bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
A Laboratory Study of the Effect of pH on Solubility of Bulk-Fill and Conventional Composites
Authors: Farahat Farnaz , Jafari Abbas Ali , Ardakani Tayebe Sadat Baghaee , Shojasadati Shima Sadat
Published: September 2023

Aim:

Factors such as the low pH of acidic foods and beverages can affect long-term clinical success of restorative materials in the oral cavity. The aim of this study was to compare the solubility of Bulk-fill and Conventional Nano-Hybrid Resin Based Composites (RBCs) in different solutions.

Material and Methods:

A total of 60 cylindrical specimens were prepared from two RBCs (Tetric N-Ceram, Tetric N-Ceram Bulk-fill) and their constant weight was measured. The specimens were divided into six groups ( N = 10) in accordance with RBC type and pH solution (solution 1, 2, 3 with pH = 2.5, 5, 7, respectively), and were immersed in desired solutions for 30 days. Then they were weighed again and solubility levels of the specimens were calculated according to ISO 4049. Data were analysed by two-way ANOVA. The test power was considered at 80%.

Results:

The type of RBC had no significant effect on solubility; while the effect of PH was significant. Solution 1 caused significantly the highest solubility. No statistically significant differences were found among other groups.

Conclusions:

Considering the limitations of the laboratory investigations, it was concluded that solubility rate of Bulk-fill and Conventional RBCs was higher in solutions with lower pH. There was no difference among the RBCs. However, the solubility rates of all groups are within the clinically normal range.
Payer mix & financial health drive hospital quality: Implications for value-based reimbursement policies
Authors: Manary Matthew , Staelin Richard , Boulding William , Glickman Seth W.
Published: September 2023

Documented disparities in health care quality in hospitals have been associated with patients’ race, gender, age, and insurance coverage. We used a novel data set with detailed hospital-level demographic, financial, quality-of-care, and outcome data across 265 California hospitals to examine the relationship between a hospital's financial health and its quality of care. We found that payer mix, the percentage of patients with private insurance coverage, is the key driver of a hospital's financial health. This is important because a hospital's financial health influences its quality of care and patient outcomes. Government policies that financially penalize hospitals on the basis of care quality and/or outcomes may disproportionately impair financial performance and quality investments at hospitals serving fewer privately insured patients. Such policies could exacerbate health disparities among patients at greatest risk of receiving substandard care.
Belonging nowhere: Marginalization & radicalization risk among Muslim immigrants
Authors: Lyons-Padilla Sarah , Gelfand Michele J. , Mirahmadi Hedieh , Farooq Mehreen , Van Egmond Marieke
Published: September 2023

In the last 15 years, the threat of Muslim violent extremists emerging within Western countries has grown. Terrorist organizations based in the Middle East are recruiting Muslims in the United States and Europe via social media. Yet we know little about the factors that would drive Muslim immigrants in a Western country to heed this call and become radicalized, even at the cost of their own lives. Research into the psychology of terrorism suggests that a person's cultural identity plays a key role in radicalization, so we surveyed 198 Muslims in the United States about their cultural identities and attitudes toward extremism. We found that immigrants who identify with neither their heritage culture nor the culture they are living in feel marginalized and insignificant. Experiences of discrimination make the situation worse and lead to greater support for radicalism, which promises a sense of meaning and life purpose. Such insights could be of use to policymakers engaged in efforts against violent extremism, including terrorism.
Moving citizens online: Using salience & message framing to motivate behavior change
Authors: Castelo Noah , Hardy Elizabeth , House Julian , Mazar Nina , Tsai Claire , Zhao Min
Published: September 2023

To improve efficiency and reduce costs, government agencies provide more and more services online. Yet, sometimes people do not access these new services. For example, prior to our field experiment intervention, Ontario spent $35 million annually on infrastructure needed for in-person license plate sticker renewals. In Canada's most populous province, only 10% of renewals occurred online. Our intervention tested variations in messaging mailed with sticker renewal forms that encouraged consumers to renew online. We changed text and color on the envelope to try to make the benefits of the online service more salient. In addition, changes to text and color on the renewal form itself emphasized either consumer gains from online renewals or losses associated with in-person renewals. Each intervention increased use of the online service when compared to the unaltered messaging. The combination of salience and gain framing achieved the highest number of online renewals: a 41.7% relative increase.
American Policy on Early Childhood Education & Development: Many Programs, Great Hopes, Modest Impacts
Authors: Haskins Ron
Published: September 2023

