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Great podcast from our own 2ser & UTS Business School! "latest episode of #ThinkBusinessFutures @2ser, with Dr Geetanjali Saluja @UTSMarketing @UTS_Business, discussing her research into moral decision making, and Adam Ferrier, author of 'The Advertising Effect: How to Change Behaviour'" Discusses some of the framing, cognitive bias, and their impact on decision making that we talked about in class

Women continue to earn less than men, for a variety of reasons. Discrimination is one, research shows. Women are also likelier than men to work in lower-paying jobs like those in public service, caregiving and the nonprofit sector - and to take time off for children. Employers often base a starting salary on someone's previous one, so at each job, the gender pay gap continues, and it becomes seemingly impossible for women to catch up. Salary history bans are too new for researchers to have studied their effects extensively. But other research has found that people are overly influenced by an opening bid, something social scientists call anchoring bias. This means that if employers learn an applicant's previous salary and it's lower or higher than they were planning to offer, it's likely to influence their offer.

Life is one long string of decisionmaking, even if none of them is major. This is certainly the impression we get from reading cognitive neuroscience journals. A great many studies these days seem to involve 'decisionmaking under uncertainty' (otherwise known as gambling). As a married couple, we have now clocked up just over 50 years of decisionmaking together. We still frequently avoid or delay decisions, but we know that this does not pay off in the long run. And, when we do make decisions, we usually make them jointly. In case this sounds too good to be true, we hasten to add that it's not always easy and often involves arguments - despite, or perhaps because, we are both cognitive neuroscientists ourselves. Actually, argument turns out to be a well-kept secret in group decisionmaking. But before we turn to the value of acrimony, let's look at some of the reasons why we believe that people can make better decisions together than they can on their own.

How are your intuitions shaped by the immediate world around you? The importance of evidence over anecdote and considering the bigger picture! If it's hot outside, you're more likely to believe in climate change. The public perception of climate change is shaped by the weather that people experience, according to a study published yesterday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal.

Have you ever noticed that when you present people with facts that are contrary to their deepest held beliefs they always change their minds? Me neither. In fact, people seem to double down on their beliefs in the teeth of overwhelming evidence against them. The reason is related to the worldview perceived to be under threat by the conflicting data.

Two Words That Could Shape the Politics of the Trade War: Loss Aversion The pain of a loss tends to be greater than the enjoyment of a win. That has big implications for trade, and also helps explain the politics of health care and taxes.

There's one particularly cunning type of pricing strategy that marketers use to get you to switch your choice from one option to a more expensive or profitable one. It's called the decoy effect. Imagine you are shopping for a Nutribullet blender. You see two options. The cheaper one, at $89, promotes 900 watts of power and a five-piece accessory kit. The more expensive one, at $149, is 1,200 watts and has 12 accessories. Which one you choose will depend on some assessment of their relative value for money. It's not immediately apparent, though, that the more expensive option is better value. It's 50% more powerful but costs almost 80% more. It does have more than twice as many plastic accessories, but what are they worth? Now consider the two in light of a third option. This one, for $125, offers 1,000 watts and nine accessories. It enables you to make what feels like a more considered comparison. For $36 more than the cheaper option, you get four more accessories and an extra 100 watts of power. But if you spend just $24 extra, you get a further three accessories and 200 watts more power. Bargain! You have just experienced the decoy effect.

What happens once misinformation is corrected? Is it effective at all? A major problem for social media platforms resides in the difficulty to reduce the spread of misinformation. In response, measures such as the labeling of false content and related articles have been created to correct users' perceptions and accuracy assessment. Although this may seem a clever initiative coming from social media platforms, helping users to understand which information can be trusted, restrictive measures also raise pivotal questions. What happens to those posts which are false, but do not display any tag flagging their untruthfulness? Will we be able to discern them?

A BBC episode (30 mins) on changing minds. There's a widespread belief that there's no point talking to people you disagree with because they will never change their minds. Everyone is too polarized and attempts to discuss will merely result in greater polarization. But the history of the world is defined by changes of mind -that's how progress (or even regress) is made: shifts in political, cultural, scientific beliefs and paradigms. So how do we ever change our minds about something? What are the perspectives that foster constructive discussion and what conditions destroy it? Margaret Heffernan talks to international academics at the forefront of research into new forms of democratic discourse, to journalists involved in facilitating national conversations and to members of the public who seized the opportunity to talk to a stranger with opposing political views:

An excellent resource that links to the 'debunking handbook' - outlining ways to combat misinformation and misconceptions.

