← The Brainy Business | Understanding the Psychology of Why People Buy | Behavioral Economics
The Brainy Business | Understanding the Psychology of Why People Buy | Behavioral Economics
487. What We Value
00:42:03
In this episode of The Brainy Business podcast, Melina Palmer welcomes Emily Falk, author of the insightful book, What We Value. Together, they dive deep into the concept of value, exploring its complex layers beyond monetary aspects and its profound...
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- [00:01]
Melina Palmer
Have you ever wished you had more influence at work? That people would naturally be more likely to buy in on whatever idea you're.
- [00:08]
Dr. Emily Falk
Selling them, whether they report to you or not?
- [00:11]
Melina Palmer
Well, you're in luck. I teach a virtual 10 week class on internal communication and change management through Texas A and M University and it's enrolling now. Get details and enroll at HBL Tamu Edu and click on certificate program. You get to learn directly from me, including live virtual office hours over zoom with a cohort of interested brainy folks like you from around the world. Again, learn more and enroll in the internal communication and change management course at HBL TAMU. EDU. That's HBL like Human Behavior Lab, dot TAMU like Texas A&M University. EDU and click on Certificate program. Your future self will thank you and when you're ready, enjoy the show. Welcome to episode 487 of the Brainy Business Understanding the Psychology of why People Buy. In today's episode, I'm excited to introduce you to Dr. Emily Falk, author of what We Value.
- [01:22]
Dr. Emily Falk
Ready? Let's get started.
- [01:28]
Melina Palmer
You are listening to the Brainy Business podcast where we dig into the psychology of why people buy and help you incorporate behavioral economics into your business, making it more brain friendly. Now, here's your host, Melina Palmer.
- [01:44]
Hello. Hello everyone. My name is Melina Palmer and I want to welcome you to the Brainy Business Podcast. I love talking about value. It's one of those concepts that everyone knows, but few really, truly, deeply know. Scarcity is the same way we know it exists and think we understand all there is there because we know a little bit about it. But there's so much more beneath the surface.
- [02:10]
Dr. Emily Falk
I have a whole episode dedicated to.
- [02:12]
Melina Palmer
The concept and how it differs from wealth, price and cost. You can check that out with a quick search on the podcast page of our website. Have you seen our new website, by the way? We launched it in January of 2025 and it's so awesome. Go over to the brainybusiness.com podcast, check that out. Super cool. Anyway, so today we're going even deeper with value to understand it on a truly deep level. This will go beyond the monetary and into the really human elements of value in our relationships, society, and of course, how it impacts us in business. So who's bringing this insight? That would be the amazing Dr. Emily Falk. She studies behavior change, persuasion, and how ideas and behaviors spread. Emily is a professor of communication psychology, Marketing and operations, informatics and decisions at the University of Pennsylvania. Vice Dean of the Annenberg School for Communication, Director of the Communication Neuroscience Lab, and director of the Climate Communication Division of the Annenberg Public Policy Center. Emily is an expert in the science of behavior change. Her research uses tools from psychology, neuroscience and communication to examine what makes messages persuas, why and how ideas spread, and what makes people effective communicators. Her research has been recognized by numerous awards, including Early Career Awards from the International Communication association, the Society for Personality and Social Psychology Attitudes Division, a Fulbright Grant, the Social and Affective Neuroscience Society, a DARPA Young Faculty Award, and the NIH Director's New Innovator Award. She was named a Rising Star by the association for Psychological Science, and she received her bachelor's degree in neuroscience from Brown and her PhD in psychology from the University of California, Los Angeles. Today we're discussing her new book, what We Value. You know, I love this one. Really quickly before we get into the conversation, I want to be sure you know that there are links in the show notes for my top related past episodes and books, ways to get in touch with Emily and myself, and more. It's all within the app you're listening to and at the brainy business.com 487. Now let's jump right in. Dr. Emily Falk, welcome to the Brainy Business podcast.
- [04:38]
Dr. Emily Falk
Thanks, Molina.
- [04:40]
Melina Palmer
Yes.
- [04:40]
Dr. Emily Falk
I'm so excited to have you here.
- [04:43]
Melina Palmer
Thank you for joining me.
- [04:45]
Dr. Emily Falk
I love, love, love, love, love, love your book and your work and I'm so delighted to share about it. For everyone who doesn't yet know you, can you share a little bit about yourself and.