The primary motivation for this Spotlight section on early childhood programs is to assess whether and to what degree they are successful in promoting the development and school readiness of children from poor families. Conflicting claims abound over the effectiveness of public programs such as Head Start and state-funded prekindergarten (pre-K) and whether they are meeting the intended goals of preparing disadvantaged children for school and boosting the overall development of served children and their families. The disappointing results of the federal study of Head Start (the Head Start Impact Study [HSIS], reported in 2010) showing that the immediate positive impacts on children's achievement quickly faded1 added fuel to the evolving debate on what does and does not work in publicly funded early childhood education. Because other pre-K studies, conducted over similar time periods as the HSIS, have demonstrated more promising results, the hope remains that these programs can significantly boost children's development and school readiness. High-quality evaluations of state pre-K programs show that some produce substantial gains in intellectual development,2 yet many programs do not. In addition, few of these studies have shown long-term impacts on children. Another popular approach to advancing family and childhood development is home visiting programs (HVPs). Trained professionals or paraprofessionals work with new mothers, improving their child-rearing skills and assisting with life issues such as perinatal depression and employment. As with Head Start and state pre-K programs, the benefits of HVPs are often modest or overstated. There are also many unresolved issues about both the long-term impacts of these programs and the nagging but pressing question of whether successful interventions can produce good results when implemented at hundreds or even thousands of sites nationwide. Clearly, improvements are needed in setting early education and development policy and in advancing the research that will point the way forward. The articles in this Spotlight address these and other issues faced by Head Start, state pre-K, and HVPs and offer a host of solutions for educational policymakers to consider.
Reforming Head Start for the 21st Century: A Policy Prescription
Authors: Mead Sara , Mitchel Ashley LiBetti
Published: September 2023

Head Start was born in 1965 as a federal program that aimed to lift America's neediest children out of poverty and enhance their lifetime opportunities. Today Head Start continues to play an important role in our nation's early learning and development system; it serves nearly 1 million children and remains the only preschool option for poor children in many communities. Yet Head Start faces real challenges if it is to remain relevant and competitive in the face of the surge in state-funded prekindergarten (pre-K) programs over the past 25 years. State pre-K programs now serve 1.3 million children and typically spend about half the amount per child that Head Start does, yet the best state pre-K programs achieve better results than does the average Head Start program. And recent federally funded evaluations of Head Start raise serious questions about its long-term effectiveness. In this article, we examine the major actions undertaken by bipartisan policymakers to improve Head Start and propose three distinct prescriptions of our own: (a) Allow Head Start providers and grantees the flexibility to triage the services most needed by children in their program rather than follow the “all services to all kids” mandate that now exists, (b) shift performance measures to focus more on outcomes than on compliance with regulations, and (c) change federal policies so that Head Start grantees can more easily coordinate and integrate with local and state early education services and funding streams.
Applying Behavioral Sciences in the Service of Four Major Economic Problems
Authors: Furman Jason
Published: September 2023

Behavioral scientists have developed a powerful tool kit for understanding individual decisionmaking and have embedded it in a framework that acknowledges the need for robust experimentation to determine optimal public policy. But to date, the integration of behavioral science into public policy has proceeded from developing a set of tools to then searching for problems these tools can help solve. Behavioral science can play an even more important role in the policymaking process in coming years if practitioners instead begin with some of the large-scale questions that economic policymakers face and then develop insights that, often as a complement to more traditional policy tools, can help solve them.
Using Identity-Based Motivation to Improve the Nation's Health without Breaking the Bank
Authors: Lewis Neil A. , Oyserman Daphna
Published: September 2023

For the first time in two decades, overall life expectancy in the United States is in decline. This unsettling increase in mortality is largely due to lifestyle-associated causes. It is in the national interest to address this decline This article outlines identity-based motivation theory (IBM), an evidence-based behavioral science theory that provides insight and a behavioral toolset which together may help lower lifestyle-associated mortality and morbidity rates. A key place to start is the health aspiration-attainment gap: Most people aspire to live healthy lives yet often fail to sufficiently engage in behaviors necessary to achieve or maintain good health. This aspiration-attainment gap is particularly prevalent amongst people of lower socioeconomic status. We offer evidentiary insight into how IBM may be deployed by health-care providers, insurers and policymakers to help ameliorate the health aspiration-attainment gap and improve the health status of various demographic groups.
Default Clinic Appointments Promote Influenza Vaccination Uptake without a Displacement Effect
Authors: Chapman Gretchen B. , Li Meng , Leventhal Howard , Leventhal Elaine A.
Published: September 2023

