“I realized that when you're not in pain or cold or experiencing a powerful emotion like anger or fear, it's very difficult to imagine yourself in that situation,“ he says. This phenomenon can help us understand why we sometimes act in ways that mystify us, whether it's making an impulsive decision when we're hungry or freezing in a moment when we expected to be assertive. This week on Hidden Brain, we explore how certain situations cause us to become strangers to ourselves. We hear from people who can't reconcile the person they believe themselves to be with their actions while in the grip of an intense feeling. And we look at the deep psychological mystery that occurs during these moments: no matter how many times we discover the strangers living inside us, the next time always catches us by surprise.

field of behavioral linguistics

Workplace behavior change interventions, or workplace nudges, are strategies used to encourage people to act in their own self-interest. These interventions can be made possible with the help of digital technology, such as mobile applications or email, as well as choice architecture design in the physical environments of the workplace, such as posters, objects or furniture arrangement. To this end, we are going to focus on walking, napping, and eating. First, we will examine general workplace wellness programs - what other researchers have tried, how employees reacted to the programs, and their impact. Then, we will go into further detail about interventions related to our three focus areas.

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the small tax on bags was the actual driver for change, but people thought ecological factors, not the tax, had convinced them. The BeSci lessons here are first, that you can use tiny levers to effect significant change and secondly, that we don't always know, or want to admit, why we take certain decisions.

Ride-hailing apps have allowed more binging—and increased demand for bartenders

a historical perspective on the evolution of behavioral economics from Richard Thaler

Basically, it’s Nudge for advertisers. Outlining ten evidence-based effective advertising strategies, each with a scientific underpinning, Adam Ferrier (psychologist and founder of Naked) is up there with fellow Antipodean Byron Sharp in terms of must-reads for marketers. Ferrier is a fan of ‘Action Advertising’ – influencing people by influencing actions rather than perceptions. Drawing on the evidence that advertising is notoriously poor at direct persuasion, Ferrier outlines 10 ways to influence actions instead. The underlying logic is that the easiest way to persuade someone is to allow them to persuade themselves – and this will happen quite naturally if you prompt (nudge, spur) people to act in a way consistent with a desired behaviour. Why? Because we tend to align our perceptions with our actions to avoid the mental discomfort of cognitive dissonance. In other words, if you influence action, you influence perception. Moreover, because perception-change is only a means to an end, the end being behaviour-change (buy, buy more, buy for more) – Action Advertising orientates advertising to what really matters, actioning behaviour change. For Ferrier, advertising is and must be about behaviour change; ultimately if no behaviour is changed as a result of advertising, advertising is valueless.

Many participants were perfectly aware of alternative services. But the patients’ perception was that such services were overstretched or hard to access. In a structured survey of 25 departments, emergency staff shared similar perceptions. Perhaps what seems to be inappropriate or avoidable use is actually an active and semi-informed choice.

Instead of trying to trigger a behavior change by trying to create a habit among your users, create an environment where a one-time action might result in the same behavior change.

the report sits uncomfortably with evidence that information needs vary across contexts; a 2018 review of awareness raising interventions across different target populations found success varied markedly. [11] The same message that will draw attention from policy makers may not resonate with the public and care providers around the world.

how-to guide - excellent explanation

Life course changes disrupt old habits and may create a mood for more change. • An intervention to promote sustainable behaviours was tested among 800 households. • Behaviour change was more likely if participants recently had moved house. • The results were compared with non-movers and a no-intervention control group. • The ‘window of opportunity’ lasted up to three months after relocation.

Sunstein and Thaler used the example of a high school cafeteria layout to demonstrate how small changes in our environment can influence our behavior, and we’ve discussed how a well-laid out office space can improve program participation rates. The example and our observations inspired MDRC’s Center for Behavioral Science (CABS) to create an interactive training session on the power of physical space to provide nudges. We asked training participants — staff at workforce development programs that help people find and keep employment — to try organizing their space with different goals in mind by designing a hypothetical high school cafeteria. Workshop participants received paper cut-out icons for all the essential materials — salads, hot food, snacks, desserts, beverages, cash registers, tables — and were asked to organize a logical cafeteria environment. But the directions had a catch. Each group received a unique goal: arrange the materials to maximize either: Healthy eating, Profits, or Efficiency.

You can either have rapid uptake OR large-scale adoption, but generally you don't find both together in these types of initiatives.

Want to learn more about applying behavioural insights to public policy? Take our free online course—Behavioural insights for public policy. There’s six learning modules, each with a quiz, to measure learning and understanding. It should help you understand the basics of BI, the mission and work of BETA, as well as the ethical application of the field. It takes about two hours – but you can save your progress and do it at your own pace.

there is no clear consensus on how long it takes to form a habit is because this has nothing to do with the behavior pattern itself and everything to do with the underlying coherence of the values dictating that behavior.

Extension of System 1/System 2 thinking model from a social ecological perspective - Systems 1-5

This is the website for a PhD-level mini-course in behavioral public economics developed by Hunt Allcott and Dmitry Taubinsky. Through the lens of neoclassical economics, the role of government is to provide public goods, correct externalities, provide information, and address other market failures. In practice, however, some public policies are motivated by the concern that people do not act in their own best interest. For example, many countries ban drugs, tax cigarettes, alcohol, and sugary drinks, or subsidize retirement savings and energy-efficient appliances, all largely on the grounds that consumers would be better off consuming more or less than they do. Standard approaches to policy analysis rely on revealed preference assumptions to measure an agent’s welfare. Under these assumptions, the direct effect of any policy that changes choices is to reduce consumer welfare. However, empirical evidence from behavioral economics in a variety of domains suggests that people sometimes do make systematic mistakes. The field of behavioral public economics extends the theoretical and empirical tools of public economics to incorporate the possibility of consumer mistakes into questions about policy evaluation and design. This is a PhD-level mini-course in behavioral public economics. In this course, we’ll consider questions like the following: How can we do welfare analysis if choice does not necessarily identify utility? How do we empirically measure consumer biases? How do we set socially optimal policies in settings when consumers may not act in their own best interest? Nudges change behavior at low cost. Does that mean they are a good idea? What are the costs and benefits of tax complexity?