Behavior Change for Good

Tom Butler: 0:04

This is the Cycling Over 60 podcast, season two, episode 34, behavior change for good. And I'm your host, tom Butler. Thanks for joining me for another look at my journey to use cycling to get and stay fit. I did my first episode on March 19th of last year, so the podcast hit a year old this week. That's exciting.

Tom Butler: 0:38

I am currently listening to a book by Richard Johnson, a kidney doctor and professor. The title is Nature Wants Us To Be Fat. I am truly enjoying the book. The main premise is that we have a survival switch in our bodies that when flipped, we are driven to accumulate fat, and the biggest switch flipper is fructose. So this information is adding to my commitment to avoid fructose as much as possible. I am also even more concerned about my fat stores. There is just so much evidence that I will need to learn to stay lean for the rest of my life. With this in mind, I took advantage of the absolutely gorgeous weather we had and did a 50 mile ride in a way that I hope to burn as much fat as possible. What I mean by that is that I did the ride at a very low intensity. I think it was a really good idea and I will do it again. I don't have any way of measuring if I actually did burn fat, but I would estimate that I burned 3000 calories during the ride and I was definitely doing a low enough intensity that my body could be in fat burning mode. I ended up with 120 miles over the four warm days we had, so that dropped the amount of miles. I am behind my annual goal to under 100.

Tom Butler: 1:56

Last week I mentioned I would start planning out the days of the 400 mile ride I would like to do this season across Washington. Obviously, the first thing to look at is the start. I have been talking about riding across Washington state, but US Bike Route 10 doesn't technically start on the western side of Washington. The ride starts in Anacortis, washington, which is on Rosario Strait. It would take a boat ride through the Strait of Wanda Fuca to get to the Pacific Ocean. If I wanted to actually ride from the Pacific Coast to Idaho I would have to add 169 miles, 6302 feet of climbing and a ferry ride to the trip. Modifying the route that way would be a spectacular trip, but beyond what I am looking to do this season, therefore, I am planning on starting in Anacortis. The first day of the trip would be going through some farm country and getting to the start of climbing over the Cascades. One potential stop for the first day would be New Halem, washington. That would make the first day 83 miles with 1800 feet of climbing. Instead I could go on to Diablo, but that would take the first day to 118 miles and 2457 feet of climbing. I don't think I want to push it that much the first day, so for now I will plan on stopping in New Halem, where I think there is a better place to stay.

Tom Butler: 3:18

The North Cascades Highway is gorgeous for sure, but what makes it beautiful also makes it a bit of a challenge for me. First, it goes over the Cascade Mountain Range, which has forest, waterfalls and amazing mountain views. The price I will pay for those views is the climbing on day two. The other thing that makes it beautiful is how remote it is. You are surrounded by national parkland. There aren't many stops for food or water, so that means I will have to carry more than I am used to carrying, and a bike problem would mean waiting a long time to get a repair done. I think that makes it important that I talk to someone who has rode this route before and find out all I need to know.

Tom Butler: 4:02

Staying in New Halem means the second day starts with 42 miles and climbing of 6,923 feet. After that it is downhill for a long time. I have a decision to make for the end of the day. I could choose to stop in a very intriguing town, winthrop, washington. That would only give me another 32 miles, so I would end up with 74 miles on the day. I might need that after what would be over 7,000 feet of climbing in one day, and I would love to spend some time in Winthrop. The problem is that I would only be at 151 miles after two days of riding. I was hoping for close to 100 miles a day. Another option is to end the second day in Okanagan. That would put me at 109 miles for the day. It would also mean over 10,000 feet of climbing Right now. That seems like it would be too much for me For now. I guess I will work on the other days of the route and see if I can make it work to stop in Winthrop on day two.

Tom Butler: 5:10

I am really happy about what I have been able to accomplish towards my health goals over the last year, but it hasn't been entirely smooth and I am continually struggling to keep moving forward, so I wanted to better understand what has been successful over the last year and use that knowledge to make my future efforts pay off. I'm really excited that I was able to get connected to Sean Ellis, phd at the behavioral change for good initiative at the University of Pennsylvania. They're doing some fantastic work there to uncover the secrets for making lasting change. Here's our discussion. I love it when I find a perfect guest to come on the podcast to talk about a topic. I feel that way about Dr Sean Ellis, who is joining me now. Thanks, dr Ellis, for taking the time to be here.

Sean Ellis Ph.D.: 5:54

That's my pleasure. Thanks for having me on.

Tom Butler: 5:56

I'll start out with a question that I like to ask people. Do you have any memories of bikes as a kid?

Sean Ellis Ph.D.: 6:03

I do, I do. Riding my bike growing up was probably one of my favorite activities. I lived in a cul-de-sac with a bunch of other kids my age, so there's a whole group of us that would roam around the neighborhood.