- [04:56]
Sure. I'm Emily Falk. I direct the Communication Neuroscience Lab at the University of Pennsylvania. I also direct the Climate Communication Division of the Annenberg Public Policy center. And I'm the vice Dean of the Annenberg School for Communication. And so across those roles, I'm really interested in how people make decisions related to their health and well being and the health and well being of our planet. So we look at how people choose to change their behavior, how they connect with other people and the kinds of psychological resources that make that possible.
- [05:30]
Yeah, I love that. And it's so, so much good stuff in the just getting into the book of the different aspects of choice and decision making and the work that you do. I really love the way that it's all framed throughout the book. Let's just, you know, jump into it right here with can you share a little bit about the value calculation?
- [05:53]
Yeah. So in our brains we have a system called the value system and it takes inputs from lots of different other systems and comes up with a value for all the different kinds of possible things that we might do. So when we're making choices, for example, about whether to go for a walk or watch a TV show, or whether to eat chocolate cake or maybe some broccoli, we might weigh lots of different kinds of things, including how tasty or healthy an option is, what someone that we're with might be choosing how we think of ourselves in the given moment. So all of those past experiences and current needs and future goals are brought together in this calculation, which happens kind of seamlessly. So we don't necessarily always think about it in those terms. But that brain system helps us do many of the things that we consciously choose to do on a day to day basis.
- [06:49]
Yeah. And knowing that, you know, there's all these, I talk a lot about just like micro moments in decision making.
- [06:56]
Melina Palmer
Right.
- [06:57]
Dr. Emily Falk
And like all the little, little teeny things that we don't necessarily realize our brains are doing all the time. I really liked how you talked about the monkey. You, you called gizmo the. And you know, looking at subjective value, can you explain a little bit more about that?
- [07:17]
Sure. So, you know, up until just a few decades ago, it wasn't obvious how this happened in the brains of humans or even other animals. And so early work that that was done in monkeys looked at how they weighed different kinds of choices between different juice options or different kinds of drinks. And so on a given day, you know, you might be surprised to know that monkeys like us have different kinds of preferences. So even if they prefer grape juice or lemonade on average on a given Tuesday, maybe they've already eaten some fruit or had some other reason that they don't have a strong preference for the grape juice, and maybe they'd be willing to accept water or peppermint tea instead. This research team, led by John Assad and Camilo Paduasciopa looked at how monkeys made these kinds of choices on a given day. And so they compared the ratio of how many, say, drops of grape juice to drops of water a monkey would need in order to make different kinds of choices. And what they found was that in what is analogous to the human's value system in these key brain regions, that the neurons fired more when they were offered choices, when they made choices that they preferred relatively more in that moment. And so instead of just tracking something like the amount of sugar that was in the, or, you know, the ingredients that were in the drink or the color of it, or other other particular things that would be specific to that that substance, they instead integrated all of these different kinds of dimensions to have subjective preferences like we do. And then the thing that was really important and interesting that followed was that we started to see analogous things in humans. So in the early days of neuroeconomics, there were a number of studies that found that humans make choices like this as well. So, you know, you could imagine a situation where our brains have lots of different kinds of modules for tracking the ingredients of a given food. So, you know, how much sugar does it have or how much fat does it have? Things that would help us stay alive in evolutionary terms, or something like that, and a separate system that would track things like how much of it you have had recently or what your date is eating, and that those would all potentially work independently. And what this early research found was that in an analogous situation of choosing snacks, for example, for humans, that we do it similarly to monkeys, that we integrate all these different factors in this common value signal, which then helps us make choices about, what do I want to have right now in this moment? And then even beyond that, for things that are much less comparable than, you know, this salty snack versus that, am I going to eat potato chips or pretzels, or am I going to eat broccoli or an orange? We also do this for a wide range of other kinds of decision making as well. So, for example, if we're thinking about whether to take $20 now or be patient and take $25 in six months, those are fairly abstract concepts. And my colleague here at Penn, Jo Cable, did beautiful work early on in this history as well, finding that those kinds of what we call intertemporal choices, or choices between things where you got to be patient and wait or take something now, also use this same valuation system. And choices between different kinds of social options, like getting a social reward, also activates this kind of system. And so across a wide range of choice domains, across a wide range of possible things we might choose between the same brain system, seems to be really important for those choices. And so this kind of value calculation, I think part of the reason that it interests me so much is because it highlights how malleable our choices are, that the different kinds of inputs to the calculation, since it's going through this sort of final common value pathway, that means that the things that are salient to us in our environment, the things that we're paying attention to, the things that we're giving more weight in that value calculation, are going to influence our behaviors. And so somebody who's really interested in behavior and behavior change. That feels really important.
