There's a tremendous gap between the world's best behavioral science research and the practices of most organizations and businesses. We use the word “tremendous” here intentionally and we don’t think we’re overstating it.

If we say this a bit more casually, organizations are pretty bad when it comes to topics that involve complex human behavior. Let's look at some of the most glaring examples:

• Personality and Assessment -- Time for MBTI!
• Bias and Equity - Let's run Unconscious Bias Training!
• Rewards - I bet pre-promised, If-then Monetary Rewards will work!
• Performance Management - Love me some Self-Assessments! Let's do Ratings influenced by Bonus Pools too!

The solutions above are amazingly widespread and not at all based on the world's best behavioral science research. Ok, so we get it. Organizations approach these types of things poorly.

Thankfully, it turns out behavioral science has a lot to say on complex people topics. But it's tremendously hard to access, understand, and apply. And that's where we come in.

With the Vault, we want to make it as easy as possible to get access to the world's best behavioral science research on the topics that matter most to you. That's our one goal, and we aspire to be the best in the world at providing this service.

So here's our pitch: for the price of around two books per month, we search the world for the best research, find the most relevant stuff, explore the connections between similar research, synthesize it all into usable frameworks, and provide that to you in one central location. That's the Vault and we hope you love it!

Let's look at the grandest question of all – what actually influences the behavior and performance of employees inside of an organization?

To provide a useful answer to this question, we have conducted - and continue to conduct! - a massive effort to better understand the different evidence-based factors that link to employee behavior and performance. Essentially, we’re trying to wade through all available research, identify the factors that can help us understand the behavior and performance of individuals in an organization, and then consolidate all of that into a coherent framework we can actually use for the people and talent challenges we see.

Our framework for Behavior and Performance covers 19 evidence-based factors, everything from IQ and Personality to the Physical Environment. These 19 factors fall into 4 categories:

• Cognitive Characteristics
• Domain-Specific Competencies
• Psychological Enablers
• Transient Contextual Factors

In the Vault, we go deep on each of these factors to understand what the factor is, how it might influence behavior and performance, and understand how each factor might change over time.

We refer to this framework as the Foundations of Behavior and Performance. It's the best thing that we have created and serves as the foundation for many of our other models. We can pretty much guarantee that you'll like it, find it useful, and drive meaningful change from it.

Whenever we look at the topic of learning in the workplace, we find that it's useful to look back a bit in time to the experience that many of us shared in a formal educational setting. During the most formative years of our life, we were sold the idea that the classroom is the place where learning occurs.

And what does that learning actually look like? (Psst, this is where it gets interesting!) Let's really think about how we experienced this environment. We were given assignments with clear instructions and deadlines. When we turned in those assignments or took an exam, our performance was graded by starting at 100% and then deducting points for the errors or mistakes we made. This was the primary feedback we received--the mistakes that lowered our grades. Our teachers, family, and peers judged us by how close we came to "perfection."

Can you imagine designing a worse environment for preparing individuals to thrive at learning in the modern organization?

This is what we explore in the Learning topic in the Vault. But we also look at the positive side of this situation, as there's a huge--huge--opportunity to build the skill of learning in employees. Not that old classroom learning, but the kind of learning that enables employees to thrive in the complex and changing environment in which many people currently find themselves.

For the last decade, we've been experimenting (on ourselves!) and teaching others how to become really high-end learners leveraging behavioral science research. We've turned this into a three-part model, which we informally refer to as the Learning Velocity model.

Grounded in research, the three factors we've built into our model that collectively enable high-end learning are:

• The stories you tell yourself about growth and adversity.
• The practices you employ to train your brain.
• The systems you build to stay the course.

It's possible for everyone to increase their Learning Velocity. We think you'll love the joint utility of this one - helping you to become a better learner yourself and also to enable growth in others.

It always makes us feel a bit "blah" when we talk about the outdated practices related to motivation and rewards. It's so clear the practices don't work, yet they continue to endure and remain widespread.

Let's look at two examples of how disconnected common rewards systems are from the actual science:

• If-then bonuses (AKA "if you get a 3 rating, you'll get a 15% bonus): The research is quite clear that this sort of bonus system is really ill-suited for office and corporate work, which calls for creativity, critical thinking, and collaboration. If-then bonuses are most likely to decrease our performance and output, yet they remain incredibly common. Shocking, I know, but this can get even worse! Have you ever been a part of a company that ties their ratings to the size of the bonus pool? We've seen this, and it is truly wild. Maybe you have heard things like, "you could have been a 4 this year, but the bonus pool was smaller than last year and I couldn't give out any more 4s." This really happens. It's sort of insane. We can do better.
• Big "steps" within bonus systems: There's almost nothing better at encouraging fraudulent behavior than creating huge "steps" in a bonus system. This is a specific variant of an if-then system, where you tell employees that they will receive a big bonus if they reach a certain goal and that they will receive little or no bonus if the goal isn't reached. Ask Bank of America or Wells Fargo how this worked out for them. This system creates a lot of pressure to hit certain milestones. And, not surprisingly, leads to a lot of really strange - and often illegal - behavior. Again, we can do better.

We explore these outdated practices in the Vault and share a lot of resources and reading that can help you strengthen your understanding of motivation and rewards.

We prioritize our research efforts on topics where the gap between the research and the everyday practices of organizations is widest. Current approaches to fairness and bias reduction meet this criteria.

Organizations in the United States alone are estimated to spend over $8 billion each year training related to fairness, equity, and bias. Yet there is widespread agreement that most programs don’t work and may actually be causing harm. This is quite problematic. Many organizations have relied upon these training programs – such as unconscious or implicit bias training – as a core part of their organizational approach and invest heavily to run these programs. And the research is clear--it’s very unlikely that these programs are doing anything to promote better organizational outcomes.

In this Vault topic, we deep-dive into the research on fairness and bias and offer an evidence-based framework for how to actually get better outcomes. The framework focuses on the four different approaches for reducing biased beliefs and behaviors based on the latest data from neuroscience and cognitive psychology research. 

Our goal with this topic is both to equip you with a deep understanding of what has been proven to work at promoting fairness and reducing bias and to provide you with a clear path to incorporating this insight into real-world organizational efforts.

Sneak preview! We've written and spoken about this topic for years. Here are two short articles that give a glimpse into our unique perspectives and research on fairness and bias reduction:

• There are four ways to reduce bias, let's start using them
• The Data is Overwhelmingly Clear: Unconscious Bias Trainings Do Not Reduce Bias

Not to send too negative, but we really messed up the whole inclusion and belonging topic within HR. And our biggest mistake was anchoring so much to the term and concept of "micro-aggressions."

"Micro-aggression" may be the worst behavioral science term to ever make the jump into organizations and businesses.

We know, we know. We typically find ourselves screaming from rooftops (often with no one listening 😊) that we should be bringing MORE behavioral science into organizations! In fact, that’s pretty much the whole goal of Applied Scholar). But here, we firmly believe the term “micro-aggressions” should have forever been locked away within the research world.

It seems almost perfectly suited to enrage everyone.

“Micro” – For the person on the receiving end, the impact of the behavior they perceive as problematic is rarely micro. Using micro here seems perfectly designed to belittle and downplay the impact.

“Aggression” – For the person displaying the behavior, it’s almost never perceived by them as being aggressive, or even intentional. Using aggressive here seems perfectly designed to create defensiveness and posturing.

In our opinion, it's malpractice that this term made the leap from the research world to the real world. And along with unconscious bias (don’t get us started), the use of the term has likely been part of the reason DEI programs have created so little impact and faced so much backlash. 

In this Vault topic, we provide an alternative (and much better in our opinion!) framework for thinking about inclusion and belonging within organizations. Leveraging the work of Dr. Tiffany Jana (among others), we look more holistically at the calculation that each of our brains is going through to determine if we a should feel a sense of inclusion or belonging.

Importantly, that leads us to look at four types of signals that each of us receive from the environment and people around us. And it's the messy combination of all these signals that leads to inclusion or belonging (or a lack thereof):

• Overt acts of inclusion
• Subtle acts of inclusion
• Subtle acts of exclusion
• Overt acts of exclusion

If you've ever felt skepticism towards the focus on micro-aggressions or simply felt a desire to go beyond the buzzwords of inclusion and belonging, we imagine that you'll find a lot of value from this topic.

Organizations spend billions every year on numerous initiatives -- leadership development, employee learning, DEI initiatives, rewards programs, and well-being just to name a few. Taking a closer look behind nearly all of it reveals the same uncomfortable truth: we're consistently terrible at anything involving complex human behavior. The research-action gap is real, it's wide, and it's persistent. There are specific, identifiable forces and incentives across academia, HR, and business leadership that keep proven behavioral science insights hidden from the people who need them most. The good news? Once you see the pattern and recognize the incentives, you can also start to see ways to bridge the research-action gap.

Due to the gap between behavioral science and organizations, there’s a lot going on within organizations that is wildly off-the-mark. The Hall of Shame is our way to poke a little fun at the world of organizations and HR – to which we also belong! – while also providing high-quality insights and research summaries. For each of the entries below, we present an evidence-based case for why organizations should purge them-- immediately. Let’s go!

• Bonus Pools
• Learning Styles
• Authentic Self
• Generational Differences
• Unconscious Bias Training

These are accessible via the Vault. For each entry in the Hall of Shame, we share a video and a mix of resources, reading, and researchers to follow.

Here, we explore a range of behavioral science concepts relevant to modern organizations and to you as a practitioner. We hope you enjoy!

• Emotional Quotient/Intelligence
• Growth Mindset
• Psychological Safety
• Grit
• Diversity and Team Performance
• Power Law Distribution
• Meritocracy and DEI
• MBTI
• Systems of Harm

These are accessible via the Vault. For each concept, we share a video and a mix of resources, reading, and researchers to follow.

Applied Scholar didn't start with a business plan — it started with a shared obsession. Almost two decades of digging into behavioral science, psychology, and human performance eventually surfaced an uncomfortable reality: the best research wasn't making it to the people who needed it most. The science was solid. The translation was broken. So we built a process — practitioner-designed, evidence-driven, and pressure-tested across boardrooms, combat zones, and everything in between — to close that gap. Explore our research system further to understand how we do it, why it works, and how you can start applying the same approach yourself.

Two decades of digging through research has produced a long list of books, studies, and voices that have shaped how we think at Applied Scholar. Narrowing that list down is nearly impossible — but we've compiled some of the most compelling works and thinkers we've encountered along the way. From foundational reads on decision-making and motivation to meta-analyses that challenge conventional wisdom, plus researchers and organizations worth following right now — this is a solid starting point for anyone ready to go deeper.

Coming soon! Need to launch the newsletter before we can have an archive, am I right?

We're in the initial stages of exploring an AI Research Assistant that contains all of our proprietary frameworks and resources. The goal would be one easy-to-use interface that helps you navigate and explore all of the materials in the Vault. We expect to have it available in 2026.