Tom Butler: 6:14

I think that's always fun to see a pack of kids on bikes. You know that they're off adventuring or having fun for sure. Now you have a PhD in economics and an MS in economics and applied econometrics. You're currently the director of analytics at the behavior change for good initiative at University of Pennsylvania. Can you talk about the behavior change for good initiative and your role there?

Sean Ellis Ph.D.: 6:43

So BCFG is a research initiative co-led by professors Katie Milkman and Angela Duckworth and we focus on what we call mega studies, or large-scale field studies that contain many smaller sub-studies which we all run simultaneously and at changing the same objective behavior and mega studies allow us to, you know, a-b, test multiple behavioral science strategies at once, testing some of the best ideas from our scientific team, which is composed of a little over 170 of the world's leading behavioral scientists, and doing this allows us to identify which strategies work best overall to change behavior for good and for whom.

Sean Ellis Ph.D.: 7:31

And my role at BCFG is to oversee pretty much all the analytics involved in kind of that process. So whether it's determining, you know, kind of setting up the experiment in the beginning and determining you know what kind of analyses are we going to conduct once it's over, and then to actually analyzing all the data after an experiment has run and then seeing that all the way to publication. One of my favorite things about working at PAN and at BCFG specifically, is I get to work with just brilliant people and we're all doing really, really cool research.

Tom Butler: 8:08

Can you explain the term behavioral economics?

Sean Ellis Ph.D.: 8:11

So behavioral economics is, you know, kind of a combination between psychology and economics and it's the study of decision-making and understanding human behavior Specifically why do people, you know, do the things that they do? And behavioral economics kind of differs from neoclassical economics because we don't just assume people are rational and will always make self-interested decisions. We're interested in large part about why people don't act what you would think would be rationally or in their best interest.

Sean Ellis Ph.D.: 8:46

And so behavioral economics is really based on the observations we make of human behavior and trying to understand and change it for the better.

Tom Butler: 8:55

I think a lot of people associate economics with money. I think that there's, you know, this element of the decision-making that is really at the heart of all economics that many times people don't think about.

Sean Ellis Ph.D.: 9:08

No, absolutely the amount of times people will ask what I do. You know? The short answer is I'm an economist. And then they ask, what stocks should I buy? And I'm like I have no idea. But yeah, that's really public misconception about economics, because economics really is just the study of both decision-making as well as the allocation of resources.

Tom Butler: 9:31

You mentioned megastudies. I wonder if you could talk a little bit more about the value of megastudies.

Sean Ellis Ph.D.: 9:38

So megastudies kind of arose out of a desire to kind of address, you know, some major issues in the social sciences Specifically. You know, policy when you know politicians or stakeholders or policymakers are designing, it should ideally be based on evidence, and that evidence, again, ideally would come from the field. However, conducting field studies and research is very time consuming, it's also very expensive and it can be really difficult at times when you're looking at, you know, even several really well-done studies. If they're not, you know, studying the same exact behavior, it can be difficult to kind of compare the results because you're making in apples to oranges, you know, or sometimes in apples to Volkswagen's kind of comparison, and so policymakers are left wondering, you know well, which is better, what should we do? And then you know, another issue which has been happening, you know, in the social sciences in general, but especially in the fields of psychology and economics, is the replication crisis. A lot of research has been found not to replicate, and typically because when the research was run, standards in the field were different and so people were looking at results from studies that only had, you know, 50, 75, a few hundred participants in the studies, and then when you scale that up to tens of thousands or millions of people. The results just don't hold. And so mega studies were born out of this desire to address both of these issues.

Sean Ellis Ph.D.: 11:14

Conducting a mega study allows researchers to keep down fixed costs of executing a study because they're only, you know, born by a single central organizer. It risks, reduces the risk of learning nothing from field studies, because we're testing multiple ideas at once. You know we're probably going to find something that works, or be really confident that maybe nothing will work, and that way we don't end up with what's known as the file drawer problem, which is, you know, historically, and still very much is the case. If you want to get your research published, it's very difficult to do that if your results are null or you found that things didn't work. And so researchers, typically, if they can't find, they don't have, you know, results, if they don't have something where they can say this worked, you know this is a solution They'll, you know, not publish the results or not be able to publish the results. And then you know, of course no one else in the world knows that and then other researchers might spend time and money researching the exact same thing, also find it doesn't work, and then again they're not publishing and so you know we're not being as efficient as we can.

Sean Ellis Ph.D.: 12:29

Megastudies also allow us to kind of bring in not just, you know, behavioral scientists and economists and psychologists, but really, you know, researchers and experts from you know a diverse array of fields, so that we create these interdisciplinary teams where we're pulling on, you know, the knowledge from different fields of study. They also allow us to do what we call behavioral phenotyping. We're figuring out what works for whom right. Are there differences with you know, how a intervention works between different types of groups, such as gender, race, socioeconomic status. And Megastudies also vastly accelerate the pace of scientific discovery. The traditional study you'll maybe look at you know 1 to 3 or 4 ideas max, and then you'll kind of run that and then you'll start your next study after that and then the next one after that and you just make this slow, incremental progress. But Megastudies allow us to, you know, kind of leapfrog scientific progress by testing all these ideas at once.