- [11:49]
Oh, definitely. As you were talking and I'm like reflecting back over everything I read in the book and different aspects of the work and the research. Perhaps it's because it's most salient because it was at the end or perhaps it was because it, you know, it's the culmination of everything or whatever else, but really thinking about how we're presenting choices to people and thinking about what they're going to like and how you can be, you know, really priming what they're going to focus on by before they watch a video and getting this kind of shared experience among people. So knowing it leans on some of your very, your early research from when you were in LA and you had friends working for production companies and whatnot. Even though it comes up late in the book, you know, can you share a little bit about that work and, and research into, you know, the shows we watch even?
- [12:44]
Sure, yeah. So one of the studies that I did in grad school and that we've done a bunch of follow up work on, looks at what goes into people's decisions about what they're going to share with other people. And so the logic of that was that it's all well and good if we can convince one person to change their behavior with messaging, but it's even more powerful when they go and also convince their friends or their friends of friends to change as well. And you know, as these decisions add up, it also potentially has the power to shift our culture. And so in that early study at UCLA with Matt Lieberman and a bunch of co authors, we looked at what happened in people's brains when they were initially exposed to ideas that they then decided they wanted to share with other people and that those people also decided that they wanted to share more. So to study this, we created a series of possible TV show pilot ideas. And then we pitched them to a first group of participants who we called the interns. And we called them the Interns because we asked them to pretend that they were interns at a television studio who were looking at these potential pilot ideas and triaging them for their boss, who's the producer. The idea was that their producer wouldn't have enough time to go through all the possible pilot ideas and that they needed to give their opinion. So they were exposed to 24 different possible pilots while we recorded their brain activation. And then after they got out of the scanner, we made little videos of them giving their opinions as if they were talking to producers. And then we cut up all Those video clips. And we showed them to another group of research participants, who we call the producers, because they didn't have access to the original pitches. They didn't have access to the original sort of coverage of, like, the specific text and so on. But they were given the same title, a key image, and then they saw this video that one of the interns had produced. And so the interns would get into it and they'd be like, you know, I think this would do really well for these reasons. Or like, I think this, like, didn't really interest me that much. It was kind of boring. And the key question was, like, well, what was happening in the brains of those interns as they were initially exposed to the ideas that not only told us something about what they would want to do in the future, but also what the producers would want to do that predicted them sort of conveying the information in a compelling way. And what was really interesting was that we saw activation in key regions that are associated with not only this kind of valuation or reward process, but also with thinking about what other people think and feel. And so that's also been a really common theme in the work that we've done. Is that another brain system that in the book I call the social relevance system, scientists also talk about it in terms of theory of mind or mentalizing, like helping understand what other people think and feel. The key regions in the mentalizing system are really important for our decision making. So both the kinds of decisions I was talking about earlier, that kind of mentalizing activation plays into our decision making. And then for these kinds of sharing decisions, the more that the interns showed activation in key parts of the mentalizing system, not only were they more likely to recommend the idea themselves, but they were more likely to talk about it in a way that later made it likely that the producers would be interested as well. And the sort of key idea here we've replicated in a number of different contexts, including looking at things like the news articles that people choose to share from the New York Times. So we've looked at health articles and climate change focused articles, and we've looked at what happens in people's brains when they're making decisions about whether they want to read the article themselves, whether they want to share them. We've looked in Philadelphia and in Amsterdam, and we found that the more we see activation in the value system and the social relevance system, and then a third system that we call the self relevance system, that helps us think about our own qualities and traits and preferences, that those systems seem to be tracking with how popular these different news articles end up being, not only with the people who are consuming them in the FMRI scanner, but also with larger groups of audiences. So for example, in a couple of studies we've looked at the sharing of news articles around the world. So what's happening in somebody's brain when they read the headline and teaser for a news article that ends up getting shared a ton in the population of New York Times readers and others around the world versus those articles that aren't shared very much at all? And again, these same sort of key brain systems seem to be really important for those decisions.
