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Our Quick Questionnaire

Favorite book: The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud. This is the book that made me want to study psychology. Once I’d formed a good understanding of its core reasoning, I began analyzing my dreams as well as those of others and cemented my realization of how much of our personality and behavior is modeled by the subconscious. Favorite tv show: Friends - no matter how many times I watch it, it still gets me giggling. To me, sitting down for an episode is the ultimate form of escapism. Podcast recommendation: Sam Harris’ Making Sense. Sam Harris is an American philosopher and neuroscientist. On each episode of his podcast, he invites a different expert to join him for fascinating conversations about brain science and human psychology. Article recommendation: “The Predictive Processing Paradigm Has Roots in Kant” (on www.frontiersin. org) - this article develops a theory which looks to explain the way with which our brains make decisions. Next holiday destination: Slovenia. An ideal destination for a short vacation.

Photo: Dani Harel

“A new social elite is defining itself by a new kind of lifestyle and novel buying habits that are less about flaunting wealth than expressing a connection to nature”

world of behavioral economics by chance. She had initially planned to specialize in clinical psychology but a call from the AI start-up ClickTale veered her off course. Their technology made it possible for websites to track and analyze consumer behavior with an unprecedented level of precision. Among ClickTale clients were such companies as Nike, Walmart, CNN and Microsoft. That phone call turned out to be more than fateful. Microsoft had been looking for someone who would analyze online behavior patterns for them, with the aim to increase user browsing time on their website to maximize sales - Dr Margalit got on board, and since then, she has become nothing less than a digital consumer behavior guru. A researcher and lecturer, she is currently a faculty member at Herzliya-based Reichman University where she teaches

a class on digital behavior and decision making. Aside from publishing books and articles, Dr Margalit hosts podcasts and contributes to psychology blogs. She serves as consultant at such companies as Nespresso and eBay and gives workshops on decision making, behavioral design and user behavior. And as if all this wasn’t enough, she also runs her own start-up company that designs smarter, more intuitive, customer service chatbots. One of her current fields of interest is marketing personalization, by which marketeers target individual buyers by leveraging their digital data. “It has become the ‘holy grail’ of marketing“, explains Dr Margalit. “It goes way beyond personalizing Nike trainers. Websites will adjust to each potential buyer’s specific characteristics. The technology isn’t quite ready yet, but it’s getting there”. ■

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ATMOSPHERE JULY 2022