Tom Butler: 13:35

From the analytic side of things, it seems like there's a lot of tools that you must use when you're doing analysis of a mega-study, when you talk about breaking down and being able to separate out maybe what works for one group of people, then to be able to really do an analysis of all those different datasets must be a bit complicated.

Sean Ellis Ph.D.: 14:00

Can be. One of the benefits of running experiments as opposed to downloading a dataset that was already put together by, say, a government agency, is that, as experimentalists, we can design what type of data we actually collect and how we collect it. That can, to a degree, simplify the analyses we have to do, because we understand the data generating process. However, in order to run these studies, we have to make sure that, whatever we're partnering with, that we actually can collect the data and that the data is some objective outcome that we're able to manipulate with our interventions.

Sean Ellis Ph.D.: 14:41

We also need to make sure before we run a study and this is probably one of the biggest difficulties of conducting mega-studies is do we have enough of a sample size? Because in order to be able to tell what works for who, well, we have to have enough people in all those different subgroups, which is why we do a lot of analyses before we even run a study to determine do we have the power to actually draw conclusions for the things that we wanna draw conclusions about?

Tom Butler: 15:09

I think it's right to say that BCFG is interested in affecting change for populations, for larger groups of people, and so that to me means policy change, and I'm wondering if you could give an example of how behavioral economics research can inform policy decisions.

Sean Ellis Ph.D.: 15:32

No, absolutely so.

Sean Ellis Ph.D.: 15:34

In 2010, the kind of first Nudge Unit was opened in the UK government, and so it was a group of behavioral scientists whose whole job is to look at what are we currently doing from a public policy perspective, and are there zero cost or low cost ways that we can change our implementing policies to achieve some desired effect, whether that's, and then that kind of idea that's spread all around the globe, and so now there are Nudge Units in most developed countries' governments, and not just in kind of the top of the government, but throughout the government.

Sean Ellis Ph.D.: 16:16

Even in the United States, one of the things that has proven really successful is you wanna get people who are on Medicare, medicaid veterans to enroll in certain programs or go in and get a certain health checks, and we found a lot of really simple ways to do that, and that is from reducing what is now being called sludge, or the red tape, or the complicated or overly burdensome process of trying to get some benefit or go in and set up an appointment, to simple reminders, or how you frame reminders to motivate people to engage in whatever the desired behavior is.

Tom Butler: 17:00

Well, I'm really looking forward. I think there's a lot of work that you do that no one sees.

Sean Ellis Ph.D.: 17:04

Absolutely yeah.

Tom Butler: 17:05

Yeah, it's awesome to think about what you guys are doing and, hopefully, see some of it from time to time. I spoke with a neurologist, dr Patrick Hogan, a while ago. I asked him about patient compliance and he, like many doctors, knows that people frequently don't choose healthy habits despite being fully aware of the consequences. What are your thoughts about this dynamic?

Sean Ellis Ph.D.: 17:31

It's a major problem and here at BCFG we kind of focus on three main topics education, savings and then healthcare. And this is one of the biggest issues in healthcare is there are many ways that we could improve human health. It's just we're having a hard time getting people to actually do it, which there's a couple of factors at play. One of them is the availability bias. Your doctor tells you you should start doing something or stop doing something, but you think to yourself, well, everyone in my life is doing this, or everyone I know does this, but I don't do it as my habits aren't as bad as theirs and so nothing bad is really gonna happen to me because nothing bad has happened to them.

Sean Ellis Ph.D.: 18:17

There's also a status quo issue, which is people tend not to deviate from whatever their default option or existing habits are, and getting them to change is very difficult, which is why getting people into healthier and better habits earlier on is really key to preventing a lot of issues, a lot of healthcare issues that people have. There's also kind of the issue of hyperbolic discounting, or that people, when thinking in the abstract or thinking far off into the future, people are like you know what I really do need to start eating healthier or quit smoking because I need to get my blood pressure under control or something like that. But as you actually get to the point where you want to engage in that unhealthy behavior you really wanna smoke or you really want that steak you're like, well, the temptation is too much in that moment, and then people engage in that behavior. But then they just keep thinking in the future I'll be better, in the future I'll have more restraint or I'll be more patient, and then that kind of cycle or lack of inertia just continues.