- [17:45]
So for, thank you for all that. As you were talking and I was saying, oh, I want to bring up social relevance and self relevance. And you did, and it was perfect.
- [17:52]
Melina Palmer
Right.
- [17:52]
Dr. Emily Falk
So we were good to go with that. So for those of us who can't go, you know, put someone in the FMRI to test all our subject lines or headers, are there any, you know, general tips as far as what makes something more likely to be shareable? Is it certain words or the way that we frame the information? Let's just say whether it's either like a newsletter or maybe like a LinkedIn post, you know, what did you find that can be kind of generalized for the, for the audience?
- [18:26]
Yeah. So we've done a number of follow up studies with exactly that kind of question in mind of what are the kinds of things that increase people's interest in sharing information? And even outside of the brain scanner, how can we tap into these kinds of self relevance and social relevance processes? And the kind of cool thing is that there are a lot of different ways. So a number of face valid prompts that we've used, like for example, just asking people to write a comment about what the article is about is kind of our baseline. And then we say, can we do better than that if we tap into self relevance or social relevance? And so to tap into self relevance, we've asked questions like say something about why this article matters to you, or say something about why this article might be relevant to people that you care about or people in your network. And when people write comments with those kinds of prompts in mind, thinking about how it connects for them personally or how it might connect for people in their social network, it increases their interest in their motivation to share the information with other people. And so that is a much stronger claim because it essentially means that regardless of what the original base article was, when we randomly assign people to think about it in these different Ways it increases their motivation to share this relatively high quality information. We haven't looked at that same thing in the context of the range of maybe less high quality information misinformation, disinformation. Like there's a whole huge space that's wide open that folks haven't explored as as much in this brain to behavior kind of context yet.
- [20:19]
Yeah, yeah. There's always so much and with so just vast amounts of more content coming out every, you know, millisecond. It's, you know, you'll never run out of things to be able to test. It's just the capacity to be able to actually run all those studies. Right. And look at it. I really liked the story about the player, I think his name is Ernie, that played basketball.
- [20:45]
Melina Palmer
Right.
- [20:45]
Dr. Emily Falk
And how the coach was able to use some of this as we think about getting buy in from other people and the way we pitch information. Right. So thinking, so we're pitching maybe content on social media, like we're saying articles, things getting people to buy in. But also there's as we're thinking about influencing and decisions and understanding these value systems. Can you share a little bit of that story?
- [21:07]
Sure, yeah. I really love this story too. This is the story of Ernie Grunfeld who had a decades long career with the NBA. And I think he may be the only player in the NBA to be a Holocaust survivor. So Ernie's story starts in Romania living with his family under the Soviet regime. And he's one of the only players in the NBA to be a Holocaust survivor. And his son Dan tells this really incredible story in a book called by the Grace of the Game. And so Ernie's parents saved up money, they stored it away in a radio, hiding it from the police and then eventually were able to save up enough to move to New York. So the family moved to New York and they made a lot of choices to prioritize their kids education. That was something that they weren't able to prioritize during the Holocaust in Eastern Europe. And so that was something that was really important to them that Ernie be able to get a good education. So they chose where they lived which was far away from the store that they started. And Alex and Livia, Ernie's parents, worked around the clock at this fabric store. And on the weekends Ernie would play basketball. And after school Ernie would play basketball when he wasn't necessarily when he wasn't helping his parents at the store. And he got really good. So he started out playing just for the love of the game. He met kids, whereas in school, school people teased him for his accent and for other things on the court. He had this real joy and this ability to connect with other people. And so one of the things I really love about this story is that it sort of highlights a number of different things about how value calculations work. So one of them is that Ernie started playing not because he had some big long term plan. I think a lot of us make these long term plans thinking about what's going to be optimal for our future self in some way, like, oh, I should really exercise more because I have a health goal or I should exercise more because my doctor said that I should. But instead, when we can find ways that tap into what's immediately relevant for the me that's right here, right now, like Ernie playing on the basketball court as a kid, like finding joy in that activity makes it so much easier. And then you were asking about his coach. So by the time he got to high school he was incredible and a real star player. But his parents had no idea and they didn't know because they were at the store working and he was playing for school. And his coach called up his mom or called up his parents and said, you know, your son is really gifted. He's know one of the most dedicated players that I've ever coached. And this is going to give him access to all kinds of opportunities. You know, he could go to college with this skill. And so, you know, Coach Iser is, has passed away and wasn't available for me to interview. But you know, I was speculating that that kind of framing, like talking with Ernie and actually talking with his mom Livia, like the opportunity to have access to the education, to focus on Ernie's dedication, these kind of core values that were really important to his parents meant that they then were really enthusiastic about supporting his career. One thing I'll add for fairness also is that Ernie's dad Alex was also a talented athlete. And so I think there was also that aspect of self relevance that was important for him to get it as well. You know, you could imagine a lot of parents being asked to prioritize their kids, you know, sports over something that they had worked so hard for, like their education. They might think of that as a trade off but I think the coach's framing was fortunate for, for Ernie's future career.
