The Saudi General Authority for Statistics is running an ad gently asking people to stop inviting census takers into their homes for coffee and meals.

nudges appear to have the greatest impact on choice when people have less developed preferences because they are ambivalent or in doubt about their choice.

The COM-B model of behaviour is widely used to identify what needs to change in order for a behaviour change intervention to be effective. It identifies three factors that need to be present for any behaviour to occur: capability, opportunity and motivation. These factors interact over time so that behaviour can be seen as part of a dynamic system with positive and negative feedback loops. Motivation is a core part of the model and the PRIME Theory of motivation provides a framework for understanding how reflective thought processes (Planning and Evaluation processes) and emotional and habitual processes (Motive and Impulse/inhibition processes) interact at every moment leading to behaviour (Responses) at that moment.

In our study, no evidence was found for a protective effect of the most common UK safer gambling message. Alternative interventions should be considered as part of an evidence-based public health approach to reducing gambling-related harm.

Research consistently shows evidence-based social and behavior change (SBC) programs can increase knowledge, shift attitudes and norms and produce changes in a wide variety of behaviors. SBC has proven effective in several health areas, such as increasing the uptake of family planning methods, condom use for HIV prevention, and care-seeking for malaria. Between 2017 and 2019, a series of comprehensive literature reviews were conducted to consolidate evidence that shows the positive impact of SBC interventions on behavioral outcomes related to family planning, HIV, malaria, reproductive empowerment, and the reproductive health of urban youth in low- and middle-income countries. The result is five health area-specific databases that support evidence-based SBC. The databases are searchable by keyword, country, study design, intervention and behavior. The databases extract intervention details, research methodologies and results to facilitate searching. For each of the five health areas, a “Featured Evidence” section highlights a list of key articles demonstrating impact.

Mutually-Assured Non-Complacency (MANC) Introducing MANC, a system that helps you achieve your goals. Plainly, MANC is a system that uses the people closest to you to assure that you don’t fall into status quo ruts. It’s Mutually-Assured Non-Complacency. How does it work? First, you define the new desired personal behavior (a.k.a. your goal). Then, you put in a system to achieve it (a.k.a. accountability system). This system gives your friends and family a role in your success. So you think you can MANC? The worksheet gives you the recipe. The videos give you the motivation to start today.

Growing open-sourced database of different commitment devices to help you stick with your intentions and achieve your long-term goals. Read this article for more information on Commitment Devices and how to make the most of this database.

A quick reference guide to creating behavioral maps and behavioral blueprints

The best way for increasing the usage and value of the product is crafting the product from a behavioral perspective instead of feature perspective. The best way for changing this mindset is asking simple questions about your users and what behaviors you want to create for bringing them value. Sankey Diagrams are awesome tools for measuring these behaviorals funnels. Once we have detected and optimized the different behaviors, the impact of adding new features will be much higher than before.

Bonus talks Why You Forget Everything And What to Do About It w/ Bec Weeks – https://youtu.be/VoDlOmHbaWE The Sneaky Things That Keep Good Habits From Sticking w/ Jessica Malone – https://youtu.be/oCwMXY7u73A Nicolas Fieulaine from NFÉtudes – https://youtu.be/E-XNZUGvVT0 ––– Timestamps 0:00 Event Intro 6:53 The Science of Habit Change with David Neal 38:10 The Science of Mindfulness with Dr. Clare Purvis 53:03 Creatures of Context with David Perrott 1:21:05 Time Smart: How to Reclaim Your Time and Live a Happier Life with Ashley Whillans 2:05:36 The Invisibility of Habit with Wendy Wood 2:34:19 Digital Behavior Change in Health with Jennifer La Guardia & Aline Holzwarth 2:59:11 Better Decision Making at Work: 5 Core Heuristics (& How to Manage Them) with Scott Young, BVA Nudge Unit 3:22:32 All the small things - How behavioral science can help you unlock success in love and at work with Logan Ury & Liz Fosslien 4:09:53 How to apply behavioral insights to cyber security training with Harriet Rowthron from BestAtDigital 4:22:44 Making Meaning When Life Stinks with Yael Schonbrun 4:54:47 The Power of Identity with Dominic Packer 5:30:40 The Untapped Science of Less with Leidy Klotz 5:55:10 Day Wrap-Up with Samuel Salzer & Peter Judodihardjo

Designing Health & Fitness Apps with the Mind in Mind - Massimo Ingegno (and other speakers)

In our coffee room experiment, we found that contributions to an honesty box for paying for coffee substantially increased when we stuck photocopied images of eyes on the wall in the coffee corner, compared to when we stuck images of flowers on the wall. This makes the point that people are generally nicer, more cooperative, more ethical, when they believe they are being watched, a point that I believe, in general terms, to be true.

