Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience, Public Speaker, Consultant
London, England, United Kingdom
42K followers
500+ connections
42K followers
500+ connections
About
Why do people buy things they don’t need, trust brands they’ve never met, or feel pain when they see a price tag?
These questions sit at the intersection of neuroscience, psychology, and decision science and they shaped my research career.
I’m a neuroscientist and researcher interested in how the brain drives behaviour, particularly in real-world contexts like consumer decision-making, communication, and persuasion. My work combines insights from neuroscience and behavioural science to understand not just what people say they will do, but what their brains reveal about the choices they actually make.
Alongside my academic research, I work with organisations interested in applying these insights to practical challenges, whether that’s understanding consumer behaviour, designing more effective messaging, or separating genuine neuroscience from the growing amount of “neurobollocks” circulating in business and popular media.
More broadly, I’m interested in how scientific research can be translated into useful tools for organisations, policymakers, and the public.
If you’re interested in the science of decision-making, consumer behaviour, or applying neuroscience beyond the lab, feel free to connect.
Articles by Joseph
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42K followers
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Joseph Devlin reposted thisJoseph Devlin reposted thisWe're hiring at MoreThanNow - we'd love it if you came and joined us! We're looking for an experienced behavioural scientist to join us as a Lead. Find more information and apply here: https://lnkd.in/e2b4FG8U
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Joseph Devlin shared thisWhat is the perfect length for a vacation? In 1910, the 27th President of the United States, William Taft, wrote in the NY Times that: “2 or 3 months’ vacation […] are necessary in order to continue work the next year with that energy and effectiveness which it ought to have.” I’ve always liked that guy but somehow his recommendation just doesn’t seem to have caught on. In the US, in particular, vacations tend to be shorter as companies typically offer approximately half as much annual paid leave as European countries. Even so, they still tend to be less than half what President Taft suggested. But what is the optimal amount? And can science help answer this thorny question? The evidence seems to suggest that vacations can have strong, but rather short-lived effects on health and well-being. 👉 Happiness rises in the weeks leading up to the vacation. It peaks during the actual holiday. 👉 In addition to higher happiness, people reported greater relaxation, reduced fatigue, longer sleep and better quality sleep, and a better ability to “savour” their time and activities during the holiday 👉 People who described their vacation as “relaxed” or “very relaxed” had elevated happiness levels that lasted roughly for two weeks after they returned home. Those who said their vacation was stressful or even just neutral did not show increased happiness upon returning from their vacation. 👉 People who included regular exercise in their holiday (e.g. golfing, walking, biking) significantly decreased their stress (despite playing golf?!) 👉 The length of the vacation had no effect on happiness levels when people returned to work. In other words, the benefits start before you leave, peak while you’re away, and fade within a couple of weeks, regardless of how long you were gone. The clear implication here is that we can maximise the benefits from our holidays by taking more short vacations rather than one long one. If you get a pre- and post- vacation boost regardless of the length, you might as well take as many as possible. More anticipation. More resets. More frequent recovery. What’s your experience? Do you prefer one long holiday, or multiple shorter ones across the year?
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Joseph Devlin shared thisWhat keeps two people together for 65 years? Choice, habit or biology? Celebrating my in-laws’ 65th wedding anniversary got me thinking about this question and about the #neuroscience of long-term relationships, specifically the role of #oxytocin. Oxytocin is a hormone produced in the hypothalamus that plays a role in many social behaviours including mother-infant bonding and pair-bonding. During childbirth and breastfeeding, huge amounts of oxytocin are released to promote nurturing behaviours and bonding with the baby. Presumably this helps Mom decide that it’s better to care for a smelly, noisy infant than to walk away in disgust... For instance, female rats do not pay much attention to pups that are not their own. If you give oxytocin to female rats that have never had their own pups, though, you see a marked change in their behaviour. Instead of ignoring the pups, they show mother-like behaviours, such as licking and nest building, even though the pups are not their own. Just as oxytocin helps mothers bond with their babies, it also plays a role in developing and maintaining romantic relationships. For example, oxytocin enhances sexual attraction. A single dose of intranasal oxytocin (that is, a spray up the nose) increases how attractive both men and women find other faces. And oxytocin levels increase during sexual activity, too. This is thought to facilitate bonding and strengthen social connections between sexual partners. That's why it has earned the nicknames "love hormone" or "cuddle hormone." Finally, oxytocin helps keep relationships faithful. In one really cool study, a set of heterosexual male volunteers received either oxytocin or a placebo before being sent into a small room with beautiful young woman holding a clipboard. The questions she asked were irrelevant; instead, these scientists measure how close the men stood to the young woman as the two talked. Both the single guys and the guys in a relationship who received the placebo leaned in a little closer to the lovely interlocutor. In contrast, partnered guys who received oxytocin actually kept their distance. In other words, if you’re in a monogamous relationship, oxytocin may help promote fidelity by helping men avoid signalling romantic interest to other women through close-approach behaviour during social encounters. It's worth noting that oxytocin doesn’t just bond us to mothers, lovers, and friends, it also seems to play a role in developing and promoting in-group trust and affiliation while at the same time excluding outsiders. In other words, it’s complicated – like all neurotransmitters. What do you think has the biggest impact on long-term relationships: biology, behaviour, or something else?