- [25:27]
Yeah, well, and definitely knowing that it's not about you right when you go to, to do this framing. So knowing that, that you know, that self relevance system is important when you're, we're going to be Using it all the time. Right. We're thinking about what's in it for us. It's, you know, natural in the world. And if you're trying to encourage someone to do something, in this case, it was, you know, the. The parents hadn't even been to a game. They'd never seen him play. They didn't know. And so to get them to. You should come, like, support your son. And here's some reasons why, you know, if the pitch had been like, you know, the team needs him and you should do this for. For me, for us, for them, whatever. But to say, like, to understand having to be like you said about education, he could go to college. That, like they say, okay, we can close the store early. Once for that and once became many times.
- [26:24]
Melina Palmer
Right.
- [26:25]
Dr. Emily Falk
Yeah. I mean, the. The story is that Alex, Ernie's dad, then started going to all of his games and became, you know, one of his biggest fans. Then Ernie went on to have an incredible career. He played in the NBA. He eventually became the general manager of the Bucks, and then eventually the Knicks, which was his hometown team. A complete dream. And so it's just a really incredible story.
- [26:52]
Yeah. I love how you weave it through with other points in the book as well. Right. So then he ended up going to where it's saying, like, hopefully, you know, I'm gonna get to play New York or maybe I'll play in Boston because it's close enough to home. But in some cases where we could say he wasn't for. Fortunate enough to get that because he was so good, he ended up being such a high draft pick. He. He didn't get picked by one of those teams, and he ended up in Milwaukee. Right. And so saying it's so far, and you could focus on the negative of that, it's really easy to think about how you didn't get the thing that you want. And I don't know if you know, of course, feel free to paraphrase on this if it doesn't come immediately to mind. But like you're saying mom asks about, or he's saying how he's feeling about going to Milwaukee and whether, you know, how. How he feels about not getting the thing he wanted. And he was able to kind of shape his experience.
- [27:45]
Yeah. I realized I also just misspoke in terms of. He played for the Bucks first when you were just giving the. The history, and then he also ended up being the president and general manager there and also the Washington Wizards, and then eventually ended up playing for the Knicks and becoming their general manager. So you were saying, like, in terms of the when we have choices versus when we don't have choices. Another thing I do really like about this story is that first part of it. So, you know, Ernie was incredible as a college player. So consistent with Coach Iser's prediction, he went and played for four years in college at Tennessee, and then when he was graduating, he was entering the NBA draft pick. Actually, before writing this book and talking with Ernie, I didn't know a ton about how the NBA draft works. But I learned from Ernie that as a player, you actually don't have very much choice about where you're going to go, right? You enter the draft and a team picks you and you go there, basically. So, you know, fresh out of college, Ernie was really hoping to go to the Knicks. He had grown up in New York. His family was in New York. It was his hometown team. Like, what a dream, right? And he knew that he was likely to be a first round pick in that draft, and he thought that there was like a reasonable chance that the Knicks might pick him, right? And so he was really excited about that possibility. There was also the possibility that Boston might pick him. The Celtics coach had expressed some interest. And so, you know, when the Knicks came up, I think they were 10th in the draft and a friend of his got picked by the Knicks. And so he realized, all right, I'm not moving to New York. I guess I'll be moving to Boston. Like, it's not my first choice, but that'll be great too. It's a train ride away from New York. But then instead, what happened next was that Milwaukee picked him and he had never been to Milwaukee. He had no idea what that would be like. Something that I really loved was his mom asked him, you know, how he was feeling about this and what he was thinking and, you know, whether. Whether he was happy. And what he said to her was, well, I'm going to make myself happy. And he was reflecting on, like, you know, sometimes in life we have all of the choices that we might want. And sometimes, you know, your first choice, job rejects you, or the person that you want to go on a date with rejects you. Or, you know, you have some choices and not others. And so Ernie, instead of deciding to be grumpy and not follow what the coaches said or whatever, basically decided that he was going to focus on the things that were good about it. And so he worked on connecting with his teammates, and he did ultimately fall in love with his wife, Nancy. And he focused on the things about Milwaukee that were under his control. It wasn't his favorite food, it wasn't his favorite location with respect to the people that he loved. But, you know, focusing on the love of the game and these other things, he was able to turn the situation into one that was really successful for him. And, you know, I struggled a little bit in. In writing about this because obviously, like, being an NBA player is a hugely privileged and coveted kind of life, right? And so maybe we don't feel like, that bad for him in the situation, like, oh, before Ernie gets to go and, like, play professional basketball as his living. But at the same time, you know, I think many of us, every day at work and at home with our friends, have these kinds of situations where things don't go exactly the way that we initially imagined would be less. And