Tom Butler: 19:30

So the issue of staying fit later in life is a big one. The current recommendation is that adults need 150 minutes of modern intensity physical activity and two days of muscle strengthening activity each week, which doesn't seem insurmountable. However, the majority of people aren't getting that Quality of life is effective, but there's also an economic impact. You mentioned that healthcare is one of the focus areas that you have, and I'm wondering if you could talk about that aspect of the impact that would happen if there was a shift in the amount of activity people get.

Sean Ellis Ph.D.: 20:14

There would be definitely a positive economic impact on the individual level as Americans age and we're aging.

Sean Ellis Ph.D.: 20:23

We're living longer than ever before, but people aren't necessarily. They may be living longer, but they're not necessarily living to a better quality lifestyle as they get older. And so there's a lot of healthcare costs, both to private health insurance plans but also to Medicare and Medicaid, that then you know, that money has to get recouped after someone passes away, and so that can take a lot of, you know, wealth out of someone's estate, and it can also, you know, reduce the quality of life. And so people who might want to either keep working because they really enjoy it can't, or people who retire and then want to go to be active and travel or maybe finally start that crazy business idea that they had, aren't able to because they're just physically not up to it. And so there's all that unrealized economic activity In addition to then all this money that is being spent to care for people as they get older, which is only increasing right now because of the size of the baby boomer generation, and then you know, the millennial generation, america's largest generation after that.

Tom Butler: 21:29

I wanted you to come on and help analyze the success that I've had. It seems kind of the polar opposite of a mega study, you know like talking about one person, but in my efforts certainly have paid off. I've gotten more healthy. It hasn't been the case in the past when I've tried to do things, and I'm certainly not perfect. Now it seems like there are so many complicating factors that contribute to successful change. Do you agree with that? It's a really complicated process.

Sean Ellis Ph.D.: 22:05

It absolutely is and most people, whenever they're trying to, you know, change some behavior, whether it's you know, especially if it's in the realm of you know, exercising more. There's lots of failed attempts before a successful attempt, because, you know, just getting, you know, breaking out of the kind of pattern that you're currently in can be extremely difficult. And then, once you get going, there's so many obstacles that pop up in your way that can easily derail you, especially in the beginning.

Tom Butler: 22:35

You mentioned inertia and I felt that it seems like that when I make a decision to try to reverse some lifestyle related to these, it seems like there's this like block to making change. I'm wondering if you could go into a little more detail about how you see inertia as far as the choices that we make.

Sean Ellis Ph.D.: 23:00

So people will continue to do. It's kind of like a what is that? Newton's first law of physics? An object in motion will stay in motion unless it hits an object you know equal or greater force and then that could, you know, change it. That's how people, in their habits, are.

Sean Ellis Ph.D.: 23:17

People continue kind of down a path, even when there's a desire to change and it really is trying to figure out a way to break out of that which you know there can be.

Sean Ellis Ph.D.: 23:27

You know, first obviously you need a desire to change a certain behavior in order to do it. But then, once you have that desire, you need something that really you know, puts you in, you know, a different direction that gets you moving and gets you moving with like a force that allows you to keep going and making progress, which you know. One of the kind of really big effects that have been found is, notice, the fresh start effect. So when someone feels like they're creating a fresh start, whether it's at the beginning of the year, so new years, or their birthday or some other significant date it can feel like, well, now things are new, right, you're becoming disconnected from kind of the past and your past habits and you know, maybe poor decision making and you're now on a different course and that kind of psychological framing in the mind can give people the needed, you know, push to start to make change.

Tom Butler: 24:26

It's interesting you talk about this fresh start, because when I started, when I made a decision that I got to make some changes here, otherwise I could have some really bad effects, like having to be on dialysis or whatever and so I'm like, okay, I need to make a change, and I went out and bought a new bike and looking back, it seems like that was a turning point. It seems like that was a kind of a fresh start.

Sean Ellis Ph.D.: 24:55

Absolutely.

Sean Ellis Ph.D.: 24:55

I would also say you know it's not just a fresh start because you got a new bike, but it's also a commitment device. If you bought that bike and then you just kind of let it sit around the house and not use it well, bikes aren't cheap. I'm currently have been looking to purchase a bike myself, and you know it's a significant financial investment and so you're committing, you know, a good chunk of money that you could spend on literally anything else into this new habit. And so if you didn't, you know, start cycling when you bought that new bike, you could also be feeling a sense of loss, aversion, right, or whatever else you could have done with that money.

Tom Butler: 25:35

I think it's a good point and, in addition to what I'd be feeling I would, there would be this personal feeling like man, I just wasted money going out and doing this. But then there's also my wife, you know who's like well, are you going to use that? I don't remember her asking that question, but I it might have been in her mind that, okay, you're going to buy this bike, but are you going to use it? So that you know there is that, that element there. Now there's another aspect of it in. You know, we could get sidetracked for the rest of the time here just talking about you choosing to buy a new bike. That would be easy for me to do, because I enjoy cycling, you know, and jumping on a bike and hitting a trail. It's something that is really great for me and there's a lot of intrinsic value there. I'm wondering if he has some thoughts about how important it is, you know, that kind of enjoyment as far as making lasting change.

