My interview mistake A few years back, I was asked to interview for a Director of Product Marketing role. The recruiter emailed me and asked when I would like to interview. "First, last or somewhere in the middle?" Being the behavioural science nerd I am, I decided to go first. Why? The primacy effect suggests that the first interview will stick more in the mind than others. The Serial Position Effect study (Glanzer & Cunitz, 1966) showed that words listed first had a higher recall than...

A secret bestseller. Do you recognise this football player? Probably not. He's only played for England once. And yet. This fairly unknown English footballer sold more books than David Beckham, Michael Owen, Steven Gerrard, and Frank Lampard combined. He did so using the curiosity gap. He wrote under a pseudonym, "the Secret Footballer". By hiding his identity, he could share hard truths, gossip, and uncensored stories, such as the drunken antics of a Chelsea striker or the binge-eating winger...

The effect paradox. I recently watched Rory Sutherland's fantastic Nudgestock talk. He shares a surprising story from the Wall Street Journal. Back in 2010, Starbucks got extremely good at making coffee fast. Baristas were trained in parallel pouring, where they could make four different coffees at once. This seems like a good thing. Surely customers want their coffee as fast as possible? Except they don't. Receiving a coffee at record speed changed the experience. The barista's service no...