Oliver Payne

Amazon Dash launches today in the UK. It’s a physical button pre-programmed to have one function, and one function alone – you push it and it…

Qin Shihuangdi first ruled China in 221 BC. He was the first Emperor, and laid the foundations for the world’s oldest continuous political entity. However…

We work harder to avoid loss than we do to achieve gain. This could be loss of time, or loss of social status, as well as the more obvious loss of money. This…

The French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss notes that Western societies constructed distal concepts like geography and astrology before developing the…

Most of us know a bit about ‘anchoring’ – even if we don’t appreciate it as such. It’s prevalent in supermarkets: we are offered food that’s ‘75% lean’, not ‘25%……

The only Gold Retail Nudge Award won for DAS LegalThe only Gold Retail Nudge Award in 2015 is won by The Hunting Dynasty & Partner Innovationbubble for DAS Legal Expenses…

As well as explicit meaning, words carry strong implicit meaning and, as such, play a major role in how we perceive a problem. In the example above...

In general, baby boomers (the retired empty-nesters) have older domestic infrastructure, and this is likely poor performing. Also, there are fewer of them...

Something interesting about Any Questions question on Radio 4 – The debate was interesting for the thing it lacked, IMHO...

The UK Department for Transport’s airing it’s THINK! drink drive advert again. It’s good, but is it focusing on the right area?..

We've all seen them – poorly constructed sentences in long winding emails about diplomats, infrastructure projects, or legal bequeathes that promise...

I saw this YouGov poll graph recently. Nice clearly defined colours. Clearly labelled axis. It tells you everything you need to know. (Sort of.) [...]

If you have a jar full of marbles, you have have a lot of marbles. Also, you have an interesting phenomenon; if you ask a group of people to guess the number...

The inestimable Maria Popova (@brainpicker) drew my attention to the very first car advert in a weekly publication, first printed in 1898, through a tweet...

A ‘tree top’ view, versus a ‘nose pressed against the tree’ view changes the way we construct our understanding of the world. This may be no surprise...

Habits are nasty, and nice. Nasty, because the habit cueing mechanism – which enacts the entire sequence of behaviour – does not require the original...

You are at work. You walk by a meeting room and peek inside. The voices are muffled, but it’s clear they’re shouting. A ‘he’, is shouting. You look closer...

Rarely can you avoid the situational, group, proximal and distal influences that shape our behaviour: Our world is a spaghetti-mess of behavioural...

The UK House of Lords Select Committee Behavioural Change Report was released on 19th July 2011. It’s an interesting read. However, more interesting is the...

Back in the mid 1930’s Kurt Lewin described behavior as a function of the situation – as something we do based on what others’ are doing. We herd. Today, on...

It’s all very well talking about how you can change recycling behaviour by adjusting the bins, but what if you’ve got only paid-for media space at your...

Recycling paper in offices is such an old story you’d think we’d have it nailed by now. We haven’t. In my experience recycling bins in offices create only on...

Like you, I am a fair-minded, considerate, person. The news I read, the stories I engage with, the information I glean is considered, compared, and...

Context is important. In fact, it’s one of the big three (quasi-stationary equilibria, and construal being the others). One of the surprising things about co...