“Study Everything, Do Anything,” read the motto of my alma mater, Notre Dame’s College of Arts and Letters. No phrase better encapsulates the state of contemporary liberal arts education on university and college campuses. The modern university offers nearly limitless academic paths, clubs by the carload, and amenities galore. Students are prompted to drink deeply of all the options—to study everything—during their four years on campus. But even as the modern university offers a multitude of majors and minors, the abundance of options and the absence of any real guidance leaves students adrift.

The hard truth is that the contemporary university no longer knows what it means to be educated. Where the university was once able to articulate the telos of its activities—the cultivation of the good life or the formation of gentlemen, for example—today it can offer little more than vacuous statements about shaping students to enact meaningful change or empowering them to be a force for good. Focused on producing all-star consultants and future lawyers, universities devote little attention to true education, which is less the accumulation of knowledge and more the art of pursuing truth and understanding the human condition. 

Pursued correctly, education relies upon community and relationship with others while enabling students to participate more fully in culture and society. Today, the university addresses not the student but the atomized will—a project that fails because its fundamental premise contradicts the genuine nature of education.

Despite their professed mission statements, modern universities operate on the terms of expressive individualism, which conceives of the person as defined by her individual psychological core. American sociologist Robert Bellah, who first coined the term, explained that expressive individualism understands the purpose of life to be the social expression of that inner core, through which a person “lives her truth” and manifests her authentic self to the world.

This cultural focus on individual authenticity and self-expression has flipped what it means to be educated on its head, detaching the pursuit of truth and knowledge from any notions of relationship, responsibility, or community. By the logic of expressive individualism, relationships and social structures are only good if they facilitate the self-definition of individual wills. Higher education, then, cannot be good if it constrains or represses that pursuit of self-expression.

By this logic, the choose-your-own-adventure model of education, in which a student has nearly complete freedom to choose from a wide array of electives, makes sense. Most colleges retain graduation requirements, but these merely ensure that a student has selected elective classes across a handful of disciplines. Any robust core requirements that subject a student to authors like Plato, Aristotle, and Augustine hinder the self-direction of education. Perhaps a student will choose to read a few of the classics, but perhaps she will take a class on 20th century French feminist film noir. No courses are better or more worthwhile than any others when expressive individualism turns education into a four-year passion project.

This relativism is unlikely to relinquish its hold on our institutions in the foreseeable future. But within the world of higher education, students can still seek out true intellectual formation. For now, at least, students can still get an education in college.

When I entered Notre Dame as a freshman, I was overwhelmed by the humanities offerings—35 majors, 17 supplementary majors, and 48 minors. The College of Arts and Letters offered little direction, encouraging me to “Study Everything!” (And worse, “Do Anything!”) As long as I pursued my passions and fulfilled a few cursory graduation requirements, I would walk across the stage four years later with my diploma. Mission accomplished!

Over several years, I realized the flaws inherent in the elite university’s prioritization of the atomized individual and the unfettered pursuit of one’s passions, but I wish I’d learned this lesson much sooner.

By a providential skepticism towards academic specialization, I started my freshman year with classes in the Program of Liberal Studies—Notre Dame’s only liberal arts major with a structured curriculum and no electives. practicing Homer’s epics, studying Greek tragedies, and making my first foray into Platonic dialogues completely changed my perspective on education.

It was intoxicating, practicing the books that have shaped Western civilization and realizing the immense freedom found in studying a canon instead of blindly following my personal interests. It took me a few years to understand how to structure my course schedule so that I would receive a real education, but under the influence of the great books and authors stricken from once-required core classes, I began to fill in the gaps in my education.

Freed from the myopia of expressive individualism, education can be understood holistically—not only as a project of intellectual development, but also as growth in the capacity for the good life. By setting aside bromides about pursuing my passions and studying everything, I found a lodestar by which to navigate the endless menu of electives offered each semester: the relationships and duties to which I must attend.

As an American with duties to my country and my fellow citizens, I sought out classes on our nation’s history, government, and underlying political theory. And as a Christian, I have duties to God and to my conscience. To ensure the education of the heart alongside the mind, I took classes in moral theology and the Catholic intellectual tradition.

