Trust.

https://people.duke.edu/~dandan/webfiles/PapersOther/DialogueCoverlet.ariely.pdf

One of the principles he describes is The Long Game. I particularly like this piece

"we are much more trusting when we think our interactions will extend for a longer period of time. In each interaction, each partner has the opportunity to prove, over and over again, through productive interactions, that they can be trusted to cooperate, and in the process each builds a good reputation for trustworthiness."

From what I've read, observed, experienced in my behavioural science career, I'm very certain that I can trust the leaders in our field and that all of their work is rooted in the best intention, to progress the science and help us all progress our careers.

For sure, old work is made better by new work, most of the time.

I think I get the debate.

I just wish that those nay sayers and commentators would spend less time acting in the moment and in ways that make them feel good about themselves - to make a quick click.

And instead, would lay out an agenda for how they themselves are going to progress the behavioural science field in their own work. And make an impact. Over time. Again and again.

For sure, it's a lot harder to be a scientific practitioner rather than a commentator or an agitator.

But I guess that's the point.

We're all susceptible. But we know that...