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we're here today with Wharton marketing Professor giddy n to talk about some of
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his latest research giddy thanks for being here hi Rachel nice being here too and so first of all could you just give
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us a brief overview of your research what you were trying to what question you were trying to ask yeah well I came
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to work on from a neuroscience department and uh my work is mostly focused on the biological basis of how
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people make decisions uh we all know that the way we make decisions is influenced by our biological state
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things like hunger sleep deprivation and stress influence the process of decision- making and I'm trying to study
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this in a rigorous way using lab experiments and uh some biological data and what have been some of the key
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takeaways from your research well one of the things I study is hormones and how hormones influence decision- making we
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all know that there are many situations in which different hormones fluctuate in
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our body H stress is a good example uh we all have a very uh clearly measurable biological stress response that uh
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consists of elevation of several hormones in our body like neur adrenaline and cortisol H one of the things that I am
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studying is how cortisol specifically affect decision making and we do it by pharmacologically administering this
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hormone to people under a double blind and Placebo controlled protocol H what's
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interesting is that giving cortisol to people is not stressing them out cortisol is actually a TR response it's
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something that make people more relaxed H but the interesting thing that we find
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is that even though people are not even aware at the fact that they received cortisol we see very clear behavioral
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effects of this drug on how people make decisions one thing specifically that we
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take a look at is the tradeoff between people's accuracy and speed when making
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the decisions uh we have this uh Paradigm called the cognitive reflection test I don't know if you heard about it
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but I can Give an example using one question that'd be great you're going to
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try to answer it but okay I can do that all right so there is a bet and a ball like a baseball bet and a ball and
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together they cost A110 so far we're good y yeah now the BET costs a dollar more than the
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bow right and again together they're $110 now what's the price of the bow 10 cents okay so you just gave me
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your intuitive answer which is the in answer of most people so if the ball is 10 cents and the bet is $1 more that
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means that the bet is a do and 10 cents so together there will be a120 so the correct answer that you will
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have to check yourself and get into some more I'd say deliberate calculations is
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$5 five cents and a do5 what we see is that when you give cortisol to people they're more likely
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to do what you just did and say 10 cents and not deliberate and think it's through even even though they have some
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incentives to really think it through and they get paid for being correct they're just giving their gut answer
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faster as if they're in kind of time pressure they're more likely to rely on
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this incorrect but uh simple euristic in the decision making process so I'm using
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this task uh many times uh I find it quite interesting to study we have other studies where I give testosterone to
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people testosterone again is a hormone that is involved in instinctive behaviors in animals such as intale
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aggression and mating behaviors again it typically rises in context where it's
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better to act fast and we see again that men that receive testosterone are more likely to fail in questions like the BET
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and the ball ones uh so this is one topic that uh I'm currently studying H yeah so other than my questionable Mas
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skills what can we what what can businesses take away from this I mean I can can imagine there's lots of
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different applications from this from I mean Human Resources departments dealing
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with their employees to businesses dealing with their customers I mean it would really want the gamut I would
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think yes so for start failing in this question is not necessarily bad if you have a good intuitive response you will
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answer it faster after when you're stressed or uh having high level of testosterone but there are some
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situations where deliberation is needed and there are some situations and some people that are more vulnerable to make
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fatal m takes in these situations and I think it's important that we pay attention to these situations and make
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sure that these won't happen for example once you're stressed if you're put in
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environment that you know well perhaps you'll respond good but if I put you in
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in a completely novel environment and give you some easy to fail uh questions you may be worse off traumatically
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because of being stressed so I think it's important that we're know when and
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where to expect these uh fatal mistakes and it also seems to me like it would also for I mean for the point of like a
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retailer for example like the idea of if you can try to figure out what state the
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customers are when they come in your door that you can try to sort of adjust your environment accordingly to either
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you know to make them less stressed or to sort of Point them towards the decision you might want them to make
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that's true one would say that maybe you can manipulate people easily more um
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when they're stressed on when they this boost of testosterone on the other hand
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I don't know if that's what you want to do because overall we want customers to
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be satisfied and if they're more likely to make mistakes they more likely to
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regret their purchase and let enjoy it and not come back so I think that again it depends on the situation but uh on my
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side I think it's better to know and also for me as a customer it's better to
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know for example that when I'm stressed I'm not going to go to the supermarket or hungry or hungry right I
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mean hunger is sort of a stressful situation true and so what's next for you what's next for This research well
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we we're living now in a time when we can measure and we can manipulate a lot
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of factors that we couldn't in history and it's not only hormones I'm talking
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about brain activity we can look at the where you're looking at eye tracking
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data we can look at the brain images uh meaning the anatomical structure of the brain we can look at gin all of these
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things are measurable nowadays and uh we can learn a lot from about individual differences between people from these
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measures and I think it's a very exciting time now uh to be working on this intersection between biological
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science and Behavioral Science and obviously the best type of Behavioral data we can get is now coming from
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marketing and from online Behavior great thank you so much for being here thank you
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Rachel [Music]