full transcript

From the Ted Talk by David Asch: Why it's so hard to make healthy decisions

Unscramble the Blue Letters


(Laughter)

Jon Corzine did not have a knowledge deficit, he had a behavior deficit. It's not that he didn't know better. He knew better. It's that he didn't do better.

Instead, I think the mind is a high-resistance pathway. Changing someone's mind with information is hard enough. chgianng their behavior with ifoamnrotin is harder still. The only way we're going to make substantial improvements in health and health care is to make substantial improvements in the behavior of helath and health care.

If you hit my patellar tendon with a reflex hammer, my leg is going to jerk forward, and it's going to jerk forward a lot fesatr and a lot more predictably than if I had to think about it myself. It's a rfleex. We need to look for the eulivqaent bevaorahil reflexes and hitch our health care wagon to those. Turns out, though, that most conventional approaches to human motivation are besad on the idea of education. We assmue that if ppolee don't behave as they should, it's because they didn't know any better. "If only people knew that smoking was dangerous, they wouldn't smoke." Or, we think about economics. The assumption there is that we're all constantly calculating the costs and benefits of every one of our anicots and optimizing that to make the perfectly right, rational decision. If that were true, then all we need to do is to find the perfect payment system for doctors or the perecft co-payments and deductibles for patients, and everything would work out.

Open Cloze


(Laughter)

Jon Corzine did not have a knowledge deficit, he had a behavior deficit. It's not that he didn't know better. He knew better. It's that he didn't do better.

Instead, I think the mind is a high-resistance pathway. Changing someone's mind with information is hard enough. ________ their behavior with ___________ is harder still. The only way we're going to make substantial improvements in health and health care is to make substantial improvements in the behavior of ______ and health care.

If you hit my patellar tendon with a reflex hammer, my leg is going to jerk forward, and it's going to jerk forward a lot ______ and a lot more predictably than if I had to think about it myself. It's a ______. We need to look for the __________ __________ reflexes and hitch our health care wagon to those. Turns out, though, that most conventional approaches to human motivation are _____ on the idea of education. We ______ that if ______ don't behave as they should, it's because they didn't know any better. "If only people knew that smoking was dangerous, they wouldn't smoke." Or, we think about economics. The assumption there is that we're all constantly calculating the costs and benefits of every one of our _______ and optimizing that to make the perfectly right, rational decision. If that were true, then all we need to do is to find the perfect payment system for doctors or the _______ co-payments and deductibles for patients, and everything would work out.

Solution


  1. information
  2. faster
  3. people
  4. behavioral
  5. health
  6. based
  7. perfect
  8. actions
  9. assume
  10. equivalent
  11. changing
  12. reflex

Original Text


(Laughter)

Jon Corzine did not have a knowledge deficit, he had a behavior deficit. It's not that he didn't know better. He knew better. It's that he didn't do better.

Instead, I think the mind is a high-resistance pathway. Changing someone's mind with information is hard enough. Changing their behavior with information is harder still. The only way we're going to make substantial improvements in health and health care is to make substantial improvements in the behavior of health and health care.

If you hit my patellar tendon with a reflex hammer, my leg is going to jerk forward, and it's going to jerk forward a lot faster and a lot more predictably than if I had to think about it myself. It's a reflex. We need to look for the equivalent behavioral reflexes and hitch our health care wagon to those. Turns out, though, that most conventional approaches to human motivation are based on the idea of education. We assume that if people don't behave as they should, it's because they didn't know any better. "If only people knew that smoking was dangerous, they wouldn't smoke." Or, we think about economics. The assumption there is that we're all constantly calculating the costs and benefits of every one of our actions and optimizing that to make the perfectly right, rational decision. If that were true, then all we need to do is to find the perfect payment system for doctors or the perfect co-payments and deductibles for patients, and everything would work out.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
health care 8
seat belts 5
jon corzine 3
health behavior 3
chocolate cake 3
late pickups 3
belts save 2
improving health 2
substantial improvements 2
behavioral reflexes 2
behavioral economics 2
behavioral economists 2
high blood 2
buy lottery 2
special tax 2
perfect sense 2
generic medications 2
million dollars 2
financial incentive 2
financial incentives 2
daycare program 2
strong intrinsic 2
handwashing rates 2
robin put 2

ngrams of length 3

collocation frequency
seat belts save 2
improving health behavior 2

Important Words


  1. actions
  2. approaches
  3. assume
  4. assumption
  5. based
  6. behave
  7. behavior
  8. behavioral
  9. benefits
  10. calculating
  11. care
  12. changing
  13. constantly
  14. conventional
  15. corzine
  16. costs
  17. dangerous
  18. decision
  19. deductibles
  20. deficit
  21. doctors
  22. economics
  23. education
  24. equivalent
  25. faster
  26. find
  27. hammer
  28. hard
  29. harder
  30. health
  31. hit
  32. hitch
  33. human
  34. idea
  35. improvements
  36. information
  37. jerk
  38. jon
  39. knew
  40. knowledge
  41. laughter
  42. leg
  43. lot
  44. mind
  45. motivation
  46. optimizing
  47. patellar
  48. pathway
  49. patients
  50. payment
  51. people
  52. perfect
  53. perfectly
  54. predictably
  55. rational
  56. reflex
  57. reflexes
  58. smoke
  59. smoking
  60. substantial
  61. system
  62. tendon
  63. true
  64. turns
  65. wagon
  66. work