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Behavioral Science Weekly

One short email a week on how people really decide — a single idea, the evidence behind it, and something you can use before the week is out. From the Center for Behavioral Decisions.

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What lands in your inbox

Three parts, five minutes

Every issue has the same shape, so you always know what you’re opening.

One idea, explained properly

A single bias, heuristic, or design pattern — what it is, when it fires, and why it changes what people do. No jargon left unexplained.

The evidence, not the anecdote

What the research actually found, how big the effect was, and where it has failed to hold up. If we can’t measure it, we don’t claim it.

One thing to try

A concrete move for your own work — a default to change, a question to reframe, a step of friction to remove — and how to tell whether it worked.

Behavioral Science Weekly
to you · 5 min read
The option nobody chooses is the one most people get
The idea

Defaults do the deciding. Whatever happens when someone does nothing is what happens most of the time.

The evidence

Where the effect is large, where it shrinks, and what the studies get asked to prove that they can’t.

One thing to try

Find the one default in your product or process that nobody chose on purpose. Then choose it on purpose.

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Who reads it

For people who design choices

If part of your job is deciding how a decision gets presented to someone else, this is written for you.

  • Product & design teams
  • Founders
  • Marketing & communications
  • Policy and public-sector leads
  • HR & people teams
  • Researchers and students
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