The majority of U.S. adults do not receive an annual influenza vaccination Behavioral economics tools can be harnessed to encourage health behaviors. Specifically, scheduling patients by default for a flu shot appointment leads to higher vaccination rates at a medical practice than does merely encouraging flu shot appointments. It is not known, however, whether default appointments actually increase net vaccination or merely displace vaccinations from other venues. In the current field experiment, we examined the use of default appointments in a large medical practice and established that automatically scheduled appointments increased the total vaccination rate by 10 percentage points within the practice without displacing vaccinations that patients would otherwise have received in other settings. This increased vaccination rate came at the cost of a high no-show rate. These findings point to an effective way to increase vaccination rates and may offer a cost-saving measure in the scope of accountable care organizations.
The Costs of Poor Health (Plan Choices) & Prescriptions for Reform
Authors: Bhargava Saurabh , Loewenstein George , Benartzi Shlomo
Published: September 2023

Evidence suggests that when confronted with a large menu of health plan choices, consumers may not select the most efficient (that is, the most cost-effective) option. In anticipation of such problems, the exchanges set up by the Affordable Care Act (ACA) were designed to help consumers navigate the complexity of plan choices. Yet little is known about the actual efficiency with which ACA enrollees select plans. We present an analysis of projected health spending and a series of hypothetical plan choice experiments to explore the financial consequences of inefficient choices among potential ACA enrollees, the likelihood of such inefficient choices, and the potential for improving efficiency with a more behaviorally informed choice architecture. Our findings indicate that choosing a plan incommensurate with one's expected health care needs would lead to significant overspending relative to the most cost-effective plan and that, despite attempts to design the exchanges so that they facilitate decisionmaking, a significant share of ACA enrollees may have made inefficient decisions. More promisingly, we find that although the metal labels used in the exchanges to organize plans (for example, Bronze and Silver) encourage choices that are no more efficient than those associated with generic plan labels (such as Plan A and Plan B), labels that more sensibly reflect the factors consumers ought to consider—for instance, labels that emphasize gradations in the need for health care—do lead to significant improvements in the efficiency of plan choices.
A Behavioral Blueprint for Improving Health Care Policy
Authors: Loewenstein George , Hagmann David , Schwartz Janet , Ericson Keith , Kessler Judd B. , Bhargava Saurabh , Blumenthal-Barby Jennifer , D'Aunno Thomas , Handel Ben , Kolstad Jonathan , Nussbaum David , Shaffer Victoria , Skinner Jonathan , Ubel Peter , Zikmund-Fisher Brian J.
Published: September 2023

Behavioral policy to improve health and health care often relies on interventions, such as nudges, which target individual behaviors. But the most promising applications of behavioral insights in this area involve more far-reaching and systemic interventions. In this article, we propose a series of policies inspired by behavioral research that we believe offer the greatest potential for success. These include interventions to improve health-related behaviors, health insurance access, decisions about insurance plans, end-of-life care, and rates of medical (for example, organ and blood) donation. We conclude with a discussion of new technologies, such as electronic medical records and web- or mobile-based decision apps, which can enhance doctor and patient adherence to best medical practices. These technologies, however, also pose new challenges that can undermine the effectiveness of medical care delivery.
Treating Ethics as a Design Problem
Authors: Epley Nicholas , Tannenbaum David
Published: September 2023

Creating policies that encourage ethical behavior requires an accurate understanding of what drives such behavior. We first describe three common myths about the psychological causes of ethical behavior that can lead policymakers to overlook constructive interventions. These myths suggest that ethical behavior stems from a person's beliefs; changing behavior therefore requires changing beliefs. Behavioral science, however, indicates that the immediate context (such as an organization's norms and accepted procedures) exerts a surprisingly powerful influence on behavior. To be effective, policies must treat ethics as a design problem; that is, policymakers should create contexts that promote ethical actions. We then discuss three psychological processes that affect ethical activity–attention, construal, and motivation—and describe how understanding them can help policymakers in the public and private sectors design environments that promote ethical behavior.
What is Health Equity?
Authors: Braveman Paula , Arkin Elaine , Orleans Tracy , Proctor Dwayne , Acker Julia , Plough Alonzo
Published: September 2023

Policymakers and others concerned about public health often speak of the need to achieve health equity. Yet the term can mean different things to different people. For government, other organizations, and communities, lack of shared understanding can be a serious obstacle to effective action. This lack of understanding makes it difficult to agree on concrete goals and criteria for success and can lead to wasted efforts, with policies and practices that work at cross-purposes. This article provides a carefully constructed definition of health equity and discusses the definition's implications both for action and for assessing progress toward health equity.
Improving the Match between Patients’ Needs & End-of-Life Care by Increasing Patient Choice in Medicare
Authors: Taylor Donald H.
Published: September 2023

