Episode Overview

In this episode of The Future-Ready Advisor, host Sam Sivarajan sits down with JonRobert 'Tat' Tartaglione, a behavioral scientist and founder of Influence 51, to explore the fascinating intersection of psychology and financial advising. With a doctorate in psychology from Cambridge, Tat specializes in translating complex behavioral science insights into practical tools that financial professionals can implement immediately.

They discuss how small changes in language and framing can dramatically influence client decisions, why choice architecture matters more than we realize, and how metaphors shape our perception of financial concepts. Tat shares practical examples of behavioral science principles in action, from commitment devices to loss aversion, all tailored specifically for financial advisors seeking to improve client outcomes.

Whether you're looking to enhance client communication, drive behavioral change, or simply understand the psychological forces behind financial decisions, this conversation offers actionable strategies that bridge the gap between academic research and real-world application.

Key Quote

'Language matters so, so much. There is a difference between saying \'80% fat free\' and \'20% fat\'. Even seemingly insignificant tweaks matter.' — JonRobert Tartaglione

Key Takeaways

Choice architecture dramatically influences decisions - how options are presented matters more than the options themselves.

Metaphors shape financial conversations - the language we use guides how clients conceptualize financial concepts.

Commitment devices drive action - creating accountability structures helps clients follow through on financial plans.

Loss aversion is a powerful motivator - framing choices to highlight what clients might lose creates stronger incentives.

Subtle language changes yield big results - even minor wording adjustments can significantly impact client decisions and behaviors.

Sound Bites

'When it comes to choice architecture, the way you present options affects how people choose, even when the options themselves don't change.'

'Money doesn't influence decisions—the psychology around money influences decisions.'

'People will work harder to avoid losing $5 than they will to gain $5, even though mathematically it's the same amount.'

'Budgeting as 'paying your future self' reframes the experience from loss to investment.'

'Metaphors aren't just flowery language—they guide how people conceptualize problems and solutions.'

Topics Discussed

00:00 - Introduction to JonRobert Tartaglione and Influence 51

01:39 - The Gap Between Behavioral Science Research and Practical Application

06:37 - Understanding Choice Architecture in Financial Advising

15:06 - Loss Aversion and How to Frame Financial Decisions

22:04 - The Power of Commitment Devices to Change Client Behavior

31:24 - Metaphors and Language: How Words Shape Financial Perceptions

46:43 - Making Behavioral Science Concrete for Different Industries

48:15 - The Critical Importance of Language in Client Communications

Resources Mentioned

Learn more about JonRobert Tartaglione and his work: https://www.influence51.com

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Hi everyone, I'm Sam Sivarajan and welcome to the Future Ready Advisor. Today I'm joined by John Robert Tat Tartaglione, a behavioral scientist and founder of Influence 51, a consulting firm that bridges the gap between cutting edge academic research and real world applications. With a doctorate in psychology from Cambridge and expertise spanning decision making, behavior change, and strategic communication, Tat specializes in translating complex psychological insights into practical tools that leaders can use immediately.

As co-author of the award-winning book, Our Search for Belonging, he understands what truly drives human behavior, knowledge that's essential for financial advisors who need to influence client decisions and inspire lasting behavioral change. Get ready for a conversation that will transform how you think about client engagement and the psychology behind every financial decision. Tat, welcome to the show.

Thanks so much for having me, Sam. I'm really excited to have the conversation today.

I am as well. I enjoyed our pre-recording conversation and I'm sure the audience will love this conversation. So, Tat your journey from studying human nature in academia to founding Influence 51 is very interesting. Can you share what sparked your realization that there was this gap between psychological research and its practical application, particularly for financial advisors and other professionals who work with human behavior every day.

Yeah, absolutely. So that really was the entire impetus behind Influence 51 is, I was studying human behavior for a few years at that point at the graduate level. And I found it absolutely fascinating, these things that drive our decision making that make us tick. And I was curious whether other individuals were aware of these things that I was learning at the time.

And whether there was gonna be kind of value additions if I were to be able to bring these into other domains. So actually prior to starting Influence 51, what I ended up doing is I ended up reaching out to my friends who were in different industries. And I kind of would ask them probing questions. Like for instance, I reached out to friends that were just in the general kind of corporate space where they were starting to become people managers. And I said, hey, did they ever teach you about the psychology of motivation or the psychology of building effective incentive systems?

And they're like, well, no, it's kind of something you learn on the job. We don't really do formal training and anything like that. And I went to my friends who were in the political space and I said, hey, do they teach you about things like message framing, right? Like the psychology or behavioral science around voter turnout, how you can maximize voter turnout.

And they were like, no, it's more of something that we kind of learn as trial and error, like there's been good campaigns and bad campaigns, but they weren't really systemizing it, right? They weren't really kind of creating these formulas or using these insights that we had in academia. And it's the same thing with financial advisors. For me, with financial professionals, many of them are probably aware at least about psychological phenomena like loss aversion or default biases or commitment devices.