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Joseph Devlin reposted thisJoseph Devlin reposted thisAnother good week for behavioural science jobs. There are some strong core behavioural science roles open right now, alongside a range of related opportunities. The list below includes +40 current openings with MI5, MoreThanNow, Busara, the World Bank, and others. Please share with anyone who might be looking. #BehaviouralScience #BehavioralScience #Careers #Hiring #ResearchBehavioural Science Jobs: New Openings (w/c 13 April)Behavioural Science Jobs: New Openings (w/c 13 April)
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Joseph Devlin reposted thisJoseph Devlin reposted this📢 Job alert: We are recruiting a Professor in Neuroscience, with expertise in MRI. We particularly encourage candidates with interdisciplinary research agendas in brain-body interaction, who have an interest in developing brain imaging or analysis methods, and/or whose research will benefit from the unique multimodal human neuroscience capabilities of our Centre for Integrative Neuroscience and Neurodynamics (CINN). The successful candidate will play a key role in CINN. For details visit: https://lnkd.in/esY47zQd. Closing date: 29th May. Interested candidates can contact me for further information. Spread the word! #neurojobs #neuroscienceProfessor of Neuroscience at University of ReadingProfessor of Neuroscience at University of Reading
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Joseph Devlin shared thisAmazing opportunity to work with the excellent team at MoreThanNow as a Behavioural Science Lead.Joseph Devlin shared thisThere’s nothing more exciting (and nerve-racking!) than hiring for MoreThanNow! Please help us get the word out for this unique new role in applied behavioural science. ———————— MTN was founded to push the standards of how we practice change in the workplace with applied #behaviouralscience. Our model seeks big impact with targeted interventions in the flow of everyday work. The demand for credible science in People & Change is spiking, and we’re growing accordingly! This role is for a relationship manager and research lead for a portfolio of partnerships, covering everything from high performance to leadership, and inclusion to AI integration. We’re a fun team. We love our work and always look out for each other. We’re privileged to do it alongside the most incredible organisational partners and academic collaborators. Come and explore what we have to offer. We can't wait to hear what you'll bring :) https://lnkd.in/eQHjZkTz
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Joseph Devlin shared thisAre kids these days ruining their brains by playing video games? We’ve all seen the alarming headlines: 👉 Is gaming harmful to the brain? 👉 Excessive video gaming can alter a child’s brain 👉 Video games damage your child’s brain! The vast majority of kids say they’ve played a video game in the last month. These range from smartphone classics like Candy Crush to online games such as Minecraft to VR giants like Skyrim. Estimates suggest 88% of young adults (aged 16-24) play video games and that more than two-thirds (68%) of children aged 7-18 own a games console. Does this inevitably mean our children have short attention spans – like a goldfish? Thankfully not. But I get asked about this pretty regularly. The reality is that playing video games can have both positive and negative effects. Various studies have found that gaming can actually improve vision, attention, and the ability to track objects in your environment such as other vehicles or pedestrians while driving. Prof. Daphne Bavalier and her team used fMRI to measure brain activity during an attention task in two groups of volunteers: people who regularly play action games (e.g. Call of Duty) vs. those who do not. They found that when attentional load increased, the brain’s attentional network responded more efficiently in the gamers. This included: 👉 The parietal lobes that control orientation of attention 👉 The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex responsible for sustained attention, and 👉 The anterior cingulate cortex which controls regulating attention and resolving conflict. The results suggest that gamers may allocate attentional resources more automatically and efficiently than non-gamers. It’s not all roses, though. Some studies have found that playing violent video games can increase aggressive thoughts. Whether these lead to long-term aggressive behaviour is far less clear. More generally, excessive game playing -- that is, game playing that interferes with other aspects of life -- can clearly be problematic. For what it’s worth, this whole debate is nothing new. It seems that every generation worries that their kids are being ruined by something new. When I was a kid, it was Dungeons and Dragons. Before that, it was too much TV. And of course, in the 1950s, rock’n’roll was corrupting our youth 🎶 Heck, in Ancient Greece, Socrates argued against teaching children to read. He said, “If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls”. Ironically, his anti-writing stance endures only because his student, Plato, wrote it down 😂 The truth of the matter is brains are pretty resilient. All of this tech doesn’t fundamentally change us. When used in moderation, it can provide a richly immersive form of entertainment and might even give our brains a light workout. What’s your experience of video games? #VideoGames #BrainHealth #neuromyths #neurobollocks
