Dr Bernice Plant

In her PhD thesis, Bernice looked at the effects of anti-speeding messages on young drivers, using a driving simulator and conducted offsite research at the Behavioural Science Institute of Radboud University in The Netherlands, where she was the editor of ‘Hidden Persuasion: 33 Psychological Influence Techniques used in Advertising’.

Prior to joining BehaviourWorks, Bernice worked as an Assistant Lecturer within the School of Psychological Sciences at Monash University, where she supervised graduate research projects in behaviour change and in creativity and innovation.

Her students’ projects applied various influence techniques (e.g., acknowledging resistance, anthropomorphism, humour, implementation intentions and self-persuasion) to health and environmental behaviours.

Bernice has taught undergraduate and graduate psychology courses at various institutions and has provided guest lectures on health persuasion, goal setting, resistance to change and road safety interventions.

She also has experience in developing, delivering and evaluating a burnout intervention grounded in behaviour-change techniques, as well as experience with conducting systematic reviews and randomised control trials.

At BehaviourWorks, Bernice works in the health space, developing feasible and scalable interventions that aim to improve patient safety in Victorian public hospitals as part of the Victorian Managed Insurance Authority Research and Innovation Program.

Bernice particularly likes designing trials to evaluate interventions (see the ‘Application’ section of The BehaviourWorks Method), and she also serves on the Monash University Human Research Ethics Committee.

When she’s not busy finding solutions to real-world problems, Bernice likes sampling self-development courses, ranging from outdoor survival courses to clowning workshops.