Or choice architecture, but some of them either aren't familiar enough to really be comfortable applying them in their day-to-day work. And some of them just genuinely have never heard of it. When I talk to some people about their default options they're using, well, they say, well, whatever kind of is given to me, I give to the clients. And that's certainly one way to go about it. But for me, I'm like, hey, listen, we have this compendium of literature in psychology and behavioral science about how people make decisions and more specifically about how you can influence those decisions based on the way you do things like curate choice environments, like craft the way questions are framed or messages are worded. Why not use those things to be better at what you do?

I think that's brilliant. It's to me, when you're talking, it's the analogy between, knowing the theory between how an internal combustion engine works and having a car that you can put your key into and - I'm dating myself - and you can start it, right? And I think that's the point that you're making. There's a lot of advancements in behavioral science. So that's the equivalent of learning, some of the theory behind how an internal combustion engine works.

But to be able to drive a car, you don't really need to know all of that. You need to know that you can put it into, you can start the car and get to where you want to go. And I think part of, I think the challenge of behavioral science has always been how do you put this into practical application? It's one thing to know that a person can have an overconfidence bias or have a tendency to have an external locus of control or what have you.

But how do you translate that into insight that a financial advisor can bring to the table and then help the client modify their behavior accordingly? And so I think when you talk and identify yourself as a translator of academic research, I think that resonates with me.

Yeah, that's exactly right.

And so when financial advisors hear terms like loss aversion or choice architecture, as you mentioned, they might think they understand them. But I guess, how do you, how do you translate? How do you help people truly experience and internalize these concepts so that they can apply them practically with their clients?

Yeah, it's a great question. Honestly, I think that is where my value ultimately lies, right? There are people out there, there are plenty of people out there who are smarter than I am. I met a lot of them at Cambridge, right? There are brilliant, brilliant people out there. The challenge becomes, how valuable is all of that knowledge if you can't disseminate it in a way that makes sense to people? That is palatable, that is digestible, and ultimately is applicable.

And that's really where I find my strength is, is I have been really good with my clients at being able to take these kind of messy, complicated concepts in psychology and behavioral science and put them into terms that they say, okay, that makes sense, right? I get that. And not only do I get it, but now I understand how I can use that to be better at what I do. And so I think translator is an apt descriptor of what I consider myself to be in this space.

And I'll give you an example. You mentioned loss aversion and choice architecture. I actually, we'll come back to loss aversion. I would like to, if you don't mind, we can return to how I help people get a better understanding of loss aversion. But I'll use choice architecture as an example. Choice architecture is this concept wherein, you know, lot of individuals, I'll take it all the way back just in case individuals who are listening aren't familiar at all, right?

A lot of people operate on the assumption that, our preferences for different choices are static, right? I'm going to choose, if I prefer A over B, it doesn't really matter how you present A and B, it doesn't matter, what you juxtapose A and B with, it doesn't matter what time you're presenting A and B, right? A preference is a preference is a preference.

Can you maybe elaborate on how loss aversion, or at least how you explain loss aversion, which we had mentioned earlier, for financial advisors? What does that actually look like? And what is an example of how a financial advisor can use loss aversion to help a client make better financial decisions?

Absolutely. So, loss aversion is a concept is that people are more sensitive to losses than they are to equivalent gains. So if I offer you, hey, you can either gain $5 or lose $5, people will take more risks to avoid the loss than they will to secure the gain, even though mathematically it's the same outcome, right? Like I either have $5 more or $5 less than what I started with, which means that when I'm going to frame advice, I need to understand how the framing is going to change the client's perception of the value of the advice.

You've briefly touched on something called commitment devices. What exactly are those? And if a financial advisor, if the people listening to this podcast, wanted to incorporate those into their discussions with their clients, how would they do that?

So a commitment device, the example I like to use, so people understand, is when Odysseus was passing through the Sea of Sirens, he knew that he couldn't resist the Siren's song. But he also knew that his crew had to pass through. So he did something very intelligent. He said, tie me to the mast and I'm going to put wax in the ears of all of my crew. Right? What Odysseus is doing, right, is he's saying, I know that my future self is going to want to break this commitment, I want to listen to the Sirens. So I need to do something that will restrict my future options.

Let's talk about using metaphors and language. In your experience, how can, given your work with different industries, how can financial advisors be more mindful of the language they use? I would imagine that budgeting is a classic example, because we use the diet analogy and that immediately says to people, you're going to be restricting yourself, you're going to be depriving yourself. So how do financial advisors get away from the metaphors that alienate clients and how do they start focusing on metaphors that help engage clients?

Yeah, that's a brilliant question. Let me ask you first, Sam, are you or have you ever been a financial advisor?

Thanks. What is one lesson you've learned that's had the biggest impact on your ability to communicate your insights to different industries?

For me in particular, it is to make my insights concrete and applicable. What I do doesn't sell in the abstract, right? Like I used to, when I first started, I had a frustrating few years really where I tried to say, I help clients leverage insights from psychology and behavioral science to be more effective. That's so abstract, it's so hard to grasp. People don't really understand it.

