Behavioural Insights

Kirstin Appelt is Research Director, UBC Decision Insights for Business & Society, and Academic Director of UBC's Advanced Professional Certificate in Behavioural Insights. Her research explores why people struggle with important decisions about the future and how to use choice architecture to help them make the best decisions for themselves and for society. Kirstin is also a behavioural science consultant for organizations including the BC Behavioural Insights Group (BC BIG), the California Health Benefit Exchange (Covered California), the Columbia University Center for Decision Sciences, Google, the Pacific Business Group on Health (PBGH), Temple University, and WorkSafeBC. She received her Ph.D. in Psychology from Columbia University and her B.A. magna cum laude in Economics from Dartmouth College.

Dale Griffin is a professor of Marketing and Behavioural Sciences and was the interim Academic Director of the Dhillon Centre for Business Ethics at UBC Sauder School of Business. He has taught at leading universities in Canada, Great Britain, and the United States, most recently at the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University. Professor Griffin teaches courses in Responsible Business, Marketing Research, and Strategic Decision Making at the undergraduate, MBA and PhD levels, and lectures on strategy and decision-making for executive audiences, and provides legal consulting on consumer behaviour and risk perception. He is the co-editor, along with Thomas Gilovich and Daniel Kahneman, of Heuristics and Biases: The Psychology of Intuitive Judgment. He received his PhD from Stanford University.

David Hardisty is Associate Professor of Marketing & Behavioural Science at UBC Sauder School of Business. His research focuses on decisions about the future, including sustainability, financial planning, and impulsivity. He also studies attribute framing and social dilemmas. At UBC Sauder, he teaches Ethics & Sustainability and Consumer Behaviour. His ultimate goal is to develop tools to improve long-term decision making. He received his PhD in Psychology from Columbia University in 2011.

Jiaying Zhao is the Canada Research Chair in Behavioural Sustainability, and an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology and the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability at the University of British Columbia. Jiaying uses psychological principles to design behavioural solutions to address financial and environmental sustainability challenges. Specifically, she examines the cognitive consequences of poverty and designs interventions to alleviate the cognitive burdens in low-income individuals. In addition, she develops behavioural interventions to encourage recycling, composting, and biodiversity conservation. Jiaying has served as a research advisor and consultant for a number of organizations, including Financial Consumer Agency of Canada, Policy Horizons Canada, City of Vancouver, and the U.S. Social and Behavioral Sciences Team. She received her PhD in cognitive psychology from Princeton University in 2013.

Vince Hopkins is Assistant Professor in the Johnson Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy at the University of Saskatchewan. Vince studies behavioural public policy—specifically, how we can help low-income and marginalized populations access public services. His research combines data science (e.g. field/survey experiments, web-scraping) and user experience design (e.g. interviews, journey maps).

Kate White is currently Professor of Marketing and Behavioural Science at the UBC-Sauder School of Business. She holds a professorship in Consumer Insights, Prosocial Consumption, and Sustainability and is Academic Director of the Dhillon Centre for Business Ethics. Kate’s research focuses on how to encourage ethical, prosocial, and sustainable consumer behaviours. Kate has consulted on various behaviour-change projects with industry collaborators such as The City of Calgary, Health Canada, BC Women’s Hospital, My Sustainable Canada, BC Hydro, Big Rock Brewery, The United Way, and Celgene Health Care.

This is a fascinating area of study - how principles from behavioural and decision sciences can help us understand human behaviour.  What I really like about this program is that it isn't simply academic - we are learning how to actually apply behavioural insights to bring about positive change at a societal and community level, in an ethical manner.  Even at an individual level, these insights can help us be more effective in our interactions and relationship with others.

The Advanced Professional Certificate in Behavioural Insights program has been fascinating and eye-opening.  I like how practical the program is, and I'm excited to use what we've learned in real-world scenarios with a hands-on approach.

I would recommend the UBC Advanced Professional Certificate in Behavioural Insights (BI) to anybody looking to advance their experience and education in BI. I chose this program as it is the only BI certificate being offered in Canada. The virtual nature of the certificate allowed me to continue working full time during the program. Since completing the certificate, I was given the opportunity to serve as the Lead of the BC Behavioural Insights Group for six months.

The program has been great so far in furthering my skills to implement evidence-based Behavioural Insights practices. It has been refreshing to see the many ways Behavioural Insights can be applied and get to know people in the Behavioural Insights community directly. I am often amazed by the caliber of my professors and classmates, who come from a variety of professions.

This program far exceeded my expectations, both from an individual learning perspective and course delivery perspective.  The instructors went above and beyond to ensure it was engaging throughout with a wide variety of learning activities and practical applications of concepts.  I have applied a BI lens to many of the programs and services I lead as a Strategic HR Manager in the short time since graduation and am excited for the possibilities for organizations.