Zhenya Lazarova is a psychologist and neuroscientist with a doctorate in cognitive neurosciences from Oxford. She has worked for the largest consulting company in the world – Deloitte – in the field of business strategy and social policy development. She has considerable teaching experience in Bulgaria and abroad. Upon her return to Bulgaria, she created Neuroeconomics Labs – a laboratory for applied neuroscience – where she studies the consumer experience, communication and education materials in real time by means of biometric equipment. For several years, she has been actively working in the field of education and socio-emotional development, and is currently writing a book on the topic, which is aimed at parents and teachers.
At the start of November in 2024, meetings were held between Ms. Lazarova and Mr. Larry Biehl for the purpose of partnership in future projects of the Bulgarian Entrepreneurship Center foundation. The foundation’s Director, Ms. Lilly Drumeva-O’Reilly, interviewed Ms. Lazarova and asked her the following questions:
My first question is, what is your background, why did you choose psychology and why did you return to Bulgaria?
I left Bulgaria shortly after the Videnov winter (the crisis in the winter of 1996/1997) and at that time the movement was for everyone to study economics. But I knew that psychology was my calling, I have always been interested in what makes us human. My academic path has always been guided by this matter.
I made the transition to a corporate career because I wanted to see the results of my work in real life and I found that business was the most direct path to that. And consulting is an incredible business teacher, because with it you learn to analyze, formulate strategic decisions and develop optimizations. You also learn to manage projects. In London I consulted for some of the largest companies in the world – such as Microsoft, Sony, and more – and the last major project I managed was in 11 countries.
Psychology is a huge help in business and this combination proved to be very successful for me, both at Deloitte and afterwards. Returning to Bulgaria, I became an entrepreneur and created the first Bulgarian laboratory for applied neuroscience. This allowed me to apply in practice and continue to build on both my scientific and business experience. I came back because I wanted to create value here. I believe that we can do both business and science at a world-class level in Bulgaria. The scientific projects of my laboratory, such as our eco-education project with the National Trust EcoFund, are published in prestigious international forums. This specific project studied how to communicate the topic of climate and environmental protection in an effective and motivating way for children of different ages and parents.
Could you tell us more about the science you are studying – neuroscience? What is the connection between behavior and the brain or biology? What are the problems that arise and why?
Neuroscience studies how our biology and physiology determine our behavior, perceptions, and thoughts – the way we interact with the world. Psychology, of course, which studies our behavior, is directly related to neuroscience and is studied to a large extent with the same scientific methods. The big challenges are related to the development of new technologies to study the way the brain works, and maybe even individual neurons, in real time.
My doctorate was on how the brain forms new knowledge – these are mechanisms that should already be included in our education. We already know what the human brain needs to form intuitive and lasting knowledge, but we continue to make children in school memorize definitions and terms and rewrite words for 10 hours a day… In general, one of the big problems of psychology and neuroscience, for which I seek solutions daily, is how to apply their discoveries in order to improve our lives. Since they deal with humans, they are applicable to literally all aspects of human life, and such huge discoveries were made in the last 20-30 years that even improvements derived from them alone could be a qualitative leap.
Let’s talk about the behavioral economics that you teach. How do people make decisions in the real world and what influences them?
Behavioral economics is essentially the psychology of decision-making. The word “economics” is included because so many of our decisions in today’s world have an economic dimension. According to economics, we make decisions like computers – we have a little calculator in our heads that calculates exactly what is profitable and right for us. In reality, however, we make many of our decisions irrationally, especially when we have incomplete information. The 2008 financial crisis clearly demonstrated this by collapsing economists’ mathematical models that the financial instruments of the time were built on.
It is no coincidence that we have already had two Nobel Prizes in Economics awarded to psychologists working in the field of behavioral economics. They study the subjective factors that influence our decisions, which determine who we will vote for, what we will buy, which policies will be more easily adopted and effective, how we can encourage people to use electricity and water more economically or to join an organ donation program, and thousands of other decisions that determine the quality of our personal and social lives.
How do external factors – such as the 2008 financial crisis, inflation, armed conflicts – influence everything?
Crisis events have a very significant impact on human behavior. You have probably heard of Abraham Maslow and his hierarchy of human needs. He believed that people could be grouped according to their motivation into two groups – one that was driven by fear and the instinct for survival, and the other that was driven by the desire for growth and altruism. This is a rather extreme point of view, but Maslow’s pyramid can be seen as a spectrum in which these are the two extremes. And whenever major crises occur, they drive a large number of people towards the more primitive end of the spectrum – and these people begin to act motivated by fear for their own survival. At the moment, unfortunately, we are observing exactly this, further fueled by other factors.
Let’s talk about entrepreneurship. What skills does a person need to have to become an entrepreneur? Are they learned or are they innate? Or both?
This question is related to certain socio-emotional and cognitive skills, as well as certain experiences, that can be acquired. Of course, it is much easier to acquire them in childhood than later.
We had a project some time ago where we studied successful people from different professions and we made two interesting discoveries: first, entrepreneurial skills are a prerequisite for success even in traditional professions, such as law and medicine, where one can also be an innovator. And second, all of the people in the study group had had the opportunity to start developing entrepreneurial skills in childhood. Richard Branson, for example, sold Christmas trees at the age of 10, and Barack Obama saw the microcredit programs for family entrepreneurship first hand, which his mother developed in poor areas of Indonesia.
As a result of the project, we formulated 50 entrepreneurial lessons, which I hope will one day see the light of day as real entrepreneurial education for children. Why is it important to learn them in childhood? Because socio-emotional aspects become part of our personality and are very difficult to change at a later age. Such as, for example, confidence in one’s own abilities, adaptability, curiosity and the drive to seek solutions, the ability to learn from one’s mistakes, and so on.
Elon Musk recently conducted an experiment with implanting a chip into a person’s brain. What do you think about this, does it have a future, is it serious? Will we witness future cyborgs?
From a scientific point of view, I will remain slightly skeptical of the experiments of Neuralink, Elon Musk’s company that is working on this. For the time being, they are focusing on chips that allow immobilized patients to control objects on a screen with their thoughts, with a two-centimeter hole being made into the skull to implant the chip. From an ethical point of view, such invasive technologies would not be allowed in healthy people, although I think this is Musk’s long-term goal. I don’t think we will have cyborgs any time soon. There are non-invasive technologies that also allow control of objects with thoughts, although with slightly lower precision. On the other hand, it is possible that the political climate in the US will give Neuralink more freedom in the future and they will be able to develop technologies that remain ethically inaccessible to the scientific community.
And, finally, tell us a bit about your book. What is the topic and why have you chosen it? Who is this book aimed at?
For a while now I have been writing an academic book about social-emotional maturation as a developmental process. Although scientific, the book is written in accessible language, and is aimed at parents and teachers, as well as people who want to invest in their own personal development.
The purpose of the book is to present a modern, systematic framework for supporting socio-emotional development in the family and educational environment. I believe that in the future world of high technology and artificial intelligence, human skills will become increasingly valuable and that it is important to cultivate them purposefully. People will continue to develop and operate the technologies of the future and must be ethically prepared for this.
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