Sean Ellis Ph.D.: 26:33

It can be a key factor. This definitely makes it a lot easier to affect behavior change If the behavior you're trying to adopt is something you actually enjoy, because if you don't, enjoy it right and a lot of people have that problem when it comes to working out or getting active is they start doing activities that they just don't like, right.

Sean Ellis Ph.D.: 26:54

And so then there's that initial excitement or drive to maybe, you know, change your behavior, become healthier.

Sean Ellis Ph.D.: 27:02

But then that wears off relatively quickly and then if you're not actually enjoying what you're doing, there's, you know, like a really big barrier to keep going, because most people, when you're not happy, you're like, well, let me stop doing the thing that doesn't make me happy. However, not enjoying an activity isn't necessarily a deal breaker for adopting it. There's a concept known as temptation bundling. So if someone doesn't like going to the gym and working out because they're just, you know, they're tired, they're sweaty, just not their kind of cup of tea, but it's something they know they need to do for their health they can essentially pair this undesirable activity that's good for them with an activity they actually do enjoy, such as, you know, watching their favorite show. And so when they're on the treadmill, they're running or walking, whatever it is they're doing, but then they're also watching on their phone or tablet the show that they like, and so they then only allow themselves to enjoy this activity when they're also doing this other activity that they don't enjoy but know they need to do.

Tom Butler: 28:08

I can really see the application of that in a lot of ways. I saw some early success and I think that kept me going. You know, having that initial kind of hey, you know, maybe I'm, you know, for me it was like, hey, maybe I'm not done cycling at 59 years old, the time no-transcript, but for me was a big goal, something that I wasn't even sure I was gonna be able to accomplish, but I really wanted to accomplish it, and that was to do the Seattle, the Portland ride, 200 miles if you're not familiar with it, and so having that goal Seemed to be particularly important to me. What have you learned about setting goals?

Sean Ellis Ph.D.: 28:54

Goal setting is extremely important, you know, especially if what you're trying to do is something that's difficult.

Sean Ellis Ph.D.: 29:01

Right, it's very easy to continue a behavior that you enjoy and is really easy, but it can be hard to continue with something that, even if you enjoy it is, you know, hard, which Cycling, especially as you're increasing distance, gets more and more difficult, taxing on the body, it's time-consuming, and so setting a goal gives you something to work towards and look forward to and kind of justify in your mind, especially when, like, the going gets hard, that like there's a reason I'm doing this and there's a reason not to stop.

Sean Ellis Ph.D.: 29:32

But what's important isn't just to set like a big overarching goal but to set small, easily achievable goals along the way. Because if you only set a big goal of you know, doing a 200 mile bike ride, and then you're just kind of starting out, you know, in those first few weeks you could be like you know what, right you, since you were 59, you could have easily been like you know, I'm 59, I could have done this years ago. I miss my chance, I'm done right. But if you set smaller goals of you know what, I'm not riding 200 miles today, I'm gonna ride a mile, I'm gonna ride five miles, I'm gonna do 10 miles. You know, you start to see progress and you feel like you're actually making progress and not just kind of you know, running in place, which could be really frustrating at times when you Set kind of a large goal that seems very far off.

Tom Butler: 30:20

The good point. My birthday was in February, which was plenty of time before the summer ride of the STP, and I did 60 miles on my 60th birthday and yeah and again, it was one of those things like okay, that that showed me that I'm capable of doing something and that you know that wasn't 200 miles, but it was certainly a step in the right direction and the longest I had written in a very long time. I decided to start the podcast Out of an interest to share information with others. However, you know, looking back, it was Probably the best thing I could do, because it was a major Accountability mechanism. What do you think about the setting up that kind of element of accountability?

Sean Ellis Ph.D.: 31:07

Again it's. Another great behavioral strategy is to make your, your actions, accountable to other people, or Accountable even to yourself, so kind of all the people. You have the podcast, you have listeners. You don't want to let them down, right, and you don't want to let down potential or future guests, and so you're gonna keep going and doing something and If you all of a sudden stopped cycling but are still doing the podcast, right Like, you could feel maybe a sense of guilt there, but you can also be accountable not just to kind of your community or individuals in your life.

Sean Ellis Ph.D.: 31:40

But you can also be accountable to yourself by you know setting you could call them financial penalties. And so there are people there, apps you can download and where essentially, you're like I'm going to reach my goal, whatever it may be, writing this many miles this week, or you know losing a certain amount of weight, and then if you don't reach that goal, then you know you had already Uploaded some amount of money and then that amount of money goes to, you know, some politician, let's say, that you really don't like, and so you can kind of financially incentivize yourself or hold yourself accountable and or as a way to motivate and get you to stick with what you're trying to do.

