10 Published Findings from Our Chief Scientist’s Academic Labs
Dr. Troy Campbell is a Duke University behavioral science PhD, former University of Oregon professor, former Disney Imagineer, a designer, and our chief scientist. In his academic labs, he has researched the behavioral science of fun, belonging, denial, empathy, persuasion, and more.
His groundbreaking academic research that he teaches in OYF’s The Science of . . . series has influenced the most innovative companies and biggest government agencies and has been awarded many top academic awards, including the Frank Prize and multiple Altimetric #1s of the year.
We often reference and use his original research in our trainings and writings, so we thought we’d make a sharable short list with write-up links to ten (now eleven) of his most provocative published findings.
1. Solution Aversion
People are more likely to deny a problem when they don’t like the solution
This effect can be particularly important in understanding global issues like climate change denial, work gridlock, and individuals failing to address their personal problems. In all these cases, the fear of the “cure” may lead people to deny the “problem.”
2. Competence–Enjoyment Link
When people “feel competent" they enjoy what they are doing more
The subjective feeling of competence is uniquely important to our enjoyment and motivation. Experiments replicate the effect in work, art, entertainment, and consumer contexts.
3. Dual Concern Messages
A dual concern message firmly criticizes a target group, while also expressing concern for the group that is criticized
This work introduces this novel type of messaging and shows the persuasive power it can have. Specific experiments examine how dual concern messaging can be particularly important in “polarized” political and business conflict situations.
4. Too Much Experience Bias
Gaining more experience can make some people worse advisors
Having lots of experience with something emotional or complex can create empathy gaps and memory biases that make some people with more experience worse at understanding and helping those with less experience. This work establishes the existence of this bias and explores ways to reduce it.
5. Passion Exploitation
If you love your job, people may be more willing to exploit you at work
This work scientifically establishes “passion exploitation,” finding that people are more willing to ask others to to do extra work that is unpaid (even if the work is demeaning and not part of the job role) if they view the other as passionate about their work.
6. Flight from Facts
When facts threaten people’s beliefs, they will often take a “flight from facts” and state that the facts do not matter
People thereby make their cherished beliefs more unfalsifiable to defend them. Importantly, this means people don’t just deny facts, they change their opinion on whether facts are even relevant, making persuasion appeals and rational conversation more difficult.
7. The Sleep-Less Masculinity Stereotype
People associate masculinity with sleeping less, and this can lead to many negative consequences for all genders
This can be especially problematic in the workplace around hiring, work schedules, and well-being.
8. The Confirmation Bias Process
Two different biases can come together in a confirmation bias process
This work is one of the first studies to examine how two biases, here “ego-centric bias” and “stereotype bias,” can come together with serious consequences in social and business contexts, and it explores different ways this bias process can be interrupted.
9. Vice–Virtue Bundles
People will eat more “virtuously” if given a healthy option that has a little bit of pure delicious “vice.”
In these experiments, many people were more likely to choose overall healthy (i.e., “virtuous”) options when there was a very small pure indulgent (i.e., “vice”) quality added, such as a single Oreo cookie with mostly fruit or a few french fries with a salad, compared to simply choosing between the more typical offerings of virtuous only and vice only options.
10. Matching to Minimize Offense
People will make different and even worse choices in the presence of another
This paper explores how “potentially offensive” situations can arise and how these situations can lead to very different and suboptimal behaviors, such as “matching.” These behaviors are often in contradiction to what would be predicted by more basic scientific theories.
11. Irrational Victim Blaming
Victim blaming can be irrational and unfounded in business contexts
These experiments revealed that people use extraneous information, such as a description of the personality of the victim, when assigning blame to random occurences. This work also explores the process and interventions that can be used to reduce victim blaming.
find More research at Troy-Campbell.com 