Grooving: Colleges and the Coronavirus

[NOTE: You may or may not know that Kurt and Tim host a sibling podcast called Weekly Grooves. We thought this was such an important topic that we wanted to share it with the Behavioral Grooves community.]

We got a call recently from Eugen Dimant, a friend of ours who is an associate professor in behavioral and decision sciences at the University of Pennsylvania, about how the University of Michigan was trying to let students know that they should only gather in groups of 25 of less.

Eugen suggested we tee it up as a topical issue for Weekly Grooves and we readily agreed. It led to a discussion about what colleges are doing to regulate student activities to contain the coronavirus, the punishments involved in breaking those regulations, the environment in which students make decisions on how to behave, and the importance of proper communication.

Also, in this episode, we include some of the conversations we had with Eugen, which is a departure from our standard approach and we hope you enjoy it. Eugen’s insights from a sociological perspective make for important reminders in an age when the words we choose to communicate impacts whether get sick or not people.

As always, please let us know what you think and share it with a friend or colleague.