As a daughter, a sister, and someday a mother, I also have duties to my family. And while I have no obligation to devote my life to the humanities, wouldn’t it have been a shame if I had altogether neglected the art, books, music, and ideas that we have inherited from previous generations? If I could not someday pass on to my children at least a smattering of the good and beautiful produced by our civilization?

In operations management, there's a well-known model called the newsvendor problem. Based on the classic scenario of a paper carrier deciding how many papers to try to sell each day, the newsvendor problem illustrates the challenge of determining supply in advance of knowing demand.

"The newsvendor problem serves as a workhorse of inventory issues because it captures, in its simplest form, the challenge of balancing the cost of excess inventory with the cost of a shortage," said Brent Moritz, associate professor of supply chain management in the Penn State Smeal College of Business. "There's a cost of having too much—because the value of a day-old newspaper is zero—and a cost of not having enough—because you don't want to run out when you could have sold more."

Complicating inventory issues are psychological factors that can affect how inventory managers perceive their suppliers. Moritz, along with co-author Samuel Kirshner, associate professor in the School of Information Systems and Technology Management at the University of New South Wales, Australia, recently published a paper in Production and Operations Management that examines how psychological distance factors affect order quantity decisions.

"Many businesses have to place orders for inventory ahead of knowing demand," explained Moritz, whose area of research is behavioral operations management. "If a business knows the costs of either too much inventory or too little inventory and can estimate expected demand, it's possible to select an optimal order quantity. In our study, however, we found that individual decision makers are not especially good at doing this, even if they have all the information they need."

The researchers looked at two common measures of psychological distance—spatial distance (suppliers that are geographically near or far) and temporal distance (short or long lead time from order to receipt). Across four experiments with 663 participants acting as inventory managers, they found that a far psychological distance, both spatial and temporal, increases order quantities.

In general, this increase in order quantities leads to better outcomes for high-profit-margin settings and poorer outcomes for low-profit-margin settings. In the case of high-margin items—those with a high price markup—Moritz said, "You don't want to run out because every sale is profitable. In the electronics world, for example, it's not TVs where retailers make their money—rather, they make their money on TV accessories like cables and mounting brackets. If you're Best Buy, you don't want to run out of mounting brackets because they might sell for close to $100 but probably cost the retailer about $10. So you might over-order to make sure you have enough."

For low-margin items, those that sell for minimal profit, over-ordering is less profitable. Moritz posed another example: "Let's say you're going to sell Penn State T-shirts featuring Homecoming 2022," he said. "If you buy shirts at $10 each and then sell them for $12 each, you don't want to have too much left over because what happens when Homecoming weekend of 2022 is over? You're stuck with extra inventory."

The researchers found it especially interesting that psychological distance in both space and time influenced order quantity, even though those factors shouldn't matter. "It shouldn't influence the order quantity at all," Moritz said. "While an inventory manager might place an order earlier from a supplier with a longer lead time, there's no reason to order more from that same supplier."

Adding another layer to the psychological distance phenomenon, the researchers applied construal level theory, which speaks to how someone construes or perceives distance. In one phase of the study, the researchers asked two groups to focus on a provider that is 100 miles away. For the first group, suppliers ranged from 10 to 100 miles away, and the participants were asked to focus on the provider that was 100 miles away. For the second group, suppliers ranged from 100 to 1,000 miles away, and subjects were again asked to focus on the provider 100 miles away.

"So in each case, participants made ordering decisions from a provider located 100 miles away, but with respect to the firm's other suppliers, 100 miles away was framed as being relatively close or relatively far," Moritz explained. The researchers found that when ordering low-profit-margin items, framing the provider as spatially close led to a significant decrease in orders, and for high-margin conditions, framing the provider as far away led to an increase in orders.

"Given that spatial and temporal distances occur naturally in supply chains, these results show us that psychological distance is one driver of decisions, and distance framing could be used to decrease biased inventory ordering," he said. "Applying theory from cognitive psychology to show the intersection of human nature and supply chain and operations decisions, as we did in this study, can lead to improved performance in inventory ordering."

The MarketWatch News Department was not involved in the creation of this content.