that's sort of where I think, understanding how our brains are computing subjective value and realizing how subjective it is and how we can focus on different aspects of a choice or a situation to feel differently, right? And so there are obviously tons of situations where we don't necessarily even want to change the way we feel. Like, there are things in the world that are good to be angry about and good to want to change, but there are also situations where we might want to more actively enhance or upregulate either positive or negative emotions to be consistent with goals that we care about. So, you know, increasing positive emotions about a situation, like moving to Milwaukee, if that's where the job that is best for our career is, or, you know, increasing negative emotions about something when it's not the choice that is best for us in other ways. Like, you know, if. If you end a relationship and you're trying to feel better about it, maybe focusing on some of the things that your best friend didn't like about that person can help us feel better, right?
- [32:58]
Yeah, definitely. And like we said, it's such a great story. I love how it weaves from, you know, beginning to end. So many of the points from the book as we go to close the conversation. And trust, I could talk to you about these things all day and night and tomorrow, but I'm going to be respectful of our time on everything here. Can you share just a little bit about why we should be the least defensive person that we know?
- [33:25]
I think there are a lot of reasons to try to notice and curb our own defensiveness. So one is for ourselves, right, that we essentially take choices off the table for ourselves when we get defensive. So often people might try to offer us new ways of thinking or doing or being, but One of the things we know about how the brain works is that self relevance and valuation, this kind of value calculation are really intimately tied together. So when we look at what happens in people's brains when they're making choices, their self relevant systems and value systems are working very closely, hand in hand, to the point where it can be hard to distinguish them. And in general, that's fine. That works, makes our decision making go together with things that are compatible with our identity, who we are, our past experiences, our future goals. But it can also mean that we confound, that we get confused by like the things that I've done before, we think of as good. And we can be defensive when people suggest that there's a different way of thinking or a different way of doing or being. And so in terms of reducing defensiveness, we want to reduce the kind of blockers that we're putting up to new ideas before we even get to consider them. And there are a lot of different tools that we've discovered for how we can do that. So, you know, one of them is what we call values affirmation, where we give people a brief period to reflect on the things that matter the most to them. So for many of us, that might be things like friends and family, family connection with other people, and just giving people a few minutes to write about that for other people, maybe it's their creativity or their spirituality or their drive, their humor. And so when people pick the things that are the most important values for them and they get to write about them for even five minutes, or reflect on prompts like think about something that you'll do in the future with people that you care about, think about ways that you've drawn on that value in the past. That helps people zoom out and see that their self worth, their identity, doesn't have to be so intimately coupled with these behaviors that ultimately shouldn't define us. Right? So for example, in one research study that we ran looking at people who are relatively sedentary, who sit a lot during the day, we gave some people, half the people, we randomized them to have the opportunity to do a values affirmation first. And the other half of the people reflected on values that were not important to them, but might be important to others. So both groups of people are reflecting on core values, and then afterwards they see the exact same health coaching messages, encouraging them to get more physically active. And what was really cool was as we scanned their brains, we see that the people who first had this values affirmation showed more receptivity in their brains and the value and self relevant systems to the coaching messages compared to the people who didn't have the chance to get that affirmation. And the reason I think that's so cool is because it's like this tiny little intervention and then people are exposed to the exact same thing, but their brains respond differently. And so you said like why, why might we want to reduce our defensiveness? Well, one is to get useful information, right? To be able to take in things that our psychological defense systems might otherwise shut out, to make our decision making better, to understand things in a new or different way, to like just understand the world and a better way. And I think another reason is to be able to connect with other people, right? One of the most important, fundamental, pleasurable things about being human is being able to connect with others. And we really limit ourselves when we are only able to do that with people who share our exact views and behaviors and interests to begin with. And so when we are able to let go of some of these kind of psychological defenses fences and open ourselves, be curious about a wider range of ideas and ways of being, then that also opens all kinds of opportunities for innovation for things that in terms of the business focus of the brainy business, like people who are able to connect with more, different groups of people who don't otherwise know each other, get paid more and promoted faster. And like, you know, I think that that also happens when we're more open to a wide and diverse range of people that we might connect with.