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Joseph Devlin reposted thisJoseph Devlin reposted thisWe’re excited to launch a new AI project exploring how performance varies across disciplines and levels of expertise. This round is open to participants from economics, political science, and psychology, and we are also especially happy to welcome final-year undergraduates alongside postgraduate students and researchers. We hope this broader mix of participants will help us learn more about how training, background, and experience shape performance on these tasks. We already have three events lined up: May 11 — Cambridge Register: https://lnkd.in/eivRXpcn May 13 — UCL Register: https://lnkd.in/espGDN7q May 14 — King’s College London Register: https://lnkd.in/eFHXdvYi Participation is possible in person or online, so even if you are not based in Cambridge or London, you are very welcome to join. If you are a student, researcher, or instructor in one of these fields, we would love to have you involved. And if you know colleagues or students who may be interested, please feel free to share.
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Joseph Devlin reposted thisJoseph Devlin reposted thisThe problem, they opined wisely, is not AI, it's that everything about higher education assessment is and has always been terrible. "Ok, but concretely, can you tell how how I can adapt my assessments?" Trust your students. "Ok, but we know they're cheating at scale and even when it's not cheating, they're cognitively offloading all the processes that let them learn anything so I'm not sure that romanticising them is the way forward?" Authentic assessment. "Ok, but AI can now do almost any task, including reflection. Also why isn't having knowledge you can draw on without looking it up authentic?" Exams are bad. Rote memorisation is bad. "Ok, but again, concretely, can you tell me how I can adapt my assessments?" Assess the process. "Ok, I have 600 students, concretely, can you tell how do I do this at scale?" "Hello?" EDIT: I appear to have forgotten that Phillip Dawson posted something very similar nearly a year ago so give him credit for the owl reference. Yes I see the irony of accidental plagiarism in a post about AI.
Joseph Devlin commented on a post
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Congrats Keith! Sounds like a great opportunity for you (and great for them getting your talents!)
Joseph Devlin replied to a comment
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The nACC is doing it thang ;)
Joseph Devlin replied to a comment
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I've had that same feeling. Normally after a busy and/or stressful "break" 😂
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Joseph Devlin liked thisJoseph Devlin liked thisWe're hiring at MoreThanNow - we'd love it if you came and joined us! We're looking for an experienced behavioural scientist to join us as a Lead. Find more information and apply here: https://lnkd.in/e2b4FG8U
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Joseph Devlin liked thisMy son Frederik is moving from Taiwan and to Portugal. There's gold on the streets if you need help with your marketing (and yes of course he's infused with neuromarketing since birth 😊)Joseph Devlin liked thisDear Network, I’m relocating to Porto, Portugal in May 2026 and am currently looking for my next opportunity in video-led content, social media, or creative strategy. Most recently, I’ve been working as a Senior Social Media & Content Specialist at ATEN, managing global content across 15 platforms. At my core, I’m an end-to-end creator—handling everything from camera work and photography to editing and final delivery—focused on high-end visual storytelling that also drives results. Recently, my work has focused on: • AI-enhanced content workflows • Neuroscience-focused content and storytelling • B2B tech content for global organizations • Driving measurable engagement and performance improvements I’m especially interested in roles where strategy and execution come together—whether that’s hybrid in Porto or remote across Europe. If you know of any teams that might be a good fit, or would like to connect, feel free to reach out or tag someone relevant. Portfolio: https://lnkd.in/gJwMuFMPFrederik Ramsøy - Digital Strategist & Content CreatorFrederik Ramsøy - Digital Strategist & Content Creator
Experience
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University College London
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Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience
University College London
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Co-Founder
Applied Consumer Neuroscience
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Co-Founder
Applied Consumer Neuroscience (ACN) Labs
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University of Oxford
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Education
Skills
Languages
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English
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