One way to achieve health equity—ensuring everyone has fair and just opportunities to be as healthy as possible—in the United States would be to reallocate Medicare spending from low-value medical care (expensive treatments that do little good) toward high-value medical and social care (respectively medical interventions that have been shown to work well but are not covered by Medicare and nonmedical interventions, such as help with activities of daily living, that patients find more helpful than low-value care). In the current policy milieu, the most practical, direct step in that direction may be for Medicare—an already established, universal health care program for the elderly—to provide patients with more choices and autonomy.
Together from afar: Introducing a Diary Contact Technique for Improving Intergroup Relations
Authors: Jackson Joshua Conrad , Gelfand Michele J. , Ayub Nailah , Wheeler Jasmine
Published: September 2023

Bringing groups into direct contact is a popular way to break down negative stereotypes but is logistically challenging when groups are geographically distant or otherwise isolated. To address this issue, we present the diary contact technique (DCT), a methodology designed to improve relations between such groups via positive contact. In the DCT., individuals read real diary entries written by a member of their own culture (the in-group) or another culture (the out-group), with the prediction that reading out-group diary entries will reduce stereotyping. In this randomized controlled study, we validate the DCT's effectiveness in samples of Americans and Pakistanis. Individuals who received out-group diaries perceived less cultural distance between the two groups after the intervention, whereas participants who received in-group diaries showed no change in perceived cultural distance. The reductions in perceived cultural distance mediated decreases in negative stereotyping of the out-groups. These results suggest that the DCT is a promising tool for improving relations between cultures.
Improving employee performance by developing empowering leaders & companies
Authors: Kirkman Bradley , Chen Gilad , Mathieu John
Published: September 2023

Empowerment has been a buzzword in many companies for decades, and research shows that empowerment enhances individual, team, and company performance. In practice, though, empowerment programs often fail. People who institute the programs frequently have a narrow understanding of what empowerment is, and this limited view probably helps to account for the failures. Drawing on several decades of organizational-science research, we provide a more useful, robust definition of empowerment and describe obstacles that company leaders and other employees can throw in the path of empowerment initiatives. We then provide empirically driven, practical recommendations for overcoming the obstacles and for otherwise enhancing employee empowerment, such as having leaders model empowerment and changing the company climate to align with more empowering policies and procedures.
Designing more effective practices for reducing workplace inequality
Authors: Roberson Quinetta , King Eden , Hebl Mikki
Published: September 2023

To explore the effectiveness of behavioral policy interventions on workplace inequality, we focus on four categories of interventions: affirmative action practices, targeted human resource management, diversity training, and accountability and transparency practices. We assess the impact of each of these approaches on improving employment outcomes for women and underrepresented minorities, and we highlight the approaches’ key design features. On the basis of this review, we offer recommendations for developing and implementing organizational policies and practices to increase workforce diversity and career growth at all levels and to decrease discrimination in the workplace. We also suggest directions for researchers, organizations, policymakers, and regulatory bodies to pursue.
Developing & delivering effective anti-bias training: Challenges & recommendations
Authors: Carter Evelyn R. , Onyeador Ivuoma N. , Lewis Neil A.
Published: September 2023

Organizations invest nearly $8 billion annually in diversity training, but questions have arisen about whether training actually reduces biased attitudes, changes behavior, and increases diversity. In this article, we review the relevant evidence, noting that training should be explicitly aimed at increasing awareness of and concern about bias while at the same time providing strategies that attendees can use to change their behavior. After outlining five challenges to developing and delivering training that meets these goals, we provide evidence-based recommendations that organizations and facilitators can use as a blueprint for creating anti-bias training programs that work. One recommendation is to couple investment in anti-bias training with other diversity and inclusion initiatives to help ensure that the billions spent each year yield meaningful change.
Article Commentary: Another challenge worth acknowledging
Authors: Avery Derek R.
Published: September 2023

I commend Evelyn R. Carter, Ivuoma N. Onyeador, and Neil A. Lewis, Jr., on their thorough, compelling, and thought-provoking article, “Developing & Delivering Effective Anti-Bias Training: Challenges & Recommendations,” which reviewed the challenges that organizations face in using diversity training to develop employee competence at interacting with people who differ from them.1 Although I recognize each of the challenges they present and respect the solutions they offer, I want to address an additional important challenge to developing a workforce that embraces diversity—namely, that organizations are dependent on the labor market to provide prospective employees who possess the knowledge, skills, abilities, and other competencies needed to fulfill job responsibilities, yet too much of the labor force seems to start off with little inclination or skill for interacting constructively with diverse groups.

