421. Behavioral Science and Democracy w/ Beatriz Vallejo

Welcome to episode 421 of the Brainy Business Understanding the Psychology of why People Buy. In today's episode, I'm excited to introduce you to Beatriz Vallejo, CEO of Ethos bt. Ready? Let's get started. You are listening to the Brainy Business podcast where we dig into the psychology of why people buy and help you incorporate behavioral economics into your business, making it more brain friendly. Now, here's your host, Melina Palmer. Hello. Hello everyone. My name is Melina Palmer and I want to welcome you to the Brainy Business podcast. In today's conversation, I'm joined by Beatriz Vallejo. Beatriz is the CEO of Ethos bt which is based in Colombia. She is a behavioral scientist, researcher and designer focused on reducing polarization, disinformation and improving society. She has worked with private organizations, governments and international agencies on designing, implementing and monitoring behavior change, anti poverty education and regional development programs. She's also designed and conducted behavioral science and decision making workshops and led behavioral science projects. It's a really exciting conversation today about some applied work they've done in Colombia and I'm really glad to be able to showcase this work from Latin America today. Thank you to Carlos Hoyos for making the introduction. Appreciate you very, very much. Now really quickly before we get into the conversation, I want to be sure you know that there are links in the show, notes for my top related past episodes and books, ways to get in touch with Beatriz and more. It's all within the app you're listening to and at the brainy business.com421 now let's jump right in. Beatriz Vallejo, welcome to the Brainy Business podcast.

Thank you, Molina. I. It's an honor to be here.

Oh, I'm so delighted to have you. We had a whole so that the audience knows, you know, we always have a little chat before we get going here we were talking about my woefully underperforming Spanish speaking skills and I have shown it all even as I'm. I'm trying and practicing and doing some work and I feel like I very much mispronounced your name. So apologies, but we're, we're making our way through. As we've said, I'm so excited for you to be here today. For everyone who doesn't yet know you, can you share a little bit about yourself and the work that you do?

Yes. Thank you. So I'm a Colombian, I'm a behavioral scientist, an economist as well, and I have consultancy in behavioral science which is called ETHOS Behavioral Team. And from Ethos, we created a huge project called Detox Information Project in which we use behavioral sciences to reduce misinformation. And that's been like my main focus in the last four or five years, researching about disinformation and behavioral science.

Wonderful. Well, let's talk a little bit about your background, because as you said, you have a degree in behavioral science, but you ventured away from Colombia to do your research and that work, is that right?

Yeah, I studied economics in Colombia and also a master's degree in economics. And then I worked a lot in the public sector in different areas. And then I went away to UCL to do a master's degree in behavioral change in the psychological department of ucl. My master's degree thesis was about understanding the factors that are related to people believing and sharing fake news. I was really interested in understanding behaviors that have to do with political polarization and how to reduce violence related to political polarization. So that's why I ended up doing my thesis in believing and sharing fake news in Colombia.

Can you share a little bit more about the work and the research that you did on that during your master's? What were you digging in on? What were you looking into with that?

It was a really fun exercise, actually. I wanted to understand the psychological factors that are highly correlated and may be causing people believing and sharing fake news. Colombia is a place where these types of research were not done before. I mean, most of the research has been done in the global north, in the United States, in the uk, in other countries of Europe. But. But understanding psychological factors related to fake news in a deep way has never been researched before, I think in Latin American country. Not from what I have seen at that point. I think that has changed in these last years. So I did an online research, filled online research in Colombia with, I don't know, like 300 people in Colombia to understand different psychological factors. And I also measured the abilities to detect fake and real news. So I found some really interesting things related to cognitive abilities related to believing fake news and also political. Political ideology factors that are related to vulnerability in fake news. But that was like a small research that opened like this whole path I've been going through the last four years.

Yeah, so let's talk about that. So what's the research you're doing now or have done? You know, what results from, you know, what you did from that first small study?