So I set out to get to the bottom of the evidence on how we respond to rational arguments. Does rationality lose out every time to irrational motivations? Or is there any hope to those of us who want to persuade because we have good arguments, not because we are handsome, or popular, or offer heavy clipboards.

Why probability and understanding statistical fallacies matters Some of our most important decisions are shaped by something as random as the order in which we make them. The gambler's fallacy, as it's known, affects loan officers, federal judges -- and probably you too. How to avoid it? The first step is to admit just how fallible we all are.

Many public conversations we have about science-related issues involve communicating risks: describing them, comparing them and trying to inspire action to avoid or mitigate them. Just think about the ongoing stream of news and commentary on health, alternative energy, food security and climate change. Good risk communication points out where we are doing hazardous things. It helps us better navigate crises. It also allows us to pre-empt and avoid danger and destruction. But poor risk communication does the opposite. It creates confusion, helplessness and, worst of all, pushes us to actively work against each other even when it's against our best interests to do so. So what's happening when risk communications go wrong?

Interesting look at data around private healthcare and marketisation. Each year, for well over a decade, more people have faced higher health insurance deductibles. The theory goes like this: The more of your own money that you have to spend on health care, the more careful you will be - buying only necessary care, purging waste from the system. But that theory doesn't fully mesh with reality: High deductibles aren't working as intended. A body of research - including randomized studies - shows that people do in fact cut back on care when they have to spend more for it. The problem is that they don't cut only wasteful care. They also forgo the necessary kind. This, too, is well documented, including with randomized studies. People don't know what care they need, which is why they consult doctors.

Why do arguments change people's minds in some cases and backfire in others? Hugo Mercier explains how arguments are more convincing when they rest on a good knowledge of the audience, taking into account what the audience believes, who they trust, and what they value.

just knowing facts doesn't necessarily guarantee that one's opinions and behaviors will be consistent with them. For example, many people "know" that recycling is beneficial but still throw plastic bottles in the trash. Or they read an online article by a scientist about the necessity of vaccines, but leave comments expressing outrage that doctors are trying to further a pro-vaccine agenda. Convincing people that scientific evidence has merit and should guide behavior may be the greatest science communication challenge, particularly in our "post-truth" era. Luckily, we know a lot about human psychology - how people perceive, reason and learn about the world - and many lessons from psychology can be applied to science communication endeavors.

'It's important to me that I make my own decisions, but I often wonder how much they are actually influenced by cultural and societal norms, by advertising, the media and those around me. We all feel the need to fit in, but does this prevent us from making decisions for ourselves? In short, can I ever be a truly free thinker?' Richard, Yorkshire. While being the lone "captain of your soul" is a reassuring idea, the truth is rather more nuanced. The reality is that we are social beings driven by a profound need to fit in - and as a consequence, we are all hugely influenced by cultural norms.

A new paper published in PLOS One by John Cook, Stephan Lewandowsky, and Ullrich Ecker tests the power of inoculation; not against disease, but against the sort of misinformation that created the conditions leading to Minnesota measles outbreak. Inoculation theory suggests that exposing people to the tricks used to spread misinformation can equip them with the tools to recognize and reject such bogus claims.

A piece I wrote on how psychology helps us understand fake news and information seeking. Every day we face complex situations in which the information we need, and who we trust to provide that information, has a very real impact on our lives. How do we evaluate the competing claims of politicians on climate change policy, or Brexit; navigate medical information regarding vaccinating our children; or assess the relative merits of diet versus regular foods in adopting a healthy lifestyle?

Podcast from UTS Think:Digital Futures (that I briefly appear on). Sometimes we get caught up thinking data and science are the be all and end all - it can give us a lot of answers sure, but the devil is in the detail. How are we interpreting data wrong? And why do we have trouble communicating it? Presenters/Producers: Cheyne Anderson & Ellen Leabeater Speakers: Jon Wardle - Faculty of Health, University of Technology Sydney Simon Knight - Lecturer, Connected Intelligence Centre, UTS Mark Moritz - Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, Ohio State University Think: Digital Futures is supported by 2SER and the University of Technology Sydney. http://2ser.com/shows/think-digital-futures/