Welcome!

I’m fascinated by what makes people tick.  Fascinated enough to complete a MSc mid-career in Cognitive & Decision Science at UCL with two young children, house-renovations and a full-time job.  And then to leave my job so I could apply what I was learning in a well-known Behavioural Economics & Data Science team. I learnt so much on the MSc I wanted to share it with others – this is why I started this blog.

Much of the popular behavioural science literature focuses on how ‘dumb’ people are. This is an overly pessimistic view of humans. Most of the time, our judgement and decision making is extremely accurate. This is why I called the blog ‘Brilliant Minds’.

I’ll be writing mainly about why we think and do what we think and do – and the all important ‘so what’? I’ll be mainly drawing on evidence from:

1. Cognitive and social psychology, as well as behavioural economics.
2. Behavioural design and human-centered design.  Thanks to Edward Gardiner at Warwick Business School, I have been recently introduced to these approaches as a way of using mixed methods to achieve real change. They provide a more formal way to combine a scientific understanding of behaviour with empathy for the end user (be it consumer, citizen, customer, patient or employee) to creatively solve problems.

I’ll be posting my first (proper) blog very soon…

Happy reading!