Yeah, so, yeah, I came back to Colombia. I worked with the mayor's office in Bogota, applying behavioral sciences mainly to Covid you know, that was the COVID year. So we did a lot of research on reducing bad behaviors around Covid using behavioral sciences. And at the same time, we. We made an alliance with some friends to think what can we do to reduce fake news in Colombia? Misinformation had been increasingly growing in Colombia. All over the world, polarization had been growing. We opened and founded this amazing project that it's called Deep Detox Information Project in which we could combine our strengths. My strength was understanding these problematic from the behavioral sciences. We were also with a journalist, a friend that's journalist and she has worked from the journalism to understand what's happening with misinformation. And there was another friend that is also a behavioral scientist, and he had been working on reducing factors such as dehumanization and violence and inclusion in Colombia using behavioral sciences. So we gathered efforts and we designed this amazing project and we did another research, like a biggest research to understand, okay, so what are the factors that make Colombians more vulnerable to misinformation? Psychological factors, biases, habits. All the different characteristics that we can see had been included in the academic literature, but also some others that had been linked to polarization and to hate speech. And that our strong hypothesis was that here in Colombia, the factors that drove vulnerability to misinformation were more related to hate speech, like dehumanizing others or how you relate to others and how good you are to understand that your vision of the world is partial, limited. So we did this research with over 1000 Colombians from different backgrounds. And we found that there are four factors highly correlated and may be causing Colombians to believing in fake news, which are dehumanizing others, distrust, feeling discriminated, perception of discrimination, and low tolerance to ambiguity. The formal name of this fourth factor is need for cognitive closure. It's a really technical name. So tolerance to ambiguity is more easy to understand. We also found that political views, like your political ideology, measured in an implicit association test, is also correlated. So the other things were not correlated. Your analytical skills in this research were not correlated. Open minded, being open minded was not correlated. Education level was not correlated. And this is a really important factor here. And a lot of different factors that literature has found to be correlated, we did not find them here. In this research, we found these four factors, five factors, including the political ideology. And yeah, that was like the first step.

Absolutely. And so I think it does, you know, it lines up with some of what I've been reading about, you know, recently in a similar topic, as there's so much coming out about misinformation. I feel like in the past we'll say 18 months, maybe like two years. So in the same like cohort of people I think that have all been looking at and interested in this at the same time. And like you're saying the. With confirmation bias and the way that we focus on things and how we can narrow in and say even when you're presented with the facts, that we can look at them and reinforce our belief, even when it totally doesn't align with what was being said. And that two different people can interpret something in completely different ways is just really fascinating. Right. To see the way that our brains can shape the information that we're getting and you know, ways that people unfortunately can and have been taking advantage of that perspective as they're sharing information intentionally or unintentionally. That's part of the problem too, right? Is that we may read something and think, oh my gosh, that sounds so fascinating. And just quickly it's so easy to just hit share. Right. Or to put it back out into the world without doing that fact checking. And we can spread misinformation very quickly even without realizing it.

Yeah. And there's something I've been, I've been seeing recently and I think there's been some writing about it from Sander van der Linden and Rosenberg and Alan Jaguar in, in the uk, which is, you know, most of the, of the misinformation we're seeing or disinformation is not fake. I mean, it's not necessarily fake. Facts, like fake news is just a little portion and okay, it does a lot of harm. Yes. But the bulk of it, the most of it is disinformation that might be not necessarily fake, but it's misleading, discontextualized, and it's manipulative and it's manipulating you in a way to influence in your behavior and in your decision making in a certain way. So it's like not necessarily or entirely fake, like a fake number, but it mislead the way you understand reality and what's happening. So and that's making a huge impact. And that's the what I understand that the bulk of misinformation we are seeing is that type of misinformation. So it's more difficult to fact check, for example, because it's like you cannot say, so this is fake is misleading. It's just manipulative. It's really emotional. So that's why we share it right away. That's a huge challenge. We have to find different ways from fact checking to control it.

Definitely. I was absolutely thinking about Sander van der Linden and my interview with him and his book which will of course they'll both be linked in the show. Notes for everyone. I'm also, um, and I. The episodes should come out about. About the same time. I'm not sure which is first and whatnot, but I'm also interviewing Alex Edmonds today about his book May Contain Lies, which is going to be really interesting and very much tied in with the conversation that you and I are having of, you know, when like facts aren't data and like when it's evidence isn't necessarily proof and all these sorts of stuff steps, which is going to be a really fun conversation too that I think ties in to this here. So let's then take some time. Let's dig in some more on the research. You've talked about the four or five things that you found that were correlated. And you've also been able to test like with some ways to help people to be less likely to be impacted by that misinformation. Right. Can you share a little bit about that?

