Nudge

Have you ever finished a book you dislike just to say you’ve finished it?

Have you loaded up Duolingo at 11:55pm to keep the streak alive?

Have you felt the crushing disappointment of realising you forgot to record your run for Strava?

If so, metrics might be controlling your life. And philosopher C. Thi Nguyen, my guest on today’s episode of Nudge, thinks that’s a problem.

Nguyen believes that our lives are increasingly organised around metrics and that these rankings don’t just track what we value. They replace it.

This episode contains some explicit language.

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Today’s sources:

Nguyen, C. T. (2026). The Score: How to stop playing somebody else's game. Penguin Press.

On April 26th, 2026, Sebastian Sawe did what many thought was impossible.

Running the marathon in under two hours.

Today on Nudge, I explain the psychological tricks Sawe may have used to break the record.

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Today’s sources:

Blanchfield, A. W., Hardy, J., & Marcora, S. M. (2014). Non-conscious visual cues related to affect and action alter perception of effort and endurance performance. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 8, Article 967.

Carter, J. M., Jeukendrup, A. E., & Jones, D. A. (2004). The effect of carbohydrate mouth rinse on 1-h cycle time trial performance. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, 36(12), 2107–2111.

Damisch, L., Stoberock, B., & Mussweiler, T. (2010). Keep your fingers crossed! How superstition improves performance. Psychological Science, 21(7), 1014–1020.

de Morree, H. M., & Marcora, S. M. (2010). The face of effort: Frowning muscle activity reflects effort during a physical task. Biological Psychology, 85(3), 377–382.

Gray, K. (2010). Moral transformation: Good and evil turn the weak into the mighty. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 1(3), 253–258.

Huang, D.-H., Chou, S.-W., Chen, Y.-L., & Chiou, W.-K. (2014). Frowning and jaw clenching muscle activity reflects the perception of effort during incremental workload cycling. Journal of Sports Science & Medicine, 13(4), 921–928.

McCormick, A., Meijen, C., & Marcora, S. (2018). Effects of a motivational self-talk intervention for endurance athletes completing an ultramarathon. The Sport Psychologist, 32(1), 42–50.

Stoate, I., Wulf, G., & Lewthwaite, R. (2012). Enhanced expectancies improve movement efficiency in runners. Journal of Sports Sciences, 30(8), 815–823.

Strack, F., Martin, L. L., & Stepper, S. (1988). Inhibiting and facilitating conditions of the human smile: A nonobtrusive test of the facial feedback hypothesis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54(5), 768–777.

Williams, E. L., Jones, H. S., Sparks, S., Marchant, D. C., Midgley, A. W., & McNaughton, L. R. (2014). Deception studies manipulating centrally acting performance modifiers: A review. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, 46(7), 1441–1451.

In 1997, Miss USA won Miss Universe with one perfectly judged answer.

She revealed just enough to charm, but not enough to shock.

Harvard professor Leslie John says that's scientifically proven to persuade.

Her research shows revealers are more likeable, more hireable, and even more dateable.

In this episode, she shares why oversharing beats staying guarded, why privacy promises make us shy, and how putting fears into words can cure phobias.

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Today’s sources:

Huang, K., Yeomans, M., Brooks, A. W., Minson, J., & Gino, F. (2017). It doesn't hurt to ask: Question-asking increases liking. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 113(3), 430–452.

John, L. K., Acquisti, A., & Loewenstein, G. (2011). Strangers on a plane: Context-dependent willingness to divulge sensitive information. Journal of Consumer Research, 37(5), 858–873.

John, L. K., Barasz, K., & Norton, M. I. (2016). Hiding personal information reveals the worst. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113(4), 954–959.

Kircanski, K., Lieberman, M. D., & Craske, M. G. (2012). Feelings into words: Contributions of language to exposure therapy. Psychological Science, 23(10), 1086–1091.

Pennebaker, J. W., & Beall, S. K. (1986). Confronting a traumatic event: Toward an understanding of inhibition and disease. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 95(3), 274–281.

Spera, S. P., Buhrfeind, E. D., & Pennebaker, J. W. (1994). Expressive writing and coping with job loss. Academy of Management Journal, 37(3), 722–733.

Katy Milkman shares one technique that could keep you exercising for 55% longer. 

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Today’s sources:

Gallus, J. (2017). Fostering public good contributions with symbolic awards: A large-scale natural field experiment at Wikipedia. Management Science, 63(12), 3999–4015.

Hershfield, H. E., Shu, S., & Benartzi, S. (2020). Temporal reframing and participation in a savings program: A field experiment. Marketing Science, 39(6), 1039-1051.

Milkman, K. L., Minson, J. A., & Volpp, K. G. M. (2014). Holding the Hunger Games hostage at the gym: An evaluation of temptation bundling. Management Science, 60(2), 283–299.

Rai, A., Sharif, M. A., Chang, E. H., Milkman, K. L., & Duckworth, A. L. (2023). A field experiment on subgoal framing to boost volunteering: The trade-off between goal granularity and flexibility. Journal of Applied Psychology, 108(4), 621–634.

Woolley, K., & Fishbach, A. (2016). For the fun of it: Harnessing immediate rewards to increase persistence in long-term goals. Journal of Consumer Research, 42(6), 952–966.

To persuade someone, most of us are tempted to use fear. 

We tell clients how much they’ll struggle if they pick a competitor. We tell our kids how they’ll lose TV time if they don’t finish their homework. We plead with our partners to kick bad habits by highlighting how unhealthy it’s making them. 

We all do it; we opt for doom-and-gloom messages baked in fear.

But today's guests on Nudge, Elizabeth Dunn and JZ, explain that these messages won’t work. 

When it comes to persuasion, fear doesn’t persuade. 

To find out what does, listen to today’s episode of Nudge. 

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