This toolkit has been designed by the Research and Evaluation Unit (RIMU) at Auckland Council to be useful to those wishing to improve public programmes or services, policy development, or team decision-making. It draws on a range of existing resources produced by the Behavioural Insights Team, the OECD and others (see ‘other resources’ on the next page). This toolkit has two components that can be used either separately or together. The first component is a step-by-step process for developing a behavioural intervention. It guides the user through understanding existing behaviours, identifying a desired behaviour, brainstorming ideas for promoting the desired behaviour, and robustly testing the best ideas. The user should follow the steps in the order they are numbered. It is focused on key questions to ask at each step. It is not a complete guide to how to answer these questions, however, and the user may need to rely on other research and evaluation resources to help with each step. The second component of the toolkit is a series of ‘brainstorming’ cards. The cards cover many important behavioural principles to keep in mind when looking to improve programmes, policies, or decision-making. Each card includes a description of the behavioural principle, some examples, and suggestions for how to apply the principle. They can be used on their own or to brainstorm ideas as in the step-by-step process above. To help with navigation, the card set has been organised into a series for better services and a series for better decisionmaking, although there is overlap in the use of the cards. The former is marked with a red dot in the top left corner and the latter with a green dot.

In this chapter we explore three approaches to ensuring that an effective intervention does lead to impact: they are scaling, dissemination, and knowledge translation. Each pathway can increase your impact - i.e., desired behaviour and societal change - but approach this goal from different directions and with emphasis on different activities and outputs. We will introduce you to the three approaches before deep diving into when and how to apply each approach.

On the whole, however, these behavioral interventions have been somewhat underwhelming, exposing an inherent brittleness that comes from three common “errors of projection” in current behavioral design methodology: projected stability, which insufficiently plans for the fact that interventions often function within inherently unstable systems; projected persistence, which neglects to account for changes in those system conditions over time; and projected value, which assumes that definitions of success are universally shared across contexts. Borrowing from strategic design and futures thinking, a new proposed strategic foresight model—behavioral planning—can help practitioners better address these system-level, anticipatory, and contextual weaknesses by more systematically identifying potential forces that may impact behavioral interventions before they have been implemented. Behavioral planning will help designers more effectively elicit signals indicating the emergence of forces that may deform behavioral interventions in emergent COVID-19 contexts, and promote “roughly right” directional solutions at earlier stages in solution development to better address system shifts.

Leveraging artificial intelligence (AI)–driven apps for health education and promotion can help in the accomplishment of several United Nations sustainable development goals. SnehAI, developed by the Population Foundation of India, is the first Hinglish (Hindi + English) AI chatbot, deliberately designed for social and behavioral changes in India. It provides a private, nonjudgmental, and safe space to spur conversations about taboo topics (such as safe sex and family planning) and offers accurate, relatable, and trustworthy information and resources.

A new meta-analysis published in PNAS by Stephanie Mertens, Mario Herberz, Ulf J. J. Hahnel, and Tobias Brosch provides more evidence about the effectiveness of nudges. Here’s a summary:

The presentarticle reviews the debate and research on nudges byfocusing on three main dimensions: (1) the exact defi-nition of nudges; (2) the justification of nudge policies,with a focus on “libertarian paternalism”; and (3) theeffectiveness of nudges, both over time and in compari-son with standard policies.

Excellent contrast with Embrace Life of gain vs loss framing!

Emotions and worries can reduce individuals’ available attention and affect economic decisions. In a four-week experiment with 2,384 US adults, offering free access to a popular mindfulness meditation app (Headspace) that costs $13 per month improves mental health, productivity and decisionmaking. First, it causes a 0.44 standard deviation reduction in symptoms of stress, anxiety, and depression, comparable to the impacts of expensive in-person therapy, with improvements even among participants with minimal or mild symptoms at baseline. Second, it increases earnings on a proofreading task by 1.9 percent. Third, it makes decision-making more stable across emotional states, reducing the interference of personal worries with risk choices. Overall, our results demonstrate the potential of affordable mindfulness meditation apps to improve mental health, productivity, and the impact of emotions on economic decisions.