Yeah. So after that research we started thinking on ways to. Okay, so we know these four factors like I'm leaving behind, I'm living outside the political ideology because our main goal is to strengthen democracy. So I mean, we don't want to change political ideology. That's something we have the right to have in a different ways. And we just need to understand how to. To be able to build things with others that think differently. But we don't want to change others way of thinking in political ideology. So that's a factor that I don't count. So we focused on distrust, feeling discriminated against, tolerance of ambiguity and dehumanizing. So first we designed some tests, personality tests that you can do. And we have, we have them open for everybody in the world can do them. It's in Spanish, but they're open and you can do them. And it says so, okay, so you have, for example, you have low tolerance to ambiguity. And according to our research that makes you more vulnerable to misinformation and we explain why. So you have immediately an individual report. This is an anonymous test. You take two minutes doing it and you get the report right away. And then we invite people to see a video. So we also design some videos which are social experiments filmed alive in which we are talking about these four factors. We are showing how people distrust others that think differently or have different roles in society. We show how people feel discriminated against, maybe by others. We show how people dehumanize others and we show how people, for example, categorize others in, like, specific boxes, stereotypes. So, for example, the stereotype of the right person or of the left wing person. So there are four video experiments and they're really, really, I think they're really great social experiments here, aiming at reducing or changing that way of thinking or understanding reality. If we found these four factors were causing people to believe in misinformation, our hypothesis was if we change the way people are distrusting, dehumanizing, etc. We are going to make them less vulnerable to misinformation. That was our hypothesis. That's what we did. And then we run an impact evaluation with some allies from the University of Chicago and University of El Rosario here in Bogota. This is a group led by John List. And the impact evaluation is really nice because we find, I think these are two great findings. First, the test. So just knowing your biases or your personality characteristics is not enough. So you can, I can tell you you are dehumanizing and that makes you vulnerable. That's not enough. That has no impact. I think, or that's my understanding from behavioral science, in reading different texts, that sometimes we assume that. We assume that if people are aware of their biases, they are going to change behavior. So this was like testing that. And in this case, we saw it didn't have an impact. So the second part is the video. So people that see the videos are 30% less vulnerable to misinformation. So they are more able to detect fake news. So this is a great finding. And I think it's the first time in Colombia that we design something using behavioral science and the first time that we evaluated its impact. So, yeah, so we've been three years from now socializing these tools with all of Colombia in different ways. And it's been a really amazing journey.

Absolutely. And such important work, really, you know, and being able to see, like you said, I mean, the 30% of people that were, you know, had that adjustment of being able to have the, the benefit there of being less likely to be impacted is, Is really phenomenal. So you started the research with, you know, you were working with some of those political bodies, like you said, the mayors and things from the beginning to be doing the, the work and the research, I'm. I'm thinking the angle I'm going to. With the question here is for people who are inspired by your story and they want to go do something and maybe are in. We have a lot of people that listen to the show that are in markets where there's not a lot happening with behavioral economics and behavioral science. People don't know what it is. The resources, most of them are not maybe in the language that's spoken in the country that they're in. And they're having to feel like they're fighting this uphill battle to be able to even get people to listen to what might be possible and why behavioral science, you know, matters and can be impactful. Do you have any tips or insights or are you willing to share a little bit of kind of your own story or journey for those who are listening and thinking I want to do something like that. And it doesn't have to be. Be, of course, in the same vein of what your research is in, but just this idea of feeling like they're maybe too early and they can't do anything yet.

Yeah, I mean, and I just, I'm thinking on our research, we, we wrote, I think it's one of the first guides in Spanish to implement behavioral science. We wrote it. We were hired by the mayorship in Bogota to write it. So it's in Spanish. That's a resource I can totally share. I think it's a really comprehensive tool to implement step by step and behavioral science and design interventions and research using behavioral science in Spanish. It's called Ibox and it's of the. For the Innovation center laboratory here in Bogota. That's a tool, I mean, that people in Spanish could use. And from the path, I mean, I think from what I'm seeing here, it's. There's a lot of people learning a lot of behavioral science in different ways. I mean, I know great behavioral scientists that haven't studied behavioral science. So there's a lot of resources such as your amazing podcast in which you can learn a lot of behavioral science free resources online. And there's a lot of people being able to implement this in the real world. So maybe start talking and writing. I mean, this huge, amazing network of behavioral scientists. I, I think we all love talking to each other and we, I mean, I have found everybody to be so kind. You can write everybody and anyone and it's going to have a nice response. So you can write almost anybody in the world right now through LinkedIn. I would do that. I would start writing people that interest are interested in the areas I'm interested and that takes you somewhere always. I mean, that's what I did when I arrived before I was working in completely different areas and when I arrived from my master's I just started writing everybody telling I'm doing behavioral sciences and I want to work in citizenship culture here. So what can I do? What can I do? I want to do this. I want to do this. I studied behavioral science and it was a matter of two or three months that I could start doing something with it. So I don't know. Our world is really nice. You know, social media has a lot of downfalls as we just saw through misinformation. It's problematic, but it also gives us this huge opportunity to talk with anybody right now to be able to work in everything we need, we want. I mean, so yeah, I would do that. I, I don't know if that answers the question.