Roughly 20 years have passed since Nancy E. Day and Betty J. Glick published the results of a national assessment detailing the level of employer satisfaction with the diversity-related competency of typical college graduates in the United States.2 They concluded that “HR managers who responded believe that college graduates do not possess the critical skills that are needed to handle diversity” and that “a minority of the organizations surveyed attempt to fill the diversity KSA [knowledge, skills, and abilities] gaps through corporate training.”2 A good deal of anecdotal evidence suggests that these conditions persist today; hence, one could argue that organizations are being forced to do the best they can with the little they have been given.
Article Commentary: The importance of organizational communications in employees’ responses to diversity practices
Authors: Khattab Jasmien
Published: September 2023

In “Synergy From Diversity: Managing Team Diversity to Enhance Performance,” Daan van Knippenberg, Lisa H. Nishii, and David J. G. Dwertmann observe that misalignment between diversity theory and actual diversity management practices often prevents organizations from achieving the systematic performance benefits diversity can bring.1 Whereas theory on diversity emphasizes the preconditions required to create synergy in groups that are diverse, diversity management practices have largely addressed legal concerns relating to discrimination and are rarely designed to promote the creative integration of diverse ideas. The authors suggest several helpful actions policymakers can take to increase synergy from diversity. These include developing specific procedures that spur teams to integrate diverse information and perspectives, leveraging the role of team leaders, establishing accountability structures for meeting diversity objectives, and implementing bundles of aligned practices. To those suggestions, I add two others, relating to the way organizations communicate about diversity practices.
Keeping Safe versus Staying Healthy: The Effect of Regulatory Fit on Social Distancing
Authors: Wang Jiaqian , Lee Angela Y.
Published: September 2023

Some states’ COVID-19 social distancing directives spotlight the goal of health promotion (that is, staying healthy), whereas others underscore illness prevention (that is, keeping safe). Regulatory fit theory holds that persuasiveness is influenced by how well the framing of a message resonates with fundamental motivations that influence recipients’ behavior. People who are motivated to approach desirable outcomes generally respond best to health messages having a promotion frame, whereas people who are motivated to avoid undesirable outcomes respond best to health messages having a prevention frame. In the research presented in this article, we show that the effectiveness of COVID-19-related directives is influenced by the fit between promotion or prevention framing and the recipients’ identity—whether they view themselves as independent actors or as part of a larger community. We found that an appeal that highlighted health promotion and benefits to the individual (as in “what you can do to help you stay healthy”) or one that highlighted disease prevention and protection of society (as in “what you can do to keep America safe”) led to greater intent to practice social distancing than did appeals using other pairings of framing and identity, particularly in people who were not already practicing rigorous social distancing. The findings suggest that policymakers should consider regulatory fit—and specifically, the pairings described above—when designing public health communications relating to COVID-19 and other directives.
The coronavirus & work-life inequality: Three evidence-based initiatives to update U.S. work-life employment policies
Authors: Kossek Ellen Ernst , Lee Kyung-Hee
Published: September 2023

The coronavirus crisis has illuminated how poorly the United States compares with other major industrialized nations in providing workers across all industries equal access to paid sick and family leave, employee-requested flexible scheduling, and reasonable work hours. Many essential workers in frontline jobs (such as those in health care, food services, and public safety) have been unable to access benefits that support work-life balance and that play a critical role in helping employees manage job stress and protect their health. At the same time, many nonessential workers (disproportionately women) who can telecommute to prevent exposure have been left juggling a demanding job while also caring for children, elders, or others at home. We propose three evidence-based national initiatives that would improve U.S. work-life policy: ensure employees have access to and the ability to use paid sick leave and family leave, mandate that employers create emergency backup staffing infrastructures, and give employees the right to request flexible and reasonable work hours. These work-life policies are based on principles of balanced flexibility that benefit employers, employees, and society as a whole.
Managing remote workers during quarantine: Insights from organizational research on boundary management
Authors: Perrigino Matthew B. , Raveendhran Roshni
Published: September 2023

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of employees find themselves working from home for the first time, and organizational leaders and supervisors are coping with the challenge of managing remote workers who are struggling to set and maintain a boundary between work and home life. Using an evidence-based management approach, we offer actionable insights into how managers can assess, create, and support work-from-home practices that address employees’ daily boundary control needs and challenges effectively. Our assess–create–support framework provides a blueprint for how managers can establish and optimize psychological and time-related work-home boundaries to enhance remote workers’ health, well-being, and performance.
A community-based sociocultural network approach to controlling COVID-19 contagion: Seven suggestions for improving policy
Authors: Hannigan Timothy R. , Wang Milo Shaoqing , Steele Christopher W. J. , Seidel Marc-David L. , Cervantes Ed , Jennings P. Devereaux
Published: September 2023

