I want to bring our society to greater consciousness. I have witnessed too many bright students buckle under the high stress stress of school, make poor decisions and fall into unhealthy habits. We can make good habits- most adults have trained themselves to brush their teeth, do their laundry, say hello to their neighbors - but we do it sparingly. If we are such “creatures of habit”, why are we so passive in creating ourselves? My Spark Session would explore the creation of habits, and how they shape our world.
This Session is inspired by a Freakonomics podcast and a sociology class I took this summer. The podcast featured researchers Angela Duckworth and Katherine Milkman and their project “Making Behavior Change Stick.” This ongoing project …show more content…
For example, I might talk about how I am creating the habit of eating sustainably. Students would reflect on how they have seen habits formed and gain inspiration for positive habits they could pursue after the class.
Secondly, we would discover how to nurture good behaviors. I would certainly invite Duckworth and Milkman to speak about their research. It would also be enlightening to invite a counselor from OSU’s Counseling and Consultation Service to share the techniques of Cognitive Behavior Therapy and how to create positive habits of the mind.
Finally, I would invite behavioral economists Sendhil Mullainaathan and Dan Ariely to convey the effects of our unconscious decisions. In his talk, “Are we in control of our own decisions?” Dan Ariely gives organ donation as an example. He found that the only difference between countries with high organ donation and countries with low organ donation was whether donation was opt in or opt out! He showed that when we are forced to make complex decisions we are overwhelmed, and take the decisions automatically given to us. He makes the argument that we need to recognize our cognitive limits as we do our physical ones. Just as we create stairs because we cannot fly, we must build stairs for our