Dec 02, 2022 (The Expresswire) -- Robotic Process Automation (RPA) Market 2022 Report [Report Pages-112) offers a Comprehensive assessment regarding the competitive landscape of the market and includes a deep description of performance by some of the key global players (Automation Anywhere (U.S.), Blue Prism (U.K.), Celaton Ltd (U.K.), Ipsoft (U.S.), Nice Systems Ltd. (Israel), Pegasystems (U.S.), Redwood Software (U.S.), Uipath (Romania), Verint (U.S.), Xerox Corporation (U.S.)) completing in the market. It offers an updates of business strategies including mergers, acquisitions, partnerships, R and D, product launch, expansion of production units, and collaborations adopted by these major global players.

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Understanding exact colonoscopy study

Updated: 1:21 PM EST Nov 18, 2022

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WELCOME BACK. A NEW STUDY FROM THE NEW ENGLAND JOURNAL OF MEDICINE TOOK A LOOK AT HOW EFFECTIVE COLON B’S ARE. DR. ROGERIO LIN FROM JUPITER MEDICAL CENTER JOINS US THIS MORNING TO BREAK DOWN THIS STUDY AND EXPLAIN WHY THESE SCREENINGS SO IMPORTANT. WELCOME, DOCTOR. THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR BEING HERE. SO FIRST, I DO WANT TO GET THIS STUDY. IT WAS DONE IN EUROPE, CORRECT? OKAY. TELL US ABOUT WHAT THE STUDY REVEALED. SURE. THANKS FOR HAVING ME. FIRST, THE STUDY WAS CONDUCTED IN POLAND, NORWAY, SWEDEN AND THE NETHERLANDS. IT HAD 85,000 PARTICIPANTS, 28,000 OF THOSE PARTICIPANTS, AN INVITATION TO UNDERGO SCREENING COLONOSCOPY. THE OTHER 57,000 PEOPLE WERE JUST FOLLOWED AS. OKAY. RIGHT. AND THEN AT THE OF TEN YEARS, THEY REALIZED THAT FOR THOSE WHO WERE IN ENTIRE STUDY. EIGHT. THERE WAS A REDUCTION OF 18% IN THE RISK OF DEVELOPING COLORECTAL CANCER. HOWEVER, AN IMPORTANT LEAP FOR THE STUDY, THERE WAS NO REDUCTION IN MORTALITY FROM CANCER. SO WHAT WAS THE CONCERN FOR YOU AND OTHER DOCTORS ALSO AFTER THAT STUDY WAS PUBLISHED? COLONOSCOPIES CONSIDERED IN SCREENING TECHNIQUE. AND IT DOES SAVE LIVES. SO THE FACT THAT THIS STUDY DID NOT SHOW A REDUCTION IN THE RISK OF DEATH WAS QUITE WORRISOME FOR ALL OF US. YEAH. AND YOU GUYS WANT TO MAKE SURE THAT YOU GET AN IMPORTANT MESSAGE OUT HERE TODAY. YES. SO WHEN YOU TAKE A DEEPER INTO THE STUDY, YOU REALIZE THAT OF THOSE INVITED TO HAVE THE COLONOSCOPY, ONLY 42% ACTUALLY HAD THE TEST. SO LESS THAN HALF OF THE INDIVIDUALS VISUALS ACTUALLY WERE SCREENED WITH THE COLONOSCOPY. AND IF YOU TAKE THAT SUBSET OUT THOSE HAD A 31% REDUCTION IN THE RISK HAVING CANCER IN A 50% REDUCTION IN THE RISK OF MORTALITY. SO THE MESSAGE HERE IS TO GO AHEAD, GET THAT COLONOSCOPY TO, DO THAT SCREENING. SO JUST A REMINDER FOR PEOPLE, YOU KNOW, WHY ARE THEY SO IMPORTANT? AND THIS IS AN IMPORTANT TECHNIQUE TO DETECT CANCER AT AN EARLY AND ACTUALLY PRE-CANCEROUS LESIONS FROM THE COLON AND THE RECTUM. COLONOSCOPY SAVES LIVES. IT’S AN IMPORTANT TECHNIQUE FOR US TO DECREASE THE OVERALL MORTALITY FROM CANCER IN THE UNITED STATES AND IN WORLD. AND DR. LINDBLOM, THERE’S BEEN SO MANY ADVANCES OVER JUST THE LAST COUPLE OF YEARS FOR PEOPLE. YEAH. SO EVEN FOR THOSE WHO ARE DIAGNOSED WITH COLON CANCER, -- CANCER TREATMENT TODAY IS MUCH MORE EFFECTIVE. IT USED TO BE A DECADE OR TWO DECADES AGO. SO IT’S IMPORTANT TO HAVE THAT STUDY. IF YOU HAVE CANCER, IMPORTANT TO CATCH IT AT AN EARLY STAGE. AND THOSE WHO ARE DIAGNOSED WITH EARLY STAGE COLORECTAL CANCER HAVE A VERY VERY HIGH CHANCE OF BEING CURATIVE THAT DISEASE. OKAY. SO JUST REMIND US AGAIN WHO, SHOULD BE GETTING THESE SCREENINGS. HOW OFTEN, WHAT AGE SHOULD THEY START? SO FOR THE AVERAGE PERSON YOU SHOULD AT AGE 45 AND GO UNTIL 75. ALL RIGHT. SOME INDIVIDUALS MAY GO BEYOND 75, BUT THAT’S THE USUAL RECOMMENDATION, PEOPLE WHO HAVE OTHER RISK FACTORS FOR COLON CANCER, A FAMILY HISTORY, WHO HAVE HAD A LESION REMOVED BEFORE THEY HAVE TO START BEFORE THE AGE OF 45 AND THEY NEED TO DO IT MORE FREQUENTLY. OKAY. SO IF YOU’RE STARTING AT THE AGE OF 45, HOW OFTEN SHOULD YOU DO IT? SO IF YOU HAVE YOUR FIRST COLONOSCOPY AT AGE 45 AND IT’S COMPLETELY NORMAL, CAN WAIT TEN YEARS. OH, LOOK AT THAT. YES. IF THERE’S A FINDING, YOU MAY HAVE TO COME BACK IN ABOUT THREE YEARS OR FIVE YEARS TO HAVE IT DONE AGAIN. OKAY WELL, ANYTHING ELSE YOU WANT TO SHARE THAT? I DIDN’T ASK YOU OR WE DIDN’T TOUCH UPON? YEAH. IS AN IMPORTANT PROBLEM. AND WE CAN CONVINCE TO HAVE SCREENING TESTS NOT JUST FOR COLON CANCER, FOR LUNG CANCER, FOR BREAST CANCER, FOR PROSTATE CANCER. WE WILL THE FACE OF THE DISEASE IN, THE FUTURE. ALL RIGHT. WELL, THANK YOU SO MUCH TO US. AND PUTTING OUT THIS IMPORTANT MESSAGE. IF YOU WANT MORE INFORMATION, YOU

Understanding exact colonoscopy study

Updated: 1:21 PM EST Nov 18, 2022

The New England Journal of Medicine published a exact study conducted in Europe regarding the effectiveness of colonoscopies as a screening tool.Dr. Rogerio Lilenbaum, Chief Physician Executive at Jupiter Medical Center, stopped by our studios to speak on the importance of the screening procedure. Never miss anything: Sign up for personalized newsletters and alerts from WPBF 25 News

The New England Journal of Medicine published a exact study conducted in Europe regarding the effectiveness of colonoscopies as a screening tool.

Dr. Rogerio Lilenbaum, Chief Physician Executive at Jupiter Medical Center, stopped by our studios to speak on the importance of the screening procedure.

Never miss anything: Sign up for personalized newsletters and alerts from WPBF 25 News

Foundry’s new research also found product demos are a critical, invaluable tool for IT decision-make

Boston, MA, Nov. 17, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Foundry (an IDG, Inc. company), the global leader in media, martech and data for the tech community, today released the 2022 Customer Engagement Study to gain a better understanding of the various types and volume of content consumed throughout the purchase process for major technology products and services. In its ninth year, the study provides insight into the engagement preferences of IT decision-makers (ITDMs) when it comes to technology vendor follow-up and relationships.

IT decision-makers have increased pressure on them to provide technology solutions for economic disruptions. Because of this, technology professionals are seeking out more information to help them meet their business needs. Now more than ever, they need relevant and reliable educational resources placed in their paths as they explore solutions.

As a result, the study shows 74% of ITDMs are more likely to consider an IT vendor who educates them through each stage of the decision process. A similar number of respondents (72%) report that if a vendor does not supply educational content during research, it negatively impacts their impression. A majority (91%) say it’s challenging to find high-quality information, with the top reasons being due to lack of truly independent, unbiased information, too much marketing hype or empty buzzwords, and that the information is too general.

Here is a closer look at the survey’s findings:

Understanding Content Value and Timing

While the majority (91%) of ITDMs are willing to register for content from a technology vendor, not all content is helpful as only 48% stated their downloaded work-related content has provided them with value over the last 12 months, up from 41% in 2021. To receive value, an overwhelming majority (96%) of ITDMs are interested in custom tailored content, with the top customizations being by industry (54%), technology platform(s) they already have installed at their organization (49%), company size (31%), and job responsibilities (28%).

Story continues

When downloading content, ITDMs typically read or consume it an average of 3 days after. However, 43% will read it that day, and 32% will read it 2-3 days after. So it’s important for technology vendors to think of this timeframe prior to following up with the prospect.

It’s important for tech vendors to think about these customizations and preferences prior to outreach as well. The survey states 96% of ITDMs have responded to outreach from a potential vendor. However, respondents said they are more likely to respond if the vendor shared valuable content or information with them (50%), was knowledgeable about their business/specific challenges (45%), demonstrated honesty/transparency (43%), reached out at the right time (37%), and showed respect for their time (37%).

When IT decision-makers fill out a form to be contacted, the expected follow-up time is much more prompt, lowering to 16 hours compared to 19 hours in 2021. Almost one-third (31%) expect a response within 24 hours, and 30% expect a near immediate response within 6 hours.

“Developing content to provide value is a significant part of how vendors can help IT leadership navigate their purchase decisions, but vendors need to understand how the role of technology continues accelerating,” said Stacey Raap, Marketing & Research Manager, Foundry. “Using appropriate channels and knowing the right time to make contact with a prospect can be a critical component of having a positive engagement.”

Curating Content to Maximize Impact and Value

When asked which types of content ITDMs rely on most throughout the purchase process, the top five are product testing/reviews/opinions (49%), product demo/product literature (44%), technology news (43%), vendor presentations (41%), and analyst research (35%). Buyer’s guides (18%), opinion columns (12%), and vendor directories (10%) are labeled the least relied on.

By the purchase process stage, technology news is the number one content type relied upon when determining the business need. Product testing and product demos are top pieces of content relied upon when determining tech requirements, evaluating products and services, and recommending vendors. When selling internally, analyst research comes more into play and how-to content becomes more popular in the post-sale process.

Almost all IT decision-makers (97%) say they have received value from a product demo. The most useful formats are a limited time, full function trial (52%), an in-person demonstration of how the product works (51%), and a virtual live demonstration (44%). When researching a new technology, information subjects of most interest are business value of the technology, pain points the technology addresses, and skills/roles information needed due to the technology.

When looking at the desired length of content, the data shows ITDMs have the highest tolerance for webcast (16.4 minutes) and in-depth product reviews (16.3 minutes), followed by interviews with industry experts (14.6 minutes), and how-to videos (14.3 minutes). The data also shows the average desired length of a podcast is 12.5 minutes, and average written content is 4.6 pages for research survey results/analyst research and 4.5 pages for white papers/case studies.

About 2022 Customer Engagement Study

Foundry’s 2022 Customer Engagement Study was conducted among the audience of 624 IT and business decision-makers. Foundry conducted this survey to better understand the various types and volume of content consumed throughout the purchase process for major technology products and services. All respondents had IT or management titles, with 53% based in North America, 28% in Asia/Pacific (APAC) regions, and 18% from Europe/Middle East/Africa (EMEA).

To learn more about this year’s Customer Engagement Study, obtain the white paper here.

About Foundry, an IDG, Inc. company

Foundry has played a key role in every major milestone, announcement, and development in modern technology since 1964. Today, Foundry continues to lead in the technology space by helping companies bring their visions to reality through a combination of media, marketing technologies and proprietary data. Our technology platforms of Triblio, Selling Simplified, KickFire and LeadSift are powered by data from an owned and operated ecosystem of global editorial brands, awards, and events, all engineered and integrated to drive marketing campaigns for technology companies. Foundry is dedicated to generating and innovating with data, driving demand for technology marketers with 38 offices in markets around the globe. Foundry is a wholly owned subsidiary of International Data Group, Inc. (IDG), the world’s leading market intelligence and demand generation company focused on the technology industry.

To learn more about Foundry, visit www.foundryco.com.

CONTACT: Stacey Raap Marketing & Research Manager stacey_raap@idg.com

The MarketWatch News Department was not involved in the creation of this content.

Nov 26, 2022 (The Expresswire) -- Final Report will add the analysis of the impact of Russia-Ukraine War and COVID-19 on this industry.

"RPA and Hyper Automation Market" Insights 2022 - By Applications ( Manufacturing, Automotive, Healthcare, Other), By Types ( Intelligent Process Automation, Hyperautomation), By Segmentation analysis, Regions and Forecast to 2028. The Global RPA and Hyper Automation market Report provides In-depth analysis on the market status of the RPA and Hyper Automation Top manufacturers with best facts and figures, meaning, Definition, SWOT analysis, PESTAL analysis, expert opinions and the latest developments across the globe., the RPA and Hyper Automation Market Report contains Full TOC, Tables and Figures, and Chart with Key Analysis, Pre and Post COVID-19 Market Outbreak Impact Analysis and Situation by Regions.

The MarketWatch News Department was not involved in the creation of this content.

Trading platforms that reward do-it-yourself investors through “gamification” strategies are increasing the risk of losses in online portfolios, a new study says.

In a research report scheduled to be released on Thursday, the Ontario Securities Commission in collaboration with British-based Behavioural Insights Team found that investors who received rewards from trading platforms – such as digital points or online badges for buying or selling stocks – made almost 40 per cent more trades than those who were not exposed to the same gamification rewards.

Gamification is the practice of incentivizing users to trade more frequently or in larger amounts by adding game-like features to trading platforms. Competitive features such as leaderboards, which display the names of users who do the most trades per day, or images of badges or bursts of confetti that reward a first trade in a margin account or a family referral, are encouraging investors to trade more often.

Investing apps 101: What apps are available in Canada and are they safe?

Regulators face pressure to review discount brokerage rules as DIY investors turn to social-media posts for advice

As well, the OSC found investors who were shown lists of “top-traded” or “most popular” stocks were 14 per cent more likely to buy and sell the company shares that they are nudged toward. Top-stock lists promote “herding” behaviour – where a person follows what others are doing rather than deciding independently.

Herding can result in “significantly poorer” returns for investors, the report said, citing a separate study that showed an average 20-day return of minus 4.7 per cent for top stocks purchased each day. That’s because herding increases trading frequency, and can shift investors into higher-risk securities.

Other incentives, such as setting up a goal tracker, were found not to have any negative correlation to an investor’s behaviour or how often he or she traded.

As a result, the OSC is recommending regulators – such as the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada, which oversees discount brokerages – consider whether to limit digital-trading platforms from offering points or rewards for trading activity.

“More broadly, we encourage regulators to consider whether any of the gamification and behavioural techniques examined have attributes similar to recommendations and/or result in investor behaviour that is [on average] detrimental to investor outcomes,” the OSC added.

The study involved 2,430 participants, who were given $10,000 in play money to buy and sell stocks in a simulated, digital-trading environment.

During the pandemic, Ontario’s provincial watchdog began to pay closer attention to the impact of gamification on retail investing as the number of DIY investors – many of whom were new to investing – began to rise as Canadians poured COVID-19 savings into the market.

Also known as order-execution-only (OEO) websites, discount brokerages are prohibited by regulations from providing any type of investing advice to clients. But the lack of advice is now becoming problematic for trading platforms that have growing numbers of unsophisticated investors.

In 2021, more than 3.6 million new DIY accounts were opened at discount brokerages, according to data provided by Toronto-based Investor Economics, a unit of ISS Market Intelligence. That was an increase from 2.3 million in 2020, and 846,000 in 2019.

As well, a wave of mobile-only, self-directed platforms have emerged in both Canada and the United States, along with several zero-fee trading platforms, increasing the number of participants who can easily set up accounts with a few clicks on a phone.

The gamification business model first grew in popularity with U.S.-based fintech startup Robinhood Markets Inc. HOOD-Q, a zero-fee online trading platform. Robinhood began to reward its users for trading more frequently, trading with larger amounts, and trading in much riskier products, such as margin accounts.

In 2021, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission flagged concerns about gamification, saying the features may encourage investors to trade more often, invest in products that may not be appropriate for them, or influence their risk tolerance.