Method:Three participatory workshops were held with the independent Welsh residential decarbonisation advisory group(‘the Advisory Group’)to (1)maprelationships betweenactors, behavioursand influences onbehaviourwithin thehome retrofitsystem,(2)provide training in the Behaviour Change Wheel framework(3)use these to developpolicy recommendationsfor interventions. Recommendations were analysed usingthe COM-B (capability, opportunity, motivation) model of behaviourtoassesswhether they addressed these factors. Results:Twobehavioural systems mapswere produced,representing privately rented and owner-occupied housing tenures. The main causal pathways and feedback loops in each map are described.

The Book of Behavior Change is an Open Access book that helps with the development of effective behavior change interventions as well as doing research into behavior change. Unlike for example Intervention Mapping, this book does not provide a complete protocol, instead focusing on identifying what to target, and how to target it, to maximize intervention effectiveness.

Which theory of behavior change can help you plan a health communication intervention for a large audience? There is no single right answer, but some theories will fit your needs better than others. The purpose of this tool is to rank-order some commonly used theories by their degree of fit with your behavior change challenge.

In 2010, Colombia's defense minister contacted an ad agency to create an idea to demobilize FARC members, the oldest guerrilla army in Latin America. The agency, after spending over a year talking to nearly 100 of its members, learned two main things (1). -First, guerrilla members are ordinary men and women and not only guerrillas, a fact which is often forgotten after 60 years at war. -Secondly, they are more likely to demobilize during Christmas as it is a sensitive and emotional period. Based on these insights, they had a clever idea to put a Christmas tree in strategic walking paths in the middle of the jungle that would light up when someone passed by with a message promoting demobilization. The results? Three hundred thirty-one people who demobilized named this idea as one of the reasons to do so. Over the years, several campaigns from the same agency were quite successful, and overall, they were named in over 800 demobilizations. Causality, of course, cannot be established. Nevertheless, any measurable, non-violent efforts like this one are praised. Next time you think you have a difficult-to-reach customer, maybe think again!

CUBES (to Change behavior, Understand Barriers, Enablers, and Stages of change) is a comprehensive framework for analyzing behavior developed by Surgo Ventures. As described in the video with Peter Smittenaar below, CUBES builds on evidence-based behavioral models that are widely used across sectors and includes drivers that show evidence of changing behavior. It illustrates how adopting a new behavior is a process of stages; at each stage, people are influenced by internal and environmental factors (see Figure 1). The CUBES framework articulates three critical components of behavior change: The path toward a target behavior comprises distinct stages of change, progressing from knowledge to intention, action, repetition, and finally, habit. Perceptual and contextual drivers can act as enablers or barriers that influence each individual, shaping their progression through each stage of change. Influencers in the form of family and friends, community, and society can affect these drivers, either directly or via media channels.

A pressing goal in global development and other sectors is often to understand what drives people’s behaviors, and how to influence them. Yet designing behavior change interventions is often an unsystematic process, hobbled by insufficient understanding of contextual and perceptual behavioral drivers and a narrow focus on limited research methods to assess them. We propose a toolkit (CUBES) of two solutions to help programs arrive at more effective interventions. First, we introduce a novel framework of behavior, which is a practical tool for programs to structure potential drivers and match corresponding interventions. This evidence-based framework was developed through extensive cross-sectoral literature research and refined through application in large-scale global development programs. Second, we propose a set of descriptive, experimental, and simulation approaches that can enhance and expand the methods commonly used in global development. Since not all methods are equally suited to capture the different types of drivers of behavior, we present a decision aid for method selection. We recommend that existing commonly used methods, such as observations and surveys, use CUBES as a scaffold and incorporate validated measures of specific types of drivers in order to comprehensively test all the potential components of a target behavior. We also recommend under-used methods from sectors such as market research, experimental psychology, and decision science, which programs can use to extend their toolkit and test the importance and impact of key enablers and barriers. The CUBES toolkit enables programs across sectors to streamline the process of conceptualizing, designing, and optimizing interventions, and ultimately to change behaviors and achieve targeted outcomes.

The issue is: We try to solve every single box in the problem tree. If people don’t know about something, then we solve it by raising awareness. If people don’t care about something, then we solve it by getting them to care more. If people are doing illegal behaviors because of a lack of enforcement, then we solve it by increasing enforcement. We go through the whole set of problem tree causes in this manner, writing objectives with a one-to-one match per problem. Not only does this result in a long list of objectives, which will quickly overwhelm us, it also traps us into solving behavioral problems using logic-based approaches.

It found exposure to the drama led to significant changes in most outcomes with 37% of those who watched at least one episode showing behavioural intent to act, rising to 78% of those who had watched at least seven episodes. The show reached 59.6 million unique viewers, confirming drama as an effective, low cost and scalable tool to engage people around faecal sludge management – a critical and hard to address issue.