We showcase the usefulness of a community-based sociocultural network approach to understanding and combating COVID-19 contagion. Rather than recommending the standard approach to modeling contagion, which uses the individual person as the unit of interest (SEIR-type modeling), we encourage researchers and policymakers to focus on social units (such as households) and to conceive of the social units as being part of a community (a local configuration of a sociocultural network) that is embedded in a regional or national culture. Contagion occurs via culturally conditioned interactions between social units in these community networks. On the basis of this approach and our preliminary simulation results, we offer three policy suggestions for analysts, two for policymakers, and two for practitioners.
Fear & anxiety in the time of COVID-19: How they influence behavior
Authors: Zigler Christina K. , Lucas Nicole , Henke Debra M. , Fridman Ilona
Published: September 2023

The emotional factors that influence adherence to public health guidelines for containing the spread of COVID-19 are poorly understood and are limiting policymakers’ ability to elicit compliance. In this article, we report the results of a nationwide survey conducted in April 2020 to gain insight into the relation between emotional stress and adherence to the public health guidelines of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). We found that levels of anxiety and perceived risk from COVID-19 correlated with adherence to the CDCs recommended cleanliness behaviors, such as handwashing. High anxiety increased individuals’ adherence in part by increasing the perceived seriousness of the risk COVID-19 posed to them. Anxiety and perceived risk were not, however, associated with adherence to social distancing guidelines. Our findings highlight a need for more research into the emotional factors that predict public compliance with the CDCs recommendations. The results also indicate that policymakers may need to deliver different messages to promote different COVID-limiting behaviors, such as handwashing and social distancing.
Vicarious learning in the time of coronavirus
Authors: Myers Christopher G.
Published: September 2023

Health professionals confronting the COVID-19 pandemic need to learn vicariously—that is, learn the lessons of others’ experiences—if they are to adopt and spread best practices for treatment, avoid costly repetition of prior mistakes, and not waste time “reinventing the wheel.” Digital communication tools and social media could be leveraged to facilitate this vicarious learning in much the same way that they are being used to support other types of interpersonal interactions amid social distancing. Yet these tools are often not used to their full potential for learning and knowledge sharing among health professionals fighting COVID-19. Drawing on organizational and behavioral science research into how individuals and organizations learn from others’ experiences, I recommend guidelines, policies, and practices that can increase both the use and the effectiveness of technological tools and social media to enhance vicarious learning among the health professionals at the front lines of pandemic care.
Behavioral insights for containing the COVID-19 pandemic: Some practices in China
Authors: Zhang Ning
Published: September 2023

Although China's central and local governments do not have behavioral insights teams, they nonetheless incorporated strategies consistent with behavioral science research when they instituted plans to contain the COVID-19 pandemic. They made it easy for the public to implement health-protective behaviors; eliminated financial barriers to obtaining treatment; set the most stringent protocols as the default to protect health care professionals; simplified decisionmaking about which groups of people needed to self-isolate (thereby enhancing the efficiency of infection-control programs); and provided timely, tailored mental health services to those in need of psychological assistance. Adopting similar practices might help other countries contain the COVID-19 pandemic and enhance future pandemic preparedness and resiliency.
Using Behavioral Economic Interventions with Remote-monitoring Technologies to Increase Physical Activity
Authors: Changolkar Sujatha , Volpp Kevin G. , Patel Mitesh S.
Published: September 2023

Many workplaces and insurers sponsor programs to increase employees’ physical activity, but these programs often fail to create healthy behaviors or else work only temporarily. They typically offer financial incentives without considering cognitive biases that influence whether people will join the programs and remain committed to exercising. We argue that interventions should leverage both insights from behavioral economics and the availability of remote-monitoring technologies, such as automatic step trackers, to be more effective. In this article, we summarize relevant insights from behavioral economics, highlight research findings that show the value of combining behaviorally informed program design with remote monitoring, and suggest strategies for selecting interventions and remote-monitoring devices.
Creating a Culture of Voice
Authors: Burris Ethan R. , Sohn Wonbin
Published: September 2023

Developing a culture of voice, in which employees routinely speak up and organizations capitalize on the ideas from rank-and-file workers, is central to success in modern business. Such a culture enables organizational leaders to identify and correct problems they might have otherwise overlooked, to innovate in ways they would not have considered without employee input, and to more readily gain employee buy-in for organizational changes. Yet employees routinely withhold their ideas. When ideas do bubble up, managers frequently fail to act on them. Leveraging the literature on employee voice, we offer insights into why employees do not speak up and why managers often resist acting on ideas from below, and we suggest how organizations can develop policies that promote employee voice and its many benefits.
How Cities Can Apply Behavioral Science to Promote Public Transportation use
Authors: Kormos Christine , Sussman Reuven , Rosenberg Bracha
Published: September 2023

