The Cultural Currents Institute's proprietary SPREAD framework is ideal for testing and refining messages and strategies at the conceptual phase, diagnosing and troubleshooting campaigns that may be struggling after launch, and accelerating efforts that have already found some success. The core concepts of the framework are introduced here. Simple to Remember and Share Plausible to its Intended Audience Relatable to Common Lived Experience Emotional and Evocative Actionable With Clear Steps Duplicable With Low Effort and High Fidelity

Our study suggests that concerns around personalization and AI persuasion are warranted, reinforcing previous results by showcasing how LLMs can outpersuade humans in online conversations through microtargeting. We emphasize that the effect of personalization is particularly remarkable given how little personal information was collected (gender, age, ethnicity, education level, employment status and political affiliation) and despite the extreme simplicity of the prompt instructing the LLM to incorporate such information (see Supplementary Section 2.5 for the complete prompts). Even stronger effects could probably be obtained by exploiting individual psychological attributes, such as personality traits and moral bases, or by developing stronger prompts through prompt engineering, fine-tuning or specific domain expertise.

Today Renaisi launches a new model for evaluating place-based systems change. Lily O’Flynn, Principal Consultant for Place-based Evaluation & Learning, describes the model and why it solves the problem of evaluating change in places for funders, commissioners, and practitioners.

What works better is grouping the reasons someone struggles with a service, rather than segmenting the people who experience those struggles. This is the basis of the Universal Barriers to Access approach. Over time, the Government Digital Service received thousands of calls from people unable to use parts of its services. By analysing this data, we identified 11 common barriers—recurring patterns that explain why services fail for users, regardless of their background or situation.

Welcome to the Complex Systems Framework Collection, where you will find ways to consider the differences between simple, complicated, complex and chaotic. Whether you're a problem solver, leader, and/or learner, we hope you will find ideas here that resonate, challenge conventional wisdom, and push your thinking about complex problems in new directions.

Alongside a weak descriptive norm, the self-benefit message worked better than other- and collective-benefit messages. We argue that public health messaging should incorporate both theoretical approaches, closer to the notion of reasonableness (rather than pure rationality or normativity), which is context-sensitive and pragmatic.

All Behavior Change publications in one place

Written in collaboration with the Central Evaluation Team and Public Health Wales, this is a practical and interactive tool that identifies key points to take into consideration when you’re planning how to test and evaluate your behaviour change intervention.

A practical, interactive tool that introduces Behaviour Change Techniques, considered to be the ‘active ingredients’ of behaviour change interventions. The tool walks you through how to identify and deliver Behaviour Change Techniques, drawing on the COM-B model and Behaviour Change Wheel.

A practical, online tool to walk you through the essential considerations to understanding and influencing behaviours that may be at play in your better-health issue.

A practical, interactive tool to help you consider which implementation types may be the most appropriate for delivering your chosen intervention.

A practical, interactive tool to help you consider which implementation functions may be the most appropriate for delivering your chosen intervention.

A practical, interactive tool to help you consider and define your target behaviour and target population, as you create a ‘behavioural specification’.

A practical, interactive tool to help you develop a systematic understanding of the influences of your target behaviour, in your target population.

Brian Cugelman

🎓 Research: Diagonally tilting text increased purchase intentions up to 44.5% for some products 🔬As part of 4 experiments and an analysis of 256 Amazon products, scientists found that: - People liked an exercise-related product more and were 44.5% more likely to say they would buy it when its logo tiled upward (vs downward) - When a resort was advertised as relaxing, people liked the resort 17.7% more when the text tilted downwards - When a resort was framed as adventurous with an upward-tilting logo, people liked the resort 23% more 🧠 Why? - We associate diagonal tilting with motion - Tilting upwards feels like going up, which requires energy and symbolizes striving for something - Going downwards (e.g. walking down a slope) is easier and more relaxing, having the opposite effect - When product’s context matches its orientation, we subconsciously like it more 📈 So if your product is associated with energy or relaxation, tilt the text or logo on your packaging or in your ads. People will like it more, and be more likely to buy.

100+ Items, 14 Mechanisms, 1 Journey Our goal with BCS is to offer a systematic yet adaptable methodology that makes it easier for product teams to capture the important details necessary for effective behavior change. To allow for that, we have chosen to focus on 14 Behavioral Science mechanisms as opposed to focusing on individual nudges which may or may not generalize to the unique context.

