Practicing behavioural psychology on business

Universities Australia chair Margaret Gardner wants government to urge into investing in university research with a tax nudge.

Margaret Gardner, Vice-Chancellor of Monash University.

In today’s Higher Ed Daily Brief: Nudge to make them budge, female opportunity

Nudge factor

Ever looking for ways to convince business to invest in university research, Universities Australia chair Margaret Gardner has resorted to the behavioural psychology approach of the “nudge”. Popularised by two US professors, University of Chicago economist Richard Thaler and Harvard Law School academic Cass Sunstein, nudging people towards their best behaviour is argued to be far more effective than proselytising. Because people don’t make rational decisions, and often don’t understand how they come to decisions, it’s more productive to use subtle means to persuade. An example would be to place healthy food at eye level in a cafeteria. rather than unhealthy junk food.

Professor Gardner yesterday urged that business be nudged. In a speech to the AFR Innovation Summit she said Australian businesses needed a “behavioural nudge” to encourage them “to venture where they have not ventured before”.

She urged the federal government to use its R&D tax incentive “to provide an incentive (a nudge) to businesses to partner with an Australian university on their research and development to build a stronger collaborative base for the future”.

Opportunity for women PhD students

The Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute (AMSI) has chalked up more success in opening opportunities for female PhD students. Ten women will do placements with the Australian Bureau of Statistics in the coming year, working on specialist research projects as part of ABS teams.

AMSI has also won placements for 24 women PhD students with the ARC Centre for Pharmaceutical Therapeutic Technology, to join short-term research projects over the next four years. “These projects will have transformative impacts for health innovation, while training PhDs with essential skills to drive commercial medical research and development,” said AMSI director Geoff Prince.