In this review, we present and critically evaluate evidence regarding how policymakers can apply behavioral science-based strategies to encourage the use of public transportation. After briefly introducing the theoretical background, we describe selected rigorously studied interventions informed by behavioral insights. We organize the interventions into three overarching groups: (a) communication-based approaches (information provision, goal setting and plan formation, and message framing), (b) bias-busting approaches (strategies that can counter negative perceptions of public transportation, break habits by timing interventions strategically, overcome anticipated dislike of social interactions on public transportation, and tap into emotional influences on decisionmaking), and (c) technology-based approaches (feedback and gamification). On the basis of the reviewed findings, we identify the interventions that seem most promising for increasing public transportation use.
Nudging the Commute: Using Behaviorally Informed Interventions to Promote Sustainable Transportation
Authors: Whillans Ashley , Sherlock Joseph , Roberts Jessica , O'Flaherty Shibeal , Gavin Lyndsay , Dykstra Holly , Daly Michael
Published: September 2023

One way to limit the emissions from fossil fuel combustion that underlie global climate change and air pollution is to nudge people away from commuting alone in their vehicles—that is, to gently encourage people (without limiting their freedom of choice) to replace single-occupancy-vehicle commutes with environmentally friendlier options. Abundant research has focused on the influence of external factors—for example, urban design, the availability of roadways and bicycle lanes, and the costs of using one's chosen means of transportation—on commuters’ transportation decisions. Much less is known about the psychological factors that influence which commuting modes people use. The field of behavioral science is therefore overdue to focus on transportation. In this article, we—a multidisciplinary team consisting of academics, applied researchers, and a transportation-management consultant—present a framework for designing and testing interventions informed by behavioral theory. We hope that this framework will help policymakers in government and the private sector identify nudges that can encourage commuters to adopt eco-friendlier modes of transportation. We also describe several studies we have designed on the basis of this framework and present the results collected so far.
Habits to save Our Habitat: Using the Psychology of Habits to Promote Sustainability
Authors: Mazar Asaf , Tomaino Geoffrey , Carmon Ziv , Wood Wendy
Published: September 2023

Public awareness and concern about climate and environmental issues have grown dramatically in the United States and around the world. Yet this shift in attitudes has not been accompanied by similar increases in eco-friendly behaviors. We propose that this attitude-behavior gap is partly driven by the difficulty of changing unsustainable habits. Governments and businesses can reduce this gap through interventions that draw on insights from research into the psychology of habits and behavioral economics. First, they can reduce or add friction, making it easier for people to engage in eco-friendly actions and making it harder to continue environmentally damaging practices. Second, they can set up action cues— prompts that trigger pro-environment actions—and deliver these cues where and when they will have the biggest impact. Finally, they can provide psychologically informed incentives and disincentives that steer people toward environmentally beneficial actions. We also describe how even initially unpopular policies can become accepted through habitual repetition. In these ways, habit psychology represents a promising addition to the policymaker's toolbox.
Making it Easier to Take Environmental Actions is not Enough: Policymakers Must Also Emphasize Why action is Necessary
Authors: Newell Ben R. , Moss Jeremy
Published: September 2023

A complete policy response to climate change, habitat destruction, plastic pollution, and other Anthropocene challenges requires action by governments, industries, nongovernmental organizations, and individuals. In this article, we focus on ways to persuade individuals to take action, whether that entails making decisions to reduce their own carbon emissions, lobbying for new laws, or providing leadership in their sphere of influence. We argue that interventions will be most effective if they not only make it easier for people to act (as behavioral science suggests) but also highlight moral reasons for taking action and assure people that their actions make a difference. Such steps should increase humanity's chances of surviving and thriving in the Anthropocene.
Hierarchy position & personality predict politicians’ choice of information sources
Authors: Joly Jeroen K. , Hofmans Joeri
Published: September 2023

Political leaders need to stay informed about their constituents’ needs and the pros and cons of any course of action. Reviewing information from a variety of sources would be expected to result in decisions that best serve those constituents. In a study involving 269 Belgian politicians, we examined whether the information sources they used differed according to individuals’ position in the political hierarchy or their personality. We found that both factors could predict a politician's consultation of certain sources over others. Notably, elite political leaders (those with the most power and status) turned significantly more to sources produced by politically neutral groups (such as civil services or scientific institutions) than did politicians known as “backbenchers,” who have less clout. We document several such patterns and argue that these tendencies are problematic. Political parties and government entities interested in good governance should provide training to teach politicians and their staffs to explore varied perspectives.
Improving election outcomes through a better understanding of heuristic evaluation of candidates
Authors: Li Meng , Glerum David R.
Published: September 2023

