As noted here, common principles underlie and unify many key features of human behaviour. A quick guide - "SIMPLER" - articulates a set of common "nudges" that can be used to improve programme outcomes and efficiency: Social influence - e.g., persuade by referencing peers Implementation prompts - e.g., establish steps to desired action Mandated deadlines - e.g., make deadlines prominent Personalisation - e.g., use name, not generic greeting Loss aversion - e.g., emphasise losses, not just gains Ease - e.g., reduce steps in a process Reminders - e.g., use phone calls, texts, postcards

dopamine, cortisol, oxytocin, serotonin

Max Bazerman, co-director of the Center for Public Leadership; Odette van de Riet, Leader of BIT IenM, the Behavioral Insight Team of the Netherlands Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment; and David Halpern, Chief Executive of the Behavioural Insights Team and Board Director of the Office of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, joined moderator Iris Bohnet, Professor of Public Policy at HKS and Director of the Women and Public Policy Program, and co-Director of the Behavioral Insights Group, in a conversation on behavioral insights. The panel discussed its experiences applying behavioral economics findings, such as "nudge" techniques, to issues of public interest.

BIT uses a simple framework to apply behavioral science to policy: in order to encourage a behavior, make it Easy, Attractive, Social, and Timely (EAST). The sections below give some examples of how this framework can be applied to improve health and health care. Many of these initiatives were tested through low-cost randomized controlled trials; we believe that such trials could be used much more by health care providers and policymakers to improve their everyday activities.

Diagram of cognitive biases clustered by meaning and application

Rather than pulling behavioural insights together into a tasty, cohesive recipe, behavioural economics has offered myriad tasty morsels and left it up to the audience to reconcile them. People want choice. People get overwhelmed by choice. People follow what others do. People don’t like to be seen to follow others. People act impulsively. People stick with the status quo. People are lazy. People like challenge. Agghhhh! To be useful behavioural economics needs to evolve from a series of interesting anecdotes to a framework that can help analyse and resolve behavioural challenges. The Williams Behaviour Change Model So that’s what I’ve cooked up. I’ve created your very own behavioural framework that is as tasty as a non-deconstructed sticky date pudding. This model gets beyond behavioural economics for its own sake and provides a structured way for you to interrogate your behavioural challenge and design how to get people to take the action you want.

A key finding of this study was that the young women used a series of visual cues to self-identify if they had drunk too much. “You start losing, like, your eyesight and stuff. Stuff goes blurry.” ICE has designed a series of behavioural nudges (e.g. blurred images in toilet mirrors) that will be employed in situ at pubs and clubs to use young women’s unconscious thoughts and nudge them to self-identify that they may be approaching their limit, thus enabling them to apply drink protective behavioural strategies more proactively.

behavioural scientists are as biased as anyone

Cognitive bias wall chart

Though nudge-economics remains seductive, what once seemed like a panacea has come to look a bit more like a series of sticking plasters. Earlier this year the nudge unit was removed from direct government control, partly sold to the Nesta innovation charity run by New Labour guru Geoff Mulgan, a move which seemed to suggest the prime minister no longer viewed it as quite so central to his philosophy. That move has coincided with a backlash, or at least a critical analysis, of some of the tenets on which its brand of behavioural economics is based.

Behavioral scientists have been studying these quirks of the mind for decades and have identified three main barriers that can lead clients astray. To summarize, clients need to: Believe what you’re saying Choose what to do Actually do it Each of these steps presents unique challenges.

Note free appendix in Supplemental section provides examples of how this works. "A key insight is that these behaviours are not predominantly driven by deliberative conscious decisions, but occur directly in response to environmental cues and without necessary representation of their consequences. Consequently, interventions that target non-conscious rather than conscious processes to change health behaviour may have significant potential... We propose a framework for describing or categorising interventions to change health behaviour by the degree to which their effects may be considered non-conscious. "

"So the big question is: How can health systems be made safer when success means changing the attitudes and habits of health care professionals at a time when many are overwhelmed and deeply frustrated by all of the demands being made on them? What does it take to get them to embrace, with urgency, new ways of working?"