Tom Butler: 32:20

That's very interesting. Now, I am familiar with the term gamification and not to go deep into it, but it's kind of making a game out of something. In my case, I have used Strava and my wife will testify that it is very important to me To have this data. I know she must get tired of after every ride me coming in and breaking it down for her and in detail about you know where my heart rate was and everything, but it's really motivating for me to see that and they have different achievements and so kind of built within Strava. Is these different, like games? Do you see this as a helpful tool for keeping focus and Motivation high?

Sean Ellis Ph.D.: 33:06

so it absolutely can be the amplification. A lot of fitness or health apps do it. A lot of exercise classes, we'll also do it. We'll have like a leaderboard at the front of like an exercise room and if people are cycling it's like who's going the farthest and you know people want to get up there and, you know, win the game. It's also, you know, shown to be really successful with the Duolingo. You know gamifying, kind of learning a language, but there's also can be blowback to gamification and Some people really find Gamifying certain things to be demotivated. Right, if you're somebody that's just Getting into cycling and then you go to a class that has like a big leaderboard and then you're never on it for weeks on end, you're like what's the point? Right, I'm never gonna catch up to these people and then can demotivate people.

Sean Ellis Ph.D.: 33:53

There was a study that was looking at salesmen and they had like gamified, you know, as a way to increase sales, and a lot of sales folks were like, no, I'm not interested, and they're like actual sales went down because they're like you took my job, something that I find serious and you're turning it into some sort of game for what you know. I feel insulted, I feel demoralized, and so A gamification can be extremely effective. It can also have negative effects if applied to the wrong situation or to people that are just not receptive.

Tom Butler: 34:27

That's very interesting. Another thing that has helped me Immensely like. Last weekend I went for a ride with my daughter and my son-in-law and it seems like my Family support has been Particularly helpful in keeping me going. How would you characterize the role of family?

Sean Ellis Ph.D.: 34:48

So I think family and really community in general. So, friends, you know, if you join an organization Like you know, a cycling club or something like that, can be an integral part of helping people achieve their goals. If, though, if you know, your family or your community or whatever group you belong to, is supportive of them, if you started cycling again and then your, your wife and kids were like Dad, this is terrible, cycling so bad, don't do it. That wouldn't have been right, helpful. It might have gotten you to even like stop, but because they were supportive and because you said you were going on a bike ride With your daughter, you're now using this activity, which you wanted to engage you more, as a way of spending time with and bonding with those closest to you, and so you're really kind of layering up the things in your life so that they're all fitting together, which then just reinforces your desired behavior of cycling more.

Tom Butler: 35:45

I really like that layering up concept. You know, my son-in-law, early on, decided that he would bike with me, which was awesome, and then my daughter later on just actually recently said, hey, I want to be part of this too. And now we're on a journey to buy my wife a bike and there will definitely be like family trips taken. I'm sure my wife and I will develop social connections through the podcast. I've developed social connections with people, friendships with people who, where biking is a major part of their life, when you talk about it can cut the other way. I mean it. I can really conceive of being part of a community or a family that is really opposed to being active or is really. You know, some of the dietary changes I've made are, you know, reject the dietary changes. I can really see that as going the other way. So I feel pretty thankful that I'm layering up the right direction for sharing.

Sean Ellis Ph.D.: 36:52

People don't even necessarily have to be actively against whatever you know behavior you're changing, there could be a passive kind of resistance.

Sean Ellis Ph.D.: 36:59

So if you started cycling more and more but then your family and your friends didn't engage in that behavior, now you're just spending more and more time away from them.

Sean Ellis Ph.D.: 37:09

If you want to spend more time with them and so in a way, then cycling could then be perceived by you or them as kind of getting in the in the way. There's also kind of the environment around you. You know, here in Philadelphia the bike safety is getting better in certain areas of the city but it's definitely a challenge in others. And so you know when you're trying to cycle around the city, you know there are areas sometimes you know, I know I don't, and you know friends of mine, my wife doesn't go because it's just dangerous, right, there isn't a safe place to bike and therefore if we're going to that area of the city will hop on public transportation or or some other modes of transport, because just the the physical environment isn't welcoming to that behavior and from a policy perspective, I think that's one of the biggest things is, you know, I'm really interested in how can we affect policy so that safety of Pedestrian and bicycle traffic can be a Important part.

Tom Butler: 38:08

You know, not everybody is Experiencing what it's like to ride in a metropolitan area, so I don't know how you get everybody on board with it. But it's certainly important for those areas where the interaction between cars and bicycles or you know, happens all the time absolutely it's.

Sean Ellis Ph.D.: 38:30

It's really a big challenge. And something I think about fairly often is how do you get, how do you break people out of kind of car brain right? American society has been set up since the end of World War two to revolve around cars, and so when you're talking to policymakers you know they might be able to, in the abstract, agree like of course we should have protected bike lanes or you know separate places for cyclists to ride.