- [38:22]
Oh yeah, absolutely. And thank you so much for tying it back, like you said, to the business side of the brainy business. And I love you talk about some work with Adidas and other areas of being able to think about how we pitch in advertising and all sorts of other stuff. We'll save that for when everyone picks up their copy, of course, of what we value, which we'll have a link for in the show notes for everyone who's so excited to just, you know, follow you and your work and you know, connect or whatnot. What's their best path to do so?
- [38:55]
Well, all of our papers are available on Our lab website, Falklab.org Our lab also has social media and the regular places. So if you search for the communication neuroscience lab, you should be able to find us on all the social places.
- [39:12]
Perfect. Well, we will have those links and like I said for the book and everything in the show notes and just, you know, thanks again for joining me. It was really delightful to chat with you about your work today.
- [39:23]
Yeah, thanks so much for having me.
- [39:26]
Melina Palmer
Thank you again to Dr. Emily Falk for joining me on the show today. What got your brain buzzing in today's conversation? For me, I found this book to be so fascinating. We covered a lot of ground in our conversation, but there's so much more within those pages to uncover and think about value and behavior change. Chapter four of the book is called to change what you think change what you think about. And I absolutely love the concept here. On the surface, it might seem like a chicken and egg sort of thing, or a space where someone might say, what's the difference? Like what I think is what I think about, right? But of course, this has to do with focus and conscious effort and time. If you want to think differently, you need to start somewhere. The subhead of the book is the neuroscience of choice and change for a reason. You can choose what you think about. You can choose what to not let yourself think about. You can choose to reframe those thoughts that seem natural as you recondition your brain to see things differently. It isn't easy at first, which is why you can't change so many things at once. Because we're talking about value. Let's tie it back to pricing and sales. If you say I'm not a good salesperson and your brain naturally jumps to all the times you've messed up or lost deals or whatever else, then that's what you will think is true. There are likely things you do right though. What if you chose to think about the things you get right? Maybe you're good at relationships with customers. Maybe you're super organized and great at remembering little details which you can use as a first step to reach out to leads in a thoughtful way instead of always thinking, I get so awkward when I need to ask for the sale, I can't do it. What might you think instead? To help you think differently about selling, you could reframe it. To think, where is the value here for this client? What would make them love this? How's this helping them? How might they be upset with me if I didn't tell them about how valuable this product or service would be for solving their problem? When you think about those things, you'll think differently as you understand what you value, what they value, and how to include that in the way you talk about the sale and then about selling in general. This of course, applies to all sorts of things to interpersonal relationships at work with friends, family, random strangers, in marketing campaigns and everything in between. Understanding what people value, why, and how to message around that will change the way you do business for the better. What will you do? First, come share it with me on social media. I'm the brainy biz pretty much everywhere and Melina Palmer on LinkedIn. I'd love to hear from you as we close out the show. Don't forget about those show notes, which include links to my top related past episodes and books, including what we value, ways to get in touch with Emily and myself, and more. It's all waiting for you in the app you're listening to and@the brainybusiness.com 487. And thank you again to Dr. Emily Falk for joining me on the show today. It was a delight to chat with and learn from you. Join me Tuesday for another Brainy episode of the Brainy Business Podcast. It's going to be a lot of fun. You don't want to miss it. Until then, thanks again for listening and learning with me, and remember to be thoughtful.
- [42:54]
Thank you for listening to the Brainy Business Podcast. Molina offers virtual strategy sessions, workshops and other services to help businesses be more brain friendly. For more free resources, visit thebrainybusiness dot.