It was an absolute delight to have Bora Ergor interning with me this year.

Bora is a very talented psychology student at the University of Strasbourg and together we worked across a range of assignments.

In this video Bora talks us through what his research unearthed as well as tips for people seeking to intern.

We cover what behavioural science says about:

• How to optimise your online presenting presence and overcome Zoom fatigue
• Framing  and use of language i.e. knowing...

Ending your price with “9” is a tidbit of pricing psychology that has entrenched itself in business folklore. 

Why? Because $1999 seems better than $2000, and $12.99 better than $13.

But why does it seem better?

It may have a lot to do with the direction the digit is pointing. You see, 9 points to the left, as does 1, 2, 3, 4 and 7.

5 and 6 are right-facing whereas 0 and 8 are centered.

This digit-directionality (Coulter, 2007) is yet another consideration when it...

I’ve been going deep on language lately 

Knowing what to say and how to say it.

Partly because I’ve created a “scripting tool” for my Just Do This members, where I’ve written sample scripts for everything from getting past the gatekeeper and dealing with time wasters, to fielding complaints and chasing late payers. 

Partly because I’ve been creating my “Dealing with D!ckheads” webinar (recording exclusively available to...

How should you deliver bad news?

There’s a lot of bad news being shared right now. In Australia we are experiencing various degrees of lockdown across the country, and our political leaders are grappling with how best to share bad news.

New South Wales, for example, started with a relatively light-touch approach that has become more stringent the longer lockdown has lasted.

In Victoria’s latest lockdown, conditions were restrictive from the get go.

While I won’t go into the...

Richard Branson was sharing a story about introducing TV screens to the back of airplane seats.

He went to his board and the banks but couldn’t get the $10 million loan he needed to retrofit his Virgin Atlantic planes.

So instead he called Boeing and asked “if I buy 15 new planes, could you include seat back video screens?”

“Of course!”, came Boeing’s reply.

Branson’s point was he couldn’t get a loan for $10 million, but he could for $2 billion....

Nudges are all about subtly influencing behaviour. In this video, I talk through my top five principles from behavioural economics to apply to your business right now, to improve results.

You'll see examples from Twitter, eBay, Noom and others.

More about my Influencing Action course:

https://www.briwilliams.com/about-influencing-action-course

Additional Framing resources for you: -

• https://www.briwilliams.com/blog/concrete-language-sells
• ...

There’s a truckload of research on how best to frame messages to appeal to your audience.

For example, ads that are framed positively work best for people who are promotion-focussed – in other words, they seek to maximise the probability of obtaining a positive outcome (Lee, Liu and Cheng, 2018).

This was true regardless of whether the product was hedonic (like a massage, or holiday, or aesthetic attributes of a product like a laptop’s design) or utilitarian (think...

Could telling yourself to do more of something be the worst thing you can do?

New research suggests so.

Framing your goal

We live in a world of more — of ‘shoulds’, particularly when it comes to wellbeing.

I should exercise more, save more, eat more healthily.

But maybe that pressure is backfiring on our ability to achieve our goals?

Researchers Tuk, Prokopec and Van den Bergh (2020) set out to see whether it would be more motivating to tell yourself “I’ll...

Text messages are a big part of how organisations communicate with customers.

So you do you get them right?

Behavioural science of text message effectiveness

Not only are text messages a cost-effective tool, but there’s a significant amount of behavioural science available that proves how effective these messages can be.

In one study, the UK Behavioural Science Team were able to reduce missed medical appointments, or no-shows, by 25%.

The best performing message pointed out how much the...

Want an inexpensive way to bolster customer satisfaction and sell more? Use concrete language.

That was the finding from “How Concrete Language Shapes Customer Satisfaction” (2020) by Grant Packard and Jonah Berger.

In the study, Packard and Berger tested whether referring to items using abstract (e.g. “pants”) vs. concrete (e.g. “blue jeans”) descriptors impacted satisfaction, willingness to buy and purchase behaviour.

Abstract language is the realm of the...