Our goal with BCS is to offer a systematic yet adaptable methodology that makes it easier for product teams to capture the important details necessary for effective behavior change. To allow for that, we have chosen to focus on 14 Behavioral Science mechanisms as opposed to focusing on individual nudges which may or may not generalize to the unique context.

Bucher will discuss how she uses artificial intelligence (AI), specifically reinforcement learning, in her work at Lirio to personalize at scale

learning module

The authors conducted a meta-meta-analysis to identify the most effective individual and social-structural determinants of behaviour change across various domains. Habits, access, and social support were found to be the most effective intervention targets, while knowledge, general skills, general attitudes, beliefs, and trustworthiness showed negligible effects. The paper argues that policymakers should prioritize interventions that enable individuals to overcome obstacles and facilitate behaviour change, rather than focusing on less effective determinants like knowledge and beliefs. The findings challenge the conventional wisdom that increasing knowledge and changing attitudes are the primary keys to behaviour change, suggesting a shift towards targeting contextual factors.

So, think about how you could suggest or provide effective prompts that encourage commitment to an action. And let’s kill our reliance on motivation as means of behaviour change.

We find that, acrossdomains, interventions designed to change individual determinantscan be ordered by increasing impact as those targeting knowledge,general skills, general attitudes, beliefs, emotions, behavioural skills,behavioural attitudes and habits. Interventions designed to changesocial-structural determinants can be ordered by increasing impactas legal and administrative sanctions; programmes that increaseinstitutional trustworthiness; interventions to change injunctivenorms; monitors and reminders; descriptive norm interventions;material incentives; social support provision; and policies that increaseaccess to a particular behaviour. We find similar patterns for health andenvironmental behavioural change specifically. Thus, policymakersshould focus on interventions that enable individuals to circumventobstacles to enacting desirable behaviours rather than targeting salientbut ineffective determinants of behaviour such as knowledge andbeliefs. (PDF) Determinants of behaviour and their efficacy as targets of behavioural change interventions. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/380329032_Determinants_of_behaviour_and_their_efficacy_as_targets_of_behavioural_change_interventions [accessed Jan 23 2025].

Starting from Cooper's approach for constructing personas, this paper details how behavioral theory can contribute substantially to the development of personas. We describe a case study in which Self-Determination Theory (SDT) is used to develop five distinctive personas for the design of a digital coach for sustainable weight loss. We show how behavioral theories such as SDT can help to understand what genuinely drives and motivates users to sustainably change their behavior.

Leading questions encourage a form of paradoxical thinking by leading individuals to perceive their own views as irrational, senseless, or exaggerated, examples of which can be found below (Hameiri et al., 2014, 2016; Swann et al., 1988). Leading questions are paradoxical in that they require participants to answer statements that are consistent with yet more extreme or senseless than their dearly held beliefs (Swann et al., 1988). The psychological mechanism underlying paradoxical thinking is based on three components: (1) Identity threat, in which individuals strive to distance themselves from the exaggerated and extreme attitudes presented to them by changing their own (Swann et al., 1988); (2) Surprise, in that the shock individuals experience when facing these extreme attitudes causes their deeply-rooted beliefs to be shaken, allowing new pieces of information to be absorbed (Hameiri et al., 2018); and (3) General disagreement, in that paradoxical messages are generally closer to the individual's beliefs (albeit being rather extreme) than completely contrary messages, thus provoking less resistance.

This article examines cognitive, affective, and behavioral measures of motivation and reviews their use throughout the discipline of experimental social psychology. We distinguish between two dimensions of motivation (outcome-focused motivation and process-focused motivation). We discuss circumstances under which measures may help distinguish between different dimensions of motivation, as well as circumstances under which measures may capture different dimensions of motivation in similar ways.

To understand why a person is behaving the way they are, it’s important to understand their social standing. What social groups do they belong to? What are the smallest, most intimate groups they’re a member of? What are the values of those groups? Which social group is dominant in the relevant context? Which media does this person/group consume? What messages are the media promoting, and what behaviors or attitudes are they encouraging? Does this person consume any media sources specific to this behavioral domain? If so, what are they and what are their messages?