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Jason Riis

Founder at Behavioralize

Jason Riis is a prominent figure in the field of behavioral science, currently serving as a Senior Research Fellow at the Behavior Change for Good Initiative at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, since July 2018. He has a rich academic and professional background, having previously held positions as a Lecturer and Research Scholar at Wharton and an Assistant Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School.

Professional Background

  • Founder and CEO: Jason founded Behavioralize, a consulting firm aimed at applying behavioral science to foster growth in healthcare and technology sectors, in December 2017.
  • Academic Roles: He has extensive teaching experience, having taught courses related to consumer behavior and health at both Wharton and Harvard. His academic journey includes a postdoctoral research associate role at Princeton University, where he worked on international surveys related to well-being under the guidance of Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman.

Research Interests

Jason's research focuses on behavior change, belief change, and decision-making processes. He collaborates with various organizations, including Fortune 500 companies and non-profits, to develop initiatives based on behavioral insights. His work aims to address critical issues in health, wellness, and technology.

Publications and Contributions

He has published numerous articles and conducted research that contributes to the understanding of consumer behavior. His insights are applied in real-world contexts through consulting services that leverage behavioral science principles.

In summary, Jason Riis combines academic expertise with practical application in behavioral science to influence positive change across various sectors.

Highlights

Mar 29 · linkedin

Context is everything when it comes to human behavior. Okay, it’s at least half the story.   My recent article on behavioral science in pharmaceutical marketing notes a couple of key ways in which contextual nuance is often overlooked.   First, you can’t nudge when you don’t own the touchpoints. Pharma marketers don’t own their customers’ choice context (e.g., electronic health record, HCP-patient conversation).  They generally can’t create defaults for customers.  Pharma marketers cannot act directly as choice architects.   The second problem emerges when marketers focus their behavioral science lens solely on “bias”. It’s easy to convince ourselves that HCPs have fallen prey to a cognitive illusion and that’s why they don’t prescribe our product. But the reality is that individual biases are rarely the only or even the most significant barrier to behavior change.   I conclude by calling for more “mental model architecture” – influencing the interconnected, but incomplete, set of intuitions that are the basis of a customer’s understanding of their context.   This approach is possible by drawing more heavily on behavioral science fields like Cognitive Psychology, Daniel Kahneman’s original discipline. Context matters at all stages of behavioral science work – diagnose, design, and test. Different contexts will bring different constraints, so practitioners will only bring value if they can find the best frameworks, tools, and methods for each context.   A few sources of inspiration for this piece are: --> Michael Hallsworth’s recent Manifesto for Applying  Behavioral Science (https://lnkd.in/gCtUJU58) --> My colleague Jared Peterson's recent article on the Science of Context (https://lnkd.in/gjyY4DdS) --> Linnea G.'s Nudge Cartography work (https://lnkd.in/gRYqSBt2) --> Gary Klein's work on, among other things, the War on Expertise (https://lnkd.in/gs6b-x_c)   Comments welcome.

#pharmaceuticals  #medicine  #behavioralscience  #mentalmodels

Oct 31 · linkedin

Here is a fun AI application I’ve been thinking about lately: Voice cloning for family nostalgia.

I want an AI that can “speak” some of the cute things my 3-year-old daughter routinely says, in her cute 3-year-old voice.

#VoiceCloning for content creation exists. Famously, Respeecher has cloned James Earl Jones’s #DarthVader voice. Several Voice Cloning apps are available.

Voice is such a potent carrier and trigger of #emotion. Voice cloning for nostalgia could be powerful.

As my daughter gets older, my wife and I will reminisce on her early childhood. We will have thousands of pictures of her at 3, and even some video. But we won’t have clips of her saying spontaneous, sweet things like I heard this weekend:

Is I can watch a movie? … This is such a boring! … I love you Daddy, etc.

For us, these phrases embody her sweetness at this age. I believe they would make us smile 20 or 30 years from now too, perhaps even more than any old image could.

Am I right? 

Or is my #AffectiveForecast wrong? Would we still find these phrases adorable when we know our daughter as a 13-year-old, or as a 33-year-old? Would her sense of #identity be offended by the existence of this voice clone in years to come? Or might she even want to share her childhood voice clone with her own children someday. Might her kids want to hear her as a little kid?

Will smart phones have voice cloning as a default feature in years to come?

For now, I’ll just enjoy another #Halloween night with my young kids. I’ll take hundreds of pictures as usual. But tonight, I’ll try harder to get a couple good voice samples.

Related Questions

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Location

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States