Tom Butler: 38:58

But actually getting them to Break out of this mode that, like car, convenience has to come first, is extremely difficult you mentioned Community, and one thing about Cascade Bicycle Club, who organizes the Seattle Portland ride they do a fantastic job is that there is this element of community. I just did my first group ride and it was 21 miles with Everybody was my age people were older than me by a decade. There was this element of being with people that I'm similar. You know that I can see myself in. If I'm saying that right, that I can see Myself being like that at their age, I guess is a good way to put it. And there was this particularly strong incentive when I got online and I registered for the ride and I put my name down there I'm gonna be there.

Sean Ellis Ph.D.: 39:59

That really pushed me to make sure that I showed up the desire for Connection you know with some community that you identify as your own, which you know a natural one is. You know people around your own age Is large. It's helpful too If you're trying to do something, if there is, you know, a role model or someone already doing it, because then you know in your mind you can see, right, like this is possible. I'm not being crazy, thinking I can do this. There's also a desire not to disappoint or embarrass yourself in front of your peers or your community, and so you're like, hey, I'm gonna go do this ride with these people my age, I better make sure I can keep up with them. Human beings are social animals and so, you know, playing on those, those evolutionary factors, right, that allowed us as a species to, you know, develop and flourish, is, you know, a brilliant way to achieve behavior change.

Tom Butler: 40:56

There's this term that we use called stigma, and there are some elements. You know, when I'm out in Lycra, I'm not the most fit-looking person on the planet, and there's are some Elements that are negative when I'm out in public. I wonder if you could talk about this term, stigma, and what that means.

Sean Ellis Ph.D.: 41:20

There's different types, you know when you're thinking from a psychological perspective.

Sean Ellis Ph.D.: 41:24

The word stigma is is kind of used in many different Kind of categories or in many different ways, but in general the idea is Stigma is an overreaction to kind of true, objective risk that something possesses, or An overreaction to what we consider normal. If you're in this context, right, you could be feel like, well, in my mind, the typical cyclist, typical person that wears clothes like these, as kind of this Pizzec and I don't, and so you're feeling outside of, kind of your comfort zone, right, because you're not conforming to what you think. Right, everyone else is thinking. Right, you have this second-order thinking of. You might feel you look why I feel comfortable and I'm a cyclist, because you know I'm doing all these things, but these people don't think I'm a cyclist and the stigma could be real. People could be staring at you on the street and being like what is this guy doing? Or it could be something that you're imagining in your head Because to you it maybe feels weird and you're not fitting the mold of a cyclist.

Tom Butler: 42:37

Seems like an interesting thing because that seems like something that lives on a population level, Either in my head, like you said everybody's looking at me and going, why is that guy dressed this way? Or really that a population starts thinking of things in a certain way and it seems like the efforts to maybe change those thoughts that that can take some time, that it can be a real effort over time to try to shift the thinking at a population level.

Sean Ellis Ph.D.: 43:10

Absolutely. You're not just dealing with what are individuals thinking and you're not just dealing with what do individuals think others are thinking, but what do individuals think others are thinking that everyone else like about that is even thinking Right, like you have all these different orders of people thinking and it can be extremely difficult, especially because the individuals at the individual level thinking might have changed, but the way everyone thinks everyone else is thinking might not have, and so that can be a bit of a lag to catch up. You know, that's where, in general, it's a good idea. Again, humans are social animals to communicate right and to talk and put it into the public forum. What is everyone kind of thinking about this topic? Because then you can kind of take the temperature and see if I'm, you know, I've evolved here, you know, is everyone else still down here like I think, or have they kind of moved up as well?

Tom Butler: 44:04

Very interesting group. They're kind of. The tagline of the group is all bodies on bikes. They are really confronting that and it is an interesting thing where, because of social media, that they are able to get that message out and then you can see, like the all the positive comments that they get from different people, that they are. I don't know if challenging perception is the right way to say it, but they are not letting perception stop them from getting out and enjoying a ride, and so I do think that you know there can be some negative aspects of social media as far as affecting positive change, but they're really demonstrating a positive aspect of social media.

Sean Ellis Ph.D.: 44:56

Absolutely. You know there's nothing new like the dynamics that social media kind of plays on or brings out. Aren't anything new, you know, when it comes to human community? The only difference is it allows, you know, us, to kind of engage in those dynamics on a bigger scale. And so, when it comes to kind of positive change, right, you're now reaching all these people that you know live very far away from you but are like you, in, you know, some characteristic that then allows you to think to yourself, you know what, yeah, I might be older, I might not be in the best health, but I also can be a cyclist and a serious one, right? But then obviously, all the negative kind of social dynamics of people can also then, you know, get supercharged, which, you know, we've seen, you know, in other contexts.

