This is the hidden brain.
I'm Shankar Vedantam.
In this episode, we're going to talk about near misses.
Almost and not quite.
First, we're going to talk about research that shows that coming close to winning something can really affect your drive and motivation.
You want to build that thing in that?
Hey, you're almost there.
Then my friend Daniel Pink will join us for a round of Stopwatch signs.
He's going to explain how the psychology of getting close to a goal can help charities raise more money.
Why do people give?
People give not because they want to be altruistic, but because they want to be effective.
Finally, we'll ask singer songwriter Casey Musgraves to put on an imaginary lab coat and join us for a game of mad scientist.
Does my lab coat have rhinestones on it?
We'll ask her to explain a song from her album, Pageant material.
And we learn what world peace has to do with swimsuits.
Okay, near misses.
Monica Wadhwa is a professor at the INSEAD Business School in Singapore.
She studies marketing, and recently in her research, she hit upon a strange but promising way to change how consumers behave.
It's funny because this came from one of my childhood experiences actually.
To understand this idea, lets travel back in time to Monica's childhood.