New technologies increase opportunities and pressures to learn new skills. Research on "desirable difficulties" has shown, however, that learners are often poor judges of the strategies for learning - e.g., they fail to appreciate that spacing experiences with a task out over time will enhance...

We study whether a particular socio-emotional skill – grit (the ability to sustain effort and interest towards long-term goals) – can be cultivated through a large-scale program, and how this affects student learning. Using a randomized control trial, we evaluate the first nationwide...

We study whether a particular socio-emotional skill - grit (the ability to sustain effort and interest towards long-term goals) - can be cultivated through a large-scale program, and how this affects student learning. Using a randomized control trial, we evaluate the first nationwide...

We study whether a particular socio-emotional skill – grit (the ability to sustain effort and interest towards long-term goals) – can be cultivated through a large-scale program, and how this affects student learning. Using a randomized control trial, we evaluate the first nationwide...

We partnered with Walmart to test 22 nudges designed to boost vaccination rates in their pharmacies. Nudges were delivered via text message to over 650,000 Walmart pharmacy patients in the fall of 2020 and encouraged patients to visit Walmart for a flu vaccine. We demonstrate that behaviorally...

We present a pre-registered experiment testing the effects of three, high-payoff (up to $50,000) vaccine regret lotteries in Philadelphia. In each drawing, residents of a randomly selected “treatment” zip code received half of the 12 lottery prizes (boosting their chances to 59-98x those of...

Many Americans fail to get life-saving vaccines each year, and the availability of a vaccine for COVID-19 makes the challenge of encouraging vaccination more urgent than ever. We present a large field experiment (N=47,306) testing 19 nudges delivered to patients via text message and designed to...

This paper explores the interface between personality psychology and economics. We examine the predictive power of personality and the stability of personality traits over the life cycle. We develop simple analytical frameworks for interpreting the evidence in personality psychology and suggest...