Welcome to The Spark, bringing you the world's best behavioral science. 

One of the best parts about running Applied Scholar is the opportunity it creates to connect with so many of you. This month has been particularly joyful and energizing on that front, as we’ve had the chance to meet and speak with a wide variety of practitioners who use Applied Scholar to benefit their work and careers. Here’s a look at the people and patterns that emerged from our conversations this month.

Coaches: We connected with a number of coaches this month who use Applied Scholar in an effort to better serve their clients. It was quite clear in these interactions that they were dedicated to the craft of coaching and felt a large obligation to their clients to leverage the best research available in their coaching. They mentioned how they use Applied Scholar to increase their expertise on human behavior more broadly (Behavior and Performance collection was mentioned) and to stay connected to research in a much more efficient way. One coach mentioned - in a sea of information of varying quality - how much they valued being able to go to one place that they can trust and rely upon.

People and HR Leaders: It’s clear there’s a lot of doubt in senior People and HR leaders that the typical talent approaches - the so-called best practices or benchmarks - are doing any good whatsoever for organizations. We heard from this group that Applied Scholar was providing them with the ability to recognize the consistent patterns across those failures and to begin working towards much more impactful outcomes. The orientation towards solutions is really valued by these leaders - with the four-part framework in the Bias and Fairness collection being an example of this. It’s not good enough to say “bias training doesn’t work” - you also need to show what can create impact.

Fueling Curiosity and Insights: Through our work at Applied Scholar, we’ve developed a long-time friendship with Art Turock, a pentathlete, breakthrough performance coach, and the author of Demolish Your Comfort Zones. Art has used Applied Scholar’s insights in his relentless pursuit to help others live more fulfilling lives. As he often says (and our favorite quote of his): “Comfort kills more dreams than failure ever will.” Art has a deep personal commitment to ensure that his work connects to the latest behavioral science research and it’s been special to build a relationship with him over the last decade. Applied Scholar’s take on anti-fragility and personal development helped Art make a major intellectual breakthrough as he wrote Demolish Your Comfort Zones. We hope our work fuels curiosity and insights for you as it has for Art!

We look forward to many more conversations in the months and years ahead!

FEATURED RESEARCH

Let's dig into the research.

Do geopolitical events affect red card decisions? We love research that looks outside of the lab and into the real-world to find new insights on human behavior. The timeless Israeli judge study is an example of that. And while some of these studies can be a bit touchy (correlation vs. causation), they can also shed light on the messy reality of real humans in real settings. With the football craze of the World Cup just behind us, in this paper, we look at the interesting question of whether the Russian-Ukraine war influenced referee decisions. Spoiler alert: human behavior is fascinating!

PERSPECTIVES TO SHARE

High-quality commentary from the world of applied behavioral science.  

How to tell if you have a changeable personality: We’re big fans of Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic and we very much enjoyed his recent article. It’s an entertaining and very accessible read on both the difficulty and possibility of changing our personalities. In his words, “Some people possess what we might call a more changeable personality: not because their core traits magically fluctuate, but because they are better equipped to revise habits, experiment with new behaviors, and respond constructively to feedback. Research suggests that four characteristics are especially important.”

Enjoy!

LAST BUT NOT LEAST

Join us and be featured in the Vault? In the coming months, we’re going to create content for our Vault collection called the Hall of Shame. It’s a lighthearted way to poke fun at the world of People and HR, and all the whacko things that really should go away. Learning styles. Generational differences. Stuff like that! We’re going to create a series of short recordings on those topics and we wanted to see if anyone from the Applied Scholar community wanted to appear in the recordings. You’d serve as a co-host and challenger with fun and relaxed vibes, no topic expertise required! 

New collection coming! Next week, we’ll be adding the Foundations of Inclusion and Belonging collection to the Vault! That will mark the fifth flagship collection we’ve released this year. Progress continues!

 We hope that you enjoyed this edition of the Spark. See you again soon!