Of course the it's your question to answer. However, it seems right to you, right? So if it's. I, I think it's, you know, your, your journey and your path and I completely agree and give similar advice all the time of. Even so, especially in the field of behavioral science and behavioral economics and whether it's reaching out on LinkedIn or anything else, it is, I is such a warm, welcoming group of people that are so passionate about people in general, right. And like understanding humans and wanting to like find these little nuanced tidbits and are open to conversations and are just excited that other people are excited about it, right? And so when you do reach out and say, like you said, you spent enough time to do, it's like doing the research and finding out, not just surface level, like I read the very first book and. And sometimes that's enough, right? You can still have conversations then, but as you're getting ready to start to be using this and I think from what I've seen from having so many of these conversations with people, either some on the show, I love showcasing these types of stories and I have so many more outside of interviews. But what I found is when people can say like, I've been looking at this and I found this, this interesting aspect that I'm so passionate about and I'm trying to figure out this thing, right? I want to know how does this apply to this thing that I don't see anybody doing yet? And am I wrong? Is someone doing this? What do you know? What should I be doing? I think people can sense the, that passion, that excitement, that genuine interest and drive that's behind that type of, you know, pursuit of a question or whatever it happens to be and the, that they want to help and support, whether they're in behavioral science or as you have had found, right. With the work that you were then able to do, to say, I know you're probably working on and struggling with this. I think behavioral science can help. And let me, let me tell you why. Right. And I'm ready to do the work. I'm excited to do. I know it's going to be a lot of work and I can't wait to do it. It's, you know, it's hard to say no to that sort of thing.

You're right. You know that. I know. I think there's a challenge. I mean, I think we were really lucky to find. Find sponsors. I mean, so find. Finding resources to do research is difficult as, you know, like, and I don't know if you, if you struggle with this with your clients, but it's really difficult to convince people to do research, initial research. They want to jump to the design process right away, not even understanding what the problem is, for example. So that part is challenging. I, I think we were really lucky to find sponsors that were really, really interested and highly preoccupated with democracy in Colombia and misinformation. And they were like, what do we have to do? I mean, this is something different. Let's try using serious. You are going to use evidence and academic evidence here. So let's do it. I think we were really lucky because that part is not easy. So we need to keep doing education with this, with our clients and with firms and with the public and private sector because we do need research to innovate. So that's the little challenge. I think the most difficult part in that process is that one. But it's possible. I mean, you just have to touch. I don't know if we use this in English. Touch doors.

Ah, right. Yeah. Like knock on. Knock on doors. Right.

Just find someone that. Or maybe a lot of different people that. It's interesting in financing, but it's possible. It's possible. And. Well, yeah, those are like the paths.

Right.

Well.

And for those who are struggling to find some financing or maybe that they have felt like it's not even worth asking because, oh, my goodness, this, this is just going to be so difficult. Do you have some tips in the way that you have helped people to see that they should invest time in understanding the problem before just jumping into a solution or, you know, tips for.

Yeah, I mean, it's not easy. Every project today, I mean, yesterday, I mean, I gather with clients, they are like, you know, this is an amazing proposal. I love it. I know that research is important, but we've done a lot of Research so far, like we have everything understood. Like what can we do just to jump? So it's. I'm still understanding it, I think asking questions. What I do is asking a lot of questions so that if they, if they have the problem really understood and a really good diagnosis, I can have that information and we can move forward. If not, we both are going to realize what's missing and they are going to realize that they don't understand the problem as they thought. So asking a lot of questions. So what's the behavioral target? Why? Where you want to prioritize? What are the behavioral barriers? What are the social norms that are maybe do we have a social norms problems here or not? Do we have data? What's the level of knowledge? What's level of. I don't know, what are the beliefs around this? What are the narratives? I don't know. I start asking a lot of questions so that we can really understand if we can go through the design. And I always show deep because deep is a really, really good example on why if you do really specific and extensive research, the likelihood of impact and of success increases a lot. I mean the 30% impact we had in deep is because we really understood these four factors. If we had just jumped to the design, we had never, never designed interventions to reduce dehumanization or distrust. We had never gone there and we hadn't had that impact. But it's not easy. And I don't always win. I don't know if you have a similar experience, but it's really right.

