Episode Details

Alessandro del Ponte is a research fellow at the National University of Singapore working in the Behavioral Change program at the Global Asia Institute. He recently earned his PhD in behavioral political economy from Stony Brook University in New York. His recent research uses simple video games to understand how people feel about making tradeoffs between jobs and paying off national debt, or between saving lives in the national healthcare system or paying off the national debt.

We decided to connect with Alessandro because of President Trump’s recent comment: The cure shouldn’t be worse than the problem. Clearly, we have a moral dilemma: open the country to save the economy or kill 10’s of thousands of people with the virus?

We hope you enjoy this very philosophical discussion.

© 2020 Behavioral Grooves

Connect with Kurt and Tim:

Kurt Nelson, PhD: @WhatMotivates  e-mail: kurt@lanterngroup.com

Tim Houlihan: @THoulihan  e-mail: tim@behavioralchemy.com

Lantern Group: http://lanterngroup.com/

BehaviorAlchemy: https://www.behavioralchemy.com/

Behavioral Grooves: https://behavioralgrooves.com/

Weekly Grooves: https://weeklygrooves.podbean.com/

Common Biases & Heuristics: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XHpBr0VFcaT8wIUpr-9zMIb79dFMgOVFRxIZRybiftI/edit#

Patreon Site for Behavioral Grooves: https://www.patreon.com/behavioralgrooves

General Coronavirus Info:

Daily Newsletter Summarizing data from Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security: http://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/newsroom/newsletters/e-newsletter-sign-up.html

CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/index.html

Great videos on the science behind this by Dr. Peter Attia – this is the first in a series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNVhLyAlfA4

What is herd immunity?: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/615375/what-is-herd-immunity-and-can-it-stop-the-coronavirus/

A list curated by Liam.Delaney@UCD.ie

https://docs.google.com/document/d/11GLhX7hLf64Bxkdpv5hvYHqOjS1imlcMQFjJBJ-9oUM/edit

Coronavirus & Behavioral Science:

Selected Links: The Behavioral Sice of Coronavirus: https://behavioralscientist.org/selected-links-the-behavioral-science-of-the-coronavirus-covid-19/

Why no one is reading your coronavirus email: https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/13/opinions/coronavirus-emails-effective-messaging-rogers/index.html

Handwashing can stop a virus, so why don’t we do it?: https://behavioralscientist.org/handwashing-can-stop-a-virus-so-why-dont-we-do-it-coronavirus-covid-19/

The behavioral science of handwashing: