Behavioral Economics & Design Courses

1. Behavioral Design Course — by Irrational Labs

This is a self-directed, online course, jam-packed with engaging content and real-world examples. 16 modules are delivered over eight weeks. Each module has fundamental insights into how you can leverage behavioral economics frameworks and insights to achieve desired outcomes from your products or services. We also cover our popular 3B model, the full Behavioral Design process used by Intuit, Microsoft, Indeed, LinkedIn and more!

Looking for a behavioral design course for health? Click here for a version of the course with a focus on how to design products and services to change behavior for better health outcomes.

Once you’re accepted, just put in the code HABITWEEKLY75 for $75 off.

Irrational Labs / Cost: $480 ($405 with discount above)

2. Behavioral Economics & Psychology in Marketing

This Masterclass reveals how to use insights from 4 decades of research in consumer psychology and behavioral economics to increase retention and conversion. You’ll get a step-by-step framework on how to apply 24 most powerful psychological principles into your landing pages, emails, product development and everything in between.

MINDWORX Academy / Cost: $429 / Instructor(s): Rory Sutherland, Sam Tatam & Matej Sucha + more

3. Behavioural Economics in Action

How can we get people to save more money, eat healthy foods, engage in healthy behaviors, and make better choices in general? There has been a lot written about the fact that human beings do not process information and make decisions in an optimal fashion. This course builds on much of the fascinating work in the area of behavioral economics and allows learners to develop a hands-on approach by understanding its methods and more importantly, how it can be harnessed by suitably designing contexts to “nudge” choice.

EDX / Cost: FREE / Instructor(s): Dilip Soman

4. Motivation & Reward Loops Masterclass — by Behavior Institute

Learn the proven motivation & reward loop playbooks from some of the world’s top behavior designers, so you can create more impact with less effort. When you can elicit motivation and create rewarding experiences, you can change almost any behavior in almost any context.

• Over 2 decades of insights, frameworks, and systems distilled into 6 weeks of intense learning and practice.
• World-class content, case studies, and behavior change tactics.
• Community of behavior change professionals from different fields
• Super-actionable with fill-in templates, checklists, and decision trees.
• 100’s of examples, case studies, and screenshots to get you inspired.

Level up your ability to motivate and change behavior in just six fun, action-packed weeks. Join here.

*Full disclosure: I (Samuel Salzer) is co-creator of this course.

5. Designing Nudges

A step-by-step framework to designing behavioral interventions that work. This online course allows behavioral science enthusiasts to take the next step and try out nudging in their environment!

Impactually / Cost: $75 / Instructor(s): Christina Gravert & Nurit Nobel

6. Behavioural Economics with Rory Sutherland

Well you may think we are all perfectly rational people, making logical decisions, but this is simply not quite so, we all act and behave in rather interesting ways.

In this course you will quickly and easily master the key behavioural change concepts such as nudging, framing, social proof, scarcity, commitment devices and even the ethics behind it all. If you ever have to sell ideas, products or services, get people on your side, or simply wish you had the ability to view the world differently, then this is for you. Learn why people do what they do and how to influence them.

42Courses / Cost: $100 / Instructor(s): Rory Sutherland

Behavioral Science Courses

7. BETA Behavioural insights for public policy

Want to learn more about applying behavioural insights to public policy? Take BETA’s free online course.

There’s six learning modules, each with interactive quizzes to measure understanding, and a test with certificate at the end. The course covers the basics of behavioural insights, how these ideas can be applied in a government context, as well as an introduction to designing and evaluating behavioural insights interventions. You’ll also learn about the work of BETA — the Behavioural Economics Team of the Australian Government.

This course takes approximately 15 minutes per module (about 2 hours in total) — but you can save your progress and do it at your own pace.
BETA / Cost: FREE

8. The Brain and Technology: Brain Science in Interface Design

Learn about human attention — in particular, how the brain decides what is most important and therefore what we should look at first and how to create effective designs, through basing them on how the brain manages and prioritizes the sensory information it receives.

IDF / Cost: $13/month / Instructor(s): Brian Whitworth

9a. Social Norms, Social Change 1

This is a course on social norms, the rules that glue societies together. It teaches how to diagnose social norms, and how to distinguish them from other social constructs, like customs or conventions. These distinctions are crucial for effective policy interventions aimed to create new, beneficial norms or eliminate harmful ones. The course teaches how to measure social norms and the expectations that support them, and how to decide whether they cause specific behaviors.

Coursera / Cost: FREE / Instructor(s): Cristina Bicchieri

9b. Social Norms, Social Change 2

This part 2 course in social norms covers scripts and schemas, the cognitive structures in which social expectations are embedded, and their relationship with social norms. The course then examines the essentials of norm abandonment, including the relations between personal beliefs and social expectations. We will also evaluate existing intervention strategies, including legal reforms, information campaigns, economic incentives, and group deliberations. Finally, we look at a variety of tools policy makers may use to effect change, highlight the role of trendsetters in social change, and explore the conditions under which they can be successful.

Coursera / Cost: FREE / Instructor(s): Cristina Bicchieri

10. Behavioural Science for Brands

There have been shelf-loads of books written about behavioural science and psychology. So, do we need this course? The short answer is yes. This course is different. Most commentators have focused on describing the findings of behavioural science. That’s useful, but it’s not ideal for marketers or those running their own businesses.