But you know, you don't have to win them all to win enough. Right. And it's the getting the, that snowball rolling. And, and I think with that too for people, just as with anything in business, not everyone is going to be your customer, whatever that means. Right. And so I think in many ways, you know, someone who, like for us, you know, the brainy business we're about to teaching and mentoring at heart.

Right.

And that we have really centered our work around helping the, you know, people that we work with to be learning enough about behavioral science and behavioral economics to be starting to use it themselves in the work that they're doing. And you know, we've had people that reach out and say, oh yeah, well we're not going to want to read. Our team doesn't want to learn things. We don't. We're not into that. That's fine. Like it's not a fit. Right. And it would just not be a good. Right. So knowing. Yeah. Someone who doesn't want to do research, who doesn't want or you know, who isn't willing to understand the problem, they just might not be a fit for you. So it's better to find that out early and move on to invest your time in the projects that are going to work.

Yeah, you're right.

It's, you know, it's the way we get to just keep going and knock on more doors. Right. We keep reaching out and finding out more and those projects that can have a great impact and, and we can learn from the ones that, that don't work as have as strong of effects. Right. Everything is learning experience, I'd say.

Yeah, no, it's really fun actually. I mean, I don't know. This is a specially fun job.

Agreed. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining me today and of course, thank you to our mutual friend Carlos Hoyos for introduction. Just delighted to have been able to chat with you and we'll definitely share. I'll have you send me the resources that you talked about and I love that they're in Spanish because we have so many people that listen to the show from, you know, greater Latin America and other Spanish speaking countries. So I think that that's really, really wonderful to be able to have those resources so we can be sharing those in the show notes. And for everyone who is inspired and excited and wants to, you know, connect with you and learn more, you know, what are their best ways to do so.

Yeah, so please, LinkedIn, I use a lot of LinkedIn. We have our webpage@deepsomosdeep.com I'll share it. And at EthosBT also we have a webpage. You can reach us at Ethos. Yeah, feel free to reach. I would be really happy to talk about any of this.

Perfect. And for everyone who's ready to do some research and invest in a project, you know, in Latin America or specifically Colombia, being able to reach out for sure. And we'll put those links for you in the show notes. And just again, thank you so much for joining me and talking about your work and your background today.

It's an honor. Thanks for the, for the invitation and it's been a really nice talk. Thank you, Melina.

Thank you again to Beatriz Vallejo for joining me on the show today. What got your brain buzzing in today's conversation? For me, I love being able to feature work in behavioral science that's being done around the world. And I believe that Beatriz is the first guest from Columbia on the show, which is also awesome. Again, a huge shout out to Carlos Hoyos for making the introduction to Beatriz as well as to the BE UEFA team in Peru who's been on the show before. Their episode is linked in the show notes along with Carlos's episode as well. If you or anyone you know is doing work or research in behavioral science or behavioral economics in a country that people aren't hearing from much yet and that you think should be featured here on the Brainy Business, please reach out to let me know. You can of course find me as the Brainy Biz on the socials and as Melina Palmer on LinkedIn. You can also send an email to melinathebrainybusiness.com to share that as well. I'd love to hear from you and feature more diverse projects here on the podcast as we close out the show. Don't forget about those show notes, which include links to my top related past episodes and books, ways to get in touch with Beatriz and myself, and more. It's all waiting for you in the app you're listening to and@the brainybusiness.com 4:2:1 and thank you again to Beatriz Vallejo for joining me on this show today. It was a delight to chat with and learn from you. Join me Tuesday for another Brainy episode of the Brainy Business Podcast. It's going to be a lot of of fun. You don't want to miss it. Until then, thanks again for listening and learning with me and remember to be thoughtful. Thank you for listening to the Brainy Business Podcast. Molina offers virtual strategy sessions, workshops and other services to help businesses be more brain friendly. For more free resources, visit thebrainybusiness. Com.