And it wasn't until I started going to specific clients, right? Like financial advisors saying, hey, listen, let me talk to you about commitment devices. Let me talk to you about loss aversion. Let me talk to you about choice architecture, and how you can use these things. And once I explain them to people, they immediately see the value. It's just about making it concrete and applicable for their world. And so for me, as someone who operates in multiple domains on any one day, I can be working with corporate leaders, and then working with political strategists, and then working with financial advisors and lawyers, it's about really making sure that I'm targeting the application of this to what matters to them.

That was a big, learning lesson for me.

That's a great lesson. Talk the language. It's not about, what do you do? It's why should I care? Right? Why does this matter to me? And what you're talking about is I think what financial advisors and all of us live through every day it's not enough that, to have the solutions you have to be able to say to the client to explain why that solution solves a problem that they want to solve at this stage.

Number two, what is one practical tip you would offer listeners keen on applying your insights?

I have a tip, can it be slightly longer? Maybe two minutes?

Sure, please.

The tip is language matters. Language matters so, so much. There is a difference between saying, like I said, between 80% fat free and 20% fat. There's a difference between something having a 90% chance of success and a 10% chance of failure. There's a difference between 10% and 10 out of 100. These are all statistically identical. And so financial professionals, look at these things and say, does it really matter how I present these are the same thing? But it does even seemingly insignificant tweaks matter.

And I'll give two quick examples. The first one is something like as simple as a fundraiser. Chances are you've never thought whether it matters to talk about it as an annual fundraiser or a once a year fundraiser. Research shows it does. Although those are exactly the same thing, people tend to donate more when it's framed as a once a year fundraiser as opposed to an annual because an annual gets people to emphasize that, this is something that happened last year, happened this year, it's gonna happen next year, it reduces urgency. Whereas once a year, although it's exactly the same, gets people to focus on the fact that this is my one time to make an impact, right?

So seemingly insignificant shifts matter, but being more deliberate about our language kind of puts the power in our hands. So my favorite example, is the metaphors we use. Metaphors saturate our conversations. We use them all the time. When you say someone's warm hearted or cold hearted, you're using a metaphor. To give you another example, I just said metaphor saturate our conversations. That was a metaphor, right? We're using them constantly, but there's research to show that if you use them deliberately, you can change the way people think about things and ultimately the way they seek to solve problems.

So my favorite example back in 2011, Tipitone Boroditsky did this thing where they gave people a vignette about crime. Half the people read that crime was a beast attacking our city. The other half read crime is a virus infecting our city. And they asked both groups the same question. What do we do about crime? Well, the first group was given the beast metaphor, naturally asked themselves, what would I do about a beast? I wanna cage it, I wanna capture it, I wanna punish it.

And the second group intuitively asked themselves, what would I do about a virus? I want to stop it from infecting people, I want to inoculate it. And when they asked these groups what should we do about crime, they found that the ones that received the beast metaphor became more likely to recommend enforcement strategies. We need more police on the streets, we need harsher penalties for criminals. Those who received the virus metaphor became more likely to recommend social reform strategies. We need to change whatever is causing crime or causing people to turn to crime in our neighborhoods.

The point being, is that the metaphor you chose ends up guiding how people think about things. And so from the perspective of financial advisors, a really quick example would be like, you could easily say something like budgeting or creating a budget is like dieting, like a good diet. And that's an okay metaphor, but that might create an aversion for some people. Some people haven't had good experience with dieting. It seems like you are denying yourself something, right?

Whereas if I could take the same exact thing and say, hey, listen, budgeting is about paying your future self, right? All of a sudden, it's no longer a loss. It's no longer something I'm denying myself. I'm actually helping my future self, right? And so something as simple as taking stock of what metaphors am I using to couch these conversations, because ultimately, the metaphor I choose is the metaphor that's going to influence how they think about this topic.

That's great advice, Tat, and great examples. So thank you. Listen, this has been a very fascinating and valuable discussion. I think you really did help translate some of the key, elements that financial advisors struggle with, with some very helpful and actionable ideas. So thank you. If listeners want to learn more about you and your company, Influence 51, or how your work behavioral science impacts their world, where should they go?

Yeah, best place would be the website. So if you go to Influence 51, that's Influence51.com. There's a lot of information on there, ways to get in contact with me, ways to stay involved in the community, whether it be through the newsletter. And I typically, in the past, I've only worked with companies, I've only really done, you know, if a large company brings me in, they want me to work with their advisors.

But I'm actually starting something quite new, Sam, over the next few weeks where I'm going to be doing more one-on-one training for individuals. I want to be able to work with individuals one-on-one without them needing their company to hire me. So there are financial advisors who find this stuff interesting. You want to understand how they can apply it more specifically to what they're doing. Reach out to have a conversation. I would love to teach you anything I can.

That's awesome. Tat, thank you for joining us today on the Future Ready Advisor.

Thank you, Sam, for having me. I really appreciate it.