Hi everyone,

See below an invitation of a talk by Kai Ruggeri organized by Cameron Brick, that might be of interest to some of you:

The Amsterdam Behavioral Insights Lab in the UvA Social Psychology group is welcoming an exciting outside speaker this Thursday at 3:30pm. I met Dr Ruggeri at Cambridge, where he was an assistant professor and doing all sorts of ambitious multi-site studies relating to public policy. He's now at Columbia. It's taken some months to convince him to give us a talk, and schedule it, and we finally nailed it down. This particular data required him getting various permissions from the partners to share, and I think it will be a treat.

Hope you can join if this is of interest. Best wishes, Cameron

Thurs 20 May at 3:30pm uva-live.zoom.us/my/brickc

Unstandard deviation: The untapped value of positive deviance for reducing inequalities

Kai Ruggeri, Assistant Professor, Columbia University, Mailman School of Public Health, Department of Health Policy and Management

Behavioral science is increasingly used in public policy to understand and address various manifestations of inequalities. Yet evidence from effective population-level interventions is limited. One framework, known as positive deviance, emphasizes individuals from disadvantaged circumstances who have significantly better outcomes than are typical for their group. Studying their behaviors and outcomes helps to understand what might explain their overall success. It can also help to incorporate those insights in such a way that would facilitate others from these circumstances to experience positive outcomes. Because positive deviance has been markedly understudied, we present a framework for doing so specifically within behavioral science for public policies aimed at reducing inequalities. Using examples from real-world and experimental insights on choices and outcomes of positive deviants, we encourage further study of their choices and trajectories over time to produce valuable insights. We propose that leveraging those findings would inform public policy by introducing interventions that are more ecologically sound and population relevant, and consequently have a better chance at benefiting those who start off under adverse circumstances.

Best,

Maaike Homan

PhD Candidate at the Political Science Department

Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research

University of Amsterdam

Room B10.01