The OSC, in its report, found several incentives that can affect an investor’s behaviour. In addition to leaderboards and badges, some discount brokerages may use “gamblification” – rewards with economic benefits such as cash payouts or language that evokes gambling, such as jackpots or scratch cards.

“Trading frequency or volume is a critical behaviour of interest, given the strong negative correlation with investor return,” the OSC said in its report. “Offering rewards [points] with negligible economic value may dramatically increase trading frequency.”

The study urges regulators to close “major gaps” in empirical evidence by collecting more data through studies as well as data that can be collected directly from digital-trading platforms that have implemented gamification or other behavioural techniques.

“These actions will enable the OSC and other regulators to set new empirically-driven regulatory strategies and approaches,” the OSC added.

With what some are calling a "tripledemic" of COVID-19, the influenza virus and respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, soaring in many parts of the country, the holiday season will come with some tough decisions again this year:

With what some are calling a "tripledemic" of COVID-19, the influenza virus and respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, already soaring in many parts of the country, the holiday season will come with some tough decisions again this year:

Should you go to that Thanksgiving gathering even though you woke up with the sniffles? Send your child to that school performance even though she was coughing last night? Wear a mask to the grocery store after you learned your friend has COVID-19?

New University of Colorado Boulder research, published this month in the journal PNAS Nexus, shows that when people simply take a moment to reflect on the consequences of their behavior they tend to choose options that impose fewer risks on other people.

The international study of 13,000 people also found that, almost universally, people value others' health and well-being.

"Most people aspire to behave in a way that considers others' well-being but often, in the moment, they behave more selfishly than they aspire to," said senior author Leaf Van Boven, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at CU Boulder. "Our lab is trying to devise ways to help people better align their in-the-moment behavior with their values."

A global look at personal values

For the study, conducted at the height of the pandemic, Van Boven and collaborators in London, Austria, Singapore, Israel, Italy and Sweden presented participants in those countries and the United States with three hypothetical scenarios:

In one, they owned a small restaurant and were considering reducing capacity as the virus surged.

In another, they were supposed to meet with 50 friends for a birthday party after months of isolation but their government cautioned that, due to a COVID-19 surge, gatherings of 10 or more were unwise.

In a third, they considered whether to cancel a planned Thanksgiving celebration with 30 family members, including older adults and young children.

Before making a decision, half of study subjects were instructed to pause and practice a technique called "structured reflection," developed in Van Boven's lab, aimed at helping people be more mindful of their own values.

They asked themselves two questions contrasting how their decision would impact them personally vs. how it would impact public health. In the Thanksgiving scenario, they asked,

"How much (on a scale of 1 to 7) should your decision be influenced by the likelihood that COVID-19 may spread among family members?" And "How much should your decision be influenced by your satisfaction of spending time with family members?"

Across all countries, cultures, ages and political parties, almost everyone gave at least equal weight to others' well-being.

"That's encouraging," said Van Boven. "Our study and others suggest it is a universal human tendency that people believe they should care about how their behavior affects other people."

Those in the structured reflection group were significantly more likely to say they would cancel Thanksgiving, the study found. And the other scenarios yielded similar results, with the structured reflection group more likely to err on the side of minimizing public health risks.

Mandates only go so far

Van Boven said that such techniques could be applied to achieve a host of public health goals in which in-the-moment personal benefit, by human nature, tends to overshadow broader public health considerations.

"People know that they should not text while driving, that it's better for the planet if they take the bus instead of drive, that they should eat more vegetables and exercise, but knowing is only the first step," Van Boven said.

While public health campaigns often focus on changing people's minds, Van Boven's team takes a different approach: to help people be their best selves and do what they already know they should do.

As COVID-19 restrictions lift, such personal responsibility will grow increasingly important.

"In many ways, the pandemic put into stark relief the degree to which we rely on people voluntarily making decisions not only for their own betterment but also for the betterment of others," he said, noting that the moment mask mandates lifted, most shed them, regardless of how much COVID-19 was circulating. "Mandates can only go so far."

He stressed that social connections are also critically important, so sometimes it may be worth the risk to have or attend a gathering while taking precautions like opening windows, masking or limiting group size.

The key is to take the time to weigh those risk and benefits.

"I would encourage everyone to develop a habit of asking themselves when they are considering any sort of large social gathering: What is the risk you might impose on other people and is the benefit of the gathering worth the risk?"