Instead of describing academic findings, this course shows you how to apply them, to make your brand even more successful. Behavioural science can improve all aspects of marketing: from pricing to promotions, from media to messaging. If your customer is human, there will be something for you.

How can we do this? We will look at a wide variety of biases (not just the most popular ones) and explain how you apply them.

42Courses / Cost: $100 / Instructor(s): Richard Shotton

11. Psychology for Digital Behavior Change

This course covers the key approaches to digital behavior change, with over 50+ psychological principles, psychological design patterns and more.

You’ll learn how to convert psychology into science-inspired products and gain experience applying psychology to UX tools and design specs, while following a behavioral design process that you can use in your next project.

AlterSpark Academy / Cost: $499 / Instructor(s): Brian Cugelman

Gamification Courses

13. Gamification & Behavioral Design: The Octalysis Framework

This class teaches Gamification and Behavioral Design by world-renowned expert (Stanford, Google, LEGO, BCG, TEDx) and Original Creator of the Octalysis Framework Yu-kai Chou. The course is free if you subscribe to the newsletter on Yu-kai Chou’s Blog.

Udemy / Cost: $195/Free / Instructor(s): Yu-kai Chou

14. Gamification — Creating Addictive User Experiences

You will learn the power of gamification and how it can increase user engagement and fulfilment, why and how gamification is not the same as game design, how to create player experiences that drive business missions and how to manage, monitor, and measure of the impact of gamification work.

IDF / Cost: $13/month / Instructor(s): Janaki Kumar

Habit formation

15. Habit Coaching Pro Certification

“Join coaches around the world dedicated to leveling up their coaching business through effective tools and insights from psychology and behavioral science. Time to make your coaching business stand out by learning how to build strong client habits. A new kind of coaching certification is here.”

Habit Coaching Professionals / Cost: $875 / Instructor(s): Samuel Salzer & Erin Laverone

16. Tiny Habits — Free 5-Day Program to Build Habits

The Tiny Habits® Academy is the result of countless requests we’ve received to teach the Tiny Habits® method in more depth beyond the free 5 Day Tiny Habits® Program. The signature Tiny Habits® Coach Certification trains people (like Coaches, Consultants, Counselors and more) to use this method in their professional lives, and to help others change their behavior and create life-transforming habits — without relying on willpower.

TinyHabits Academy / Cost: FREE/$1,750 / Instructor(s): BJ Fogg

17. The Hooked Online Workshop

The Hooked Workshop is a six lecture online course that will give you practical insights to create habits within your products and services, giving you actionable steps for building products people love and use regularly. This workshop teaches the model that is used by some of the world’s most successful companies.

Nir Eyal / Cost: $496 / Instructor(s): Nir Eyal

18. Nir Eyal on Creating Habit-Forming Products

How have apps like Facebook and Snapchat become so popular, so quickly? How do they keep users coming back day after day? The secrets to creating habit-forming products aren’t new, but found deep in the roots of human psychology. Find out how to manufacture desire using the four steps of the hook model — trigger, action, variable reward, and investment — and apply the strategies of the most persuasive companies to your own business.

LinkedIn Learning / Cost: 1-month free trial then $25/month / Instructor(s): Nir Eyal

19. The Habits Academy by James Clear

The Habits Academy is the premier training platform for individuals and organizations that are interested in building better habits in life and work.

The Habits Academy / Cost: $300 / Instructor(s): James Clear

Other Behavioral design related courses

20. Panthera Academy

Panthera Academy / Cost: Varies depending on course

21. Behavioral Finance

Behavioral finance is the study of these and dozens of other financial decision-making errors that can be avoided, if we are familiar with the biases that cause them. In this course, we examine these predictable errors, and discover where we are most susceptible to them. This course is intended to guide participants towards better financial choices. Learn how to improve your spending, saving, and investing decisions for the future.

Duke University (via Coursera) / Cost: FREE / Instructor(s): Emma Rasiel

22. Introduction to Neuroeconomics: How the Brain Makes Decisions

Economics, psychology, and neuroscience are converging today into a unified discipline of Neuroeconomics with the ultimate aim of creating a single, general theory of human decision-making. Neuroeconomics provides biologists, economists, psychologists and social scientists with a deeper understanding of how they make their own decisions and how others decide. You will be provided with the most recent evidence from brain-imaging techniques (fMRI, TMS, etc.) and introduced to the explanatory models behind them.

Coursera / Cost: FREE / Instructor(s): Vasily Klucharev

23. An Introduction to Consumer Neuroscience & Neuromarketing

How do we make decisions as consumers? What do we pay attention to, and how do our initial responses predict our final choices? To what extent are these processes unconscious and cannot be reflected in overt reports? This course will provide you with an introduction to some of the most basic methods in the emerging fields of consumer neuroscience and neuromarketing. You will learn about the methods employed and what they mean. You will learn about the basic brain mechanisms in consumer choice, and how to stay updated on these topics. The course will give an overview of the current and future uses of neuroscience in business.

Copenhagen Business School (via Coursera) / Cost: FREE / Instructor(s): Thomas Zoëga Ramsøy

*This list may occasionally include some form of affiliate links to support future behavioral design content and resources.

Samuel Salzer is a behavioral designer, author & keynote speaker helping value-driven organizations around the world to create habit-forming products and services using insights from behavioral economics and applied behavioral science.

For questions or queries, get in touch here.

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