In democracies, the public may assume that people elected to public office are qualified and suited for that office. However, history has demonstrated that this perception can be incorrect. One reason that unqualified individuals win elections is that voters do not always make logical or rational choices. Instead, they often rely on mental shortcuts called heuristics to make snap judgments about which candidate would do the best job. Unfortunately, these snap judgments can be inaccurate. In this article, we summarize heuristics commonly used by voters. These heuristics are often activated by candidate attributes such as appearance, age, ethnicity, and other characteristics that are not related to leadership potential. We also propose policy solutions to reduce the chance of incompetent leaders being elected. These policy solutions address the problem through two main strategies: increasing the number of candidates who have the proper qualifications and encouraging voters to evaluate candidates more deeply and deliberately. We suggest four ways to implement these strategies.
Being and Becoming: Men in a Matrilineal Society
Authors: Goswami Subhashim
Published: September 2023

This article elucidates what it means to be a man in a matrilineal society by critically assessing the status of men within the Khasi matrilineal tribe in Meghalaya, India. This article argues that Khasi men constantly negotiate their gender identity in tandem with a tribal identity and find themselves trapped between a masculine assertion of patriarchal hegemony and demands that the rules of matriliny apply to their everyday existence. There is inevitably a conflict between the two, and Khasi men constantly tackle this dilemma by presenting their worldview through a notion of victimhood or a sense of pathos in explicating their position in the tussle between these two polarities. While the structural order of a matrilineal system determines the existence and ways of being a man and even a woman in a matrilineal society, this article argues that both of these positions could be prescriptive while ascribing of an identity in itself.
Myositis mimics in scleroderma: A case series of neuromuscular diseases that can co-exist in scleroderma
Authors: Joyce Emma , Wigley Fredrick M , Hummers Laura K , Paik Julie J
Published: September 2023

We present a case series of four patients with systemic sclerosis and skeletal myopathy. While idiopathic inflammatory myopathies, or myositis, are thought to be the most common type of muscle disease seen in systemic sclerosis, we highlight four cases where unique clinical findings and careful assessment ruled out myositis mimics. Key diagnostic tools that can be helpful for clinicians to diagnose a neuromuscular disease are also detailed in this report.
Encroachment of Tribal Culture and Representations of Their Struggle
Authors: Vijayan Don G. , Umamaheshwari S.
Published: September 2023

India is the homeland for a great number of indigenous people, who have remained intact despite modern lifestyles and these ethnic groups are known as Tribes or Native people. India’s ethnographic tradition is marked by the culture of various Tribes. The tribal struggle after independence can be divided into three categories: struggles that arise due to encroachment by outsiders, struggles as a result of economic hardships and the struggles as a result of separatist attitudes that cause conflict. The key issues faced by them are poverty, debt, illiteracy, slavery, exploitation, sickness and unemployment. Many countries around the world have witnessed industrialization along the tribal belts, resulting in core changes in the tribal culture. The present study analyses the history, cultures and the struggles faced by the tribes based on works of Mahasweta Devi and Gopinath Mohanty.
Results of VOICE: a global survey of disease-specific knowledge and perspectives of real-world patients with CLL
Authors: Tam Constantine , Pinilla-Ibarz Javier , Castillo Carolina G. , Fenili Ana Cristina , Huntley Kathryn , Karakus Volkan , Mattar Mervat , Miroli Miguel A. , Moura Catherine , Pavlovsky Miguel , Piotrowski Fernando , Šimkovič Martin , Stilgenbauer Stephan
Published: September 2023

The Virtual Opinions poll Independent Centered on CLL patients’ Experience (VOICE) evaluated patients’ knowledge about chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), their perspectives on diagnosis and treatment, and their unmet needs. Clinicians and patient advocacy group representatives developed and distributed the survey from March through December 2022 in 12 countries, and 377 patients with ≥1 line of previous CLL treatment responded from Europe, Latin America, the United States, Australia, Egypt, and Turkey. A majority of them (90%; 336/374) relied on their physicians for information regarding CLL and treatment. If at high risk, respondents prefer oral medications to intravenous (78%; 232/296), fixed duration treatment over treatment until progression (69%; 185/270), outpatient over inpatient treatments (91%; 257/283). Over three-fourths of respondents (78%; 286/368) wanted to be involved in treatment decisions, but a minority actually participated (44%; 138/313). COVID-19 vaccinations were widely available (97%; 273/281), but one-fifth (19%; 63/331) were unaware that CLL increases vulnerability to infections. Most patients’ physicians explained their treatment options (84%; 297/355), and 90% (271/301) understood their treatment. Notably, >10% would continue treatment normally if they experienced cardiac problems or arrhythmias, whereas 23% would consider stopping treatment if they developed skin cancer. Treatment–associated side effects affected 27% to 43% of patients. These results in a global patient population highlight gaps in patients’ knowledge of risk groups, their susceptibility to infections including COVID, and the side effects of common treatments. Such knowledge can guide the appropriate targeting of patient education initiatives by clinicians, advocates, and policymakers.