Maya Shankar
Senior Director of Behavioral Economics, Google. On 2 shows, 2 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
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Under President Barack Obama, Shankar served as a Senior Policy Advisor and founded the White House Social and Behavioral Sciences Team, later serving as the first Behavioral Science Advisor to the United Nations. She also created the podcast A Slight Change of Plans and authored the book The Other Side of Change.
2shows
2appearances
35statements
7resolved
6supported
0contradicted
86%fully supported
Everything Maya Shankar said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Shankar: Major disruptions inspire lasting internal change people appreciate
“When big changes happen to us, they also inspire lasting change within us. And by and large, the people that I've interviewed over the years for The Other Side of Change, but also for my podcast, they haven't been happy, necessarily, that the change happened t…”
Shankar: Innovators must frame tools around partners' existing goals
“Now you framed what you're doing as actually complementary to their efforts rather than sitting as like a tangential thing or like something that might be at odds with their thing, right? And so in every conversation, I try to first do my research and understa…”
Shankar: Shared psychological struggles imply shared solutions across life changes
“Like, if the problem statement's the same for those of us going through change, then probably the solution set's gonna be the same, too.”
Shankar: Vastly different life disruptions evoke the same psychological states
“The cancer patient and the woman who finds out that her husband has had an affair, they both are grappling with a feeling of betrayal. They're both having to deal with that same psychological state.”
Shankar: Practicing a habit for one minute a day primes self-reinforcing identity
“The difference between writing zero minutes a day, and writing one minute a day, is that in the one minute world, you're a writer. And when you prime that identity, it's self-reinforcing. It leads to a virtuous cycle.”
Shankar: Affirmations in crisis should focus on unthreatened identities
“You just take five or 10 minutes, and you write down all the identities, all the things you really value in your life that give your life great meaning, but that importantly are not threatened by the change you're going through.”
Shankar: Witnessing moral beauty expands what people believe they can achieve
“When we witness people behaving in ways that defy our understanding of what humans are capable of, That changes our own understanding of what we're capable of. It cracks open our imagination about what we're capable of.”
Shankar: Anchoring Identity to 'Why' Creates a More Resilient Sense of Self
“The challenge becomes, though, when you anchor yourself to something that is precarious in some way, and that's what I found with the violin. What I strive to do, because it's very much a works in progress, but I hope this resonates for your listeners, is to a…”
Shankar: Cultivating Layered Identities Protects Self-Worth Against Career Disruptions
“What I'm proposing is having multifaceted identities. So you have multiple layers of abstraction when it comes to where you derive meaning and how you define yourself. And so at one level, you can absolutely say, okay, I'm a lawyer, I'm a doctor, a stay at hom…”
Shankar: Self-identity narratives must be rooted in reality and external feedback
“So I really don't, I'm not okay with people telling themselves stories that are simply advantageous or promote psychological well-being, right? They have to be rooted in reality. They have to be to some degree vetted by the people in your life.”
Shankar: Group identity shapes beliefs more than data and facts
“Facts and science and evidence don't surface as much as they should in some of our debates, and it's because when we look at how it is that people form their attitudes and beliefs about the world, they're not simply basing it on What the data says. They're bas…”
Shankar: Fear of Social Ejection Prevents People From Updating Their Beliefs
“And if you feel too strong tribal membership, it can impede you from updating your point of view, because in that moment, You're not just asking yourself, do I believe in that X virus is real? What you're really asking is, do I belong to X group or not? Becaus…”
Shankar: Framing arguments within an opponent's moral values improves persuasion
“What we find is that grounding our arguments in moral terms that affirm rather than threaten the moral views of those we disagree with is far more effective at helping them
Change their viewpoints.”
Shankar: Increasing Question-To-Statement Ratio Changes Minds Better Than Authoritative Assertions
“The other thing, and this relates to this curiosity point, is you want to increase your question-to-statement ratio. So one thing that we can often do in these contexts is simply just Tell people what we think they should think, right? We just come out the gat…”
Shankar: Framing goals around proactive behaviors makes progress easier to track
“There is some research showing that you do want to frame your goals in terms of do behaviors versus don't behaviors, so you would kind of acknowledge this before. It's much more easy to measure progress when we're engaging in proactive decisions or proactive b…”
Shankar: Adding Emergency Reserves to Goals Massively Increases Goal Adherence
“And so there is research showing that when we introduce what are known as emergency reserves into our goal setting, basically get out of jail free cards, into the process of goal setting, we're much more likely to stay the course and to reach those goals.”
Shankar: People Quickly Forget Negative Qualifiers in Public Service Messaging
“What they find in research is that very quickly after you say, read the public service announcement, or you listen to the commercial, people forget whether there was a not or not in that sentence.”
Shankar: Affirmative messaging works better than myth-busting to build neural connections
“What research has found is that we should actually just make more affirmative statements that are correct. So in order to have safe water, you should use a water filter, and you should install it in this particular way, and you should, you know, you try to go …”
Maya Shankar: Self-Chosen Targets Improve Goal Achievement Through Intrinsic Motivation
“We do find that people are definitely better at achieving them when we are the ones who feel like we set our own targets. And that's because we're really tapping into intrinsic motivation.”
Shankar: Environmental Choice Architecture Radically Outperforms Willpower and Cognitive Reframing
“No semantic shift is gonna be that powerful to eliminate the willpower issues. I know Angela Duckworth focuses a lot on this. So that we don't have to employ willpower, we should really focus on the way that we design our lives and the choice architecture of o…”
Shankar: Temptation Bundling Fails Unless the Reward Is Denied Everywhere Else
“The only way in which this temptation bundling works is if you Actively deny yourself that rewarding activity in all other domains of life so that it really feels special and it feels coupled with the undesirable activity.”
Maya Shankar: Future-proof identity by focusing on 'why' rather than 'what'
“You can future proof yourself and your identity by defining yourself, not simply by what you do, but by why you do that thing.”
Shankar: The 'end of history illusion' makes us believe we stop changing
“So the phenomenon you're describing is called the end of history illusion. And it basically says that we, Fully acknowledge that we've changed considerably in the past. So if you were to show me footage of ten-year-old Maya or twenty-year-old Maya, oh my god, …”
Shankar: Default opt-out gave 12.5M more kids school lunch
“So they changed the school lunch program from an opt-in program to an opt-out program. So now, every kid's automatically enrolled, and parents only have to take an affirmative step if they want to actively unenroll their kid from the school lunch program. As a…”
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Maya's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 KNOWLEDGE PROJECTLEDGER | Senior Director of Behavioral Economics, Google | 1 | 21 | 100% 4/4 | full record on the Knowledge Project → |
 MASTERS OF SCALELEDGER | Senior Director of Behavioral Economics, Google | 1 | 14 | 67% 2/3 | full record on Masters of Scale → |