Tom Butler: 45:44

Where do you see the science of understanding how people make change advancing in the next few years? Do you think there's a lot of things to learn? Do you think we're pretty much figuring out? Where do you think we are?

Sean Ellis Ph.D.: 45:55

I think we're really on the cusp of kind of a new chapter in the study of human behavior. One of the big things that's been largely elusive is trying to figure out how do we make behavior change stick right. So there are a lot of different types of interventions or you know strategies that have been shown to be very successful in lots of different contexts to, you know, getting people to change their behavior for the good. But a lot of these wear off over time and so there's the question of well, how do we really get someone to permanently change their behavior in a positive way, especially for things that you have to, you know, continually do over time? So I think that is kind of that elusive white whale for a lot of researchers is trying to figure that out, I think, behavioral phenotyping, trying to figure out, you know, what works for who, and that's really dependent on do we have the data right?

Sean Ellis Ph.D.: 46:53

There's a lot of racial disparities, you know, in the United States, especially with healthcare, and one of the things kind of preventing us from being able to study and really understand is that we don't always have the data needed to be able to analyze what works, you know. Are there different? You know, racial disparities, and part of that has been like a scale issue as well. And I think this is, you know, more and more research you know is going to follow kind of what we're doing here at the Behavioral Change for Good Initiative, which is let's test these things at scale and see what actually works. And I think the big issues right now where a lot of these kind of ideas are going to be tested is in the field of, you know, adaption to climate change, as well as disinformation.

Sean Ellis Ph.D.: 47:37

And then you know big health issues you know, such as the you know American obesity, like how do we get people to lose weight? Are there behavioral interventions that we could be doing that can help people, you know, deal with high blood pressure. You know, help to deal with and prevent COPD, and I also think a big topic where there's a lot of money being poured into it but nothing's actually being studied in a rigorous scientific way at least not at scale, would be a ditch. You know we have the opioid epidemic in the United States and you know billions of dollars every year being spent to help people deal with addiction, but we still know very little about how to do that, and so I think it's really in these areas that a lot of work will be happening over the next few years. Hopefully progress, but at least work.

Tom Butler: 48:26

Dr Ellis, thank you so much for taking the time to have this discussion. I loved it and there's we're a whole lot of places that I could have gone down a rabbit hole in the discussion, but I really appreciate your insight and you know I appreciate what you guys are doing there. I really feel these kind of efforts to really understand how to affect change are just so valuable when it comes to informing policy decisions and in helping individuals like me, who I'm wanting to overcome some of my personal challenges, some of my personal options. So again, thanks so much for taking the time to come on.

Sean Ellis Ph.D.: 49:12

Hey, thank you so much for the invitation and for having me on. I really enjoyed the discussion and the opportunity to talk about the research that we're doing here.

Tom Butler: 49:21

Well, thanks and good luck with your search for a bike.

Sean Ellis Ph.D.: 49:25

Thank you. Thank you, I'm hoping to make a purchase soon. The weather's getting nicer.

Tom Butler: 49:29

Yes, nice, all right, Take care now.

Sean Ellis Ph.D.: 49:31

All right, you too.

Tom Butler: 49:41

Dr Ellis brought up that Katie Milkman is one of the leaders at the Behaviour Change for Good Initiative. Dr Milkman is also the author of a fantastic book titled how to Change. If you're like me and find change to be difficult, you should consider reading the book Over and over again. As I talked to Dr Ellis, I was thinking about the community connections that I've made and how valuable they have been in this effort. I have been looking for a way to support more interaction, because I think it could provide more value to this community. What I came up with was to launch a cycling over 60 Strava group.

Tom Butler: 50:14

I don't imagine that everybody is as into Strava data as I am, but I do think a Strava group provides a particular kind of interactivity. I'm not limiting membership in the group to people over 60. I want anybody who is interested in staying on the bike later in life, no matter their age, to feel welcome. I also want to include the people who support older riders. I'm sure there are others out there, like my daughter and my son-in-law, that play a big role in keeping friends and family cycling. I want them to participate as well. And finally, I want to be able to invite advisors, who might be younger, to share insights and join in on discussions.

Tom Butler: 50:53

I am only beginning to get to know what Strava has to offer a community and I have a lot to learn, but I do have some ideas that I hope will make the Strava group a really fun place to be. A consequence of inviting everyone is that the club leaderboard will not be the same as if we only had over 60 cyclists. I'm thinking that we can find a way to recognize people of all ages and abilities for their accomplishments. Please let me know if you have some ideas for the group. You can find my email and a link to the show Instagram and the show notes and, of course, now there's also chat on Strava. I would love any feedback you have. I hope this episode helped you think about strategies for making positive changes. Ideally, all your changes will help you to have some fantastic cycling adventures soon. And remember age is just a gear change.