When the word ‘vulnerable’ is used as an adjective to describe people, such as ‘vulnerable consumers’ this risks causing harm (or more harm) to those experiencing vulnerability. We recommend that ‘vulnerability’ is used as a noun to describe the situation people experience, suchas ‘consumer vulnerability’ rather than as an adjective to modify a noun (see Macdonald et al.,2021). The use of person-first terminology is consistent with adopting a strengths-based approachto customer vulnerability (Raciti et al. 2022, Russell-Bennett et. al. 2023). This addresses one ofthe harm factors listed above by taking away the stigma incumbent with assigned labels. Forpolicymakers or practitioners who aim to focus on addressing those who are at a higher risk ofharm, we suggest the following term is optimal: “consumers experiencing heightened vulnerability” (CEHV). The shorter term to use outside this framework is “consumers experiencing vulnerability”.

Invented claim about social security fraud due to misunderstood statistics

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.

The Trauma-Informed Storytelling Toolkit offers customizable Google Doc templates and resources to help nonprofits share stories that promote safety and resist harm.

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.

When myth belief was high, question-answer format was more effective than a fact-only format immediately post-intervention, and after delay, more effective than fact-myth format.

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.

The SHeLL Health Literacy Editor is an online browser-based software that gives you objective, real-time feedback on the complexity of health information.

Q&A: What Happens When We Encounter the Same Information Repeatedly? In this Q&A from Choiceology, UCL and MIT neuroscience professor Tali Sharot discusses her research exploring a mistake we can make when we’re exposed to the same information repeatedly.

Audiopedia Academy GPT is an advanced AI-powered assistant built using OpenAI's GPT technology. Designed specifically to help Community-Based Organizations (CBOs), NGOs, government organizations, and individual stakeholders, this tool guides users through the EDUC method for creating meaningful and effective audio-based outreach campaigns. This interactive, empathetic, and resource-aware tool is now available at adp.ax/gpt.

I used three words that I routinely used in talks, and that I had thought about for a long time before selecting for frequent repetition in my book on dieting. I thought they helped simplify a complex idea. I was horrified that morning to realize that my three carefully chosen words could be mistaken for terrible diet advice if you plucked them out of the sentences they were in. I urged people to strive for their “leanest livable weight.” It looked like I was recommending that people diet until their weight was so low they could just barely cling to life. Did I mean that? Absolutely not. If anything, I meant close to the opposite.

Our approach to goals and challenges can be categorized into two main motivational mindsets: prevention focus and promotion focus. These concepts, developed by social psychologist Tory Higgins, describe how we frame our desires and how that shapes our behaviour.

In this video, behavioural expert Bri Williams reveals why we are better to talk about a product's users than the product itself when sharing a statistic.

Latinx is broadly unpopular among Latino adults who have heard of it, according to the survey. 75% of Latinos who have heard of the term Latinx say it should not be used to describe the Hispanic or Latino population, up from 65% saying the same in 2019.

An in-depth analysis of replies to COVID-19 vaccination outreach reveals thanks, angst — and much more.

This highlights some really important things to consider in creating behavior change interventions - there isn't one “user journey“ - as Amy said many times, personalization will matter (and we can have a whole other conversation on what personalization means). There may be a “dose“ effect for some people where they need to accumulate a certain understanding before any message works and it is more about the dose than the personalization (or not) of the most proximal message.

Anticipated regret can indeed be a powerful motivator. When you think about what you don’t want in the future—and the picture in your mind is unpleasant enough—it can influence the decisions you make right now. While anticipated regret sometimes comes across as fearmongering, it can be done more artfully. In behavior change communications, we can apply the right dose of this strategy to prompt a person to action.

Our latest capability “Ask Viamo Anything” is providing access to the latest AI technology to the digitally disconnected – at no cost to them. It was built and will soon be offered on the Viamo Platform. Ask Viamo Anything works on simple mobile phones without internet access. And because of its use of voice technology, it can even be used by people with low literacy — leapfrogging text-based approaches and truly democratizing access.

Results indicated that emotional shift messages generated more talk than single-valence messages because they elicited greater emotional intensity and deeper message processing.

New Metaphors is a creative toolkit for generating ideas and reframing problems.

“We tested the effectiveness of different messages aimed at addressing climate change and created a tool that can be deployed by both lawmakers and practitioners to generate support for climate policy or to encourage action,” says Madalina Vlasceanu, an assistant professor in New York University’s Department of Psychology and the paper’s lead author. The tool, which the researchers describe as a “Climate Intervention Webapp,” takes into account an array of targeted audiences in the studied countries, ranging from nationality and political ideology to age, gender, education, and income level. “To maximize their impact, policymakers and advocates can assess which messaging is most promising for their publics,” adds paper author Kimberly Doell, a senior scientist at the University of Vienna who led the project with Vlasceanu. Article: https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/cr5at Tool: https://climate-interventions.shinyapps.io/climate-interventions/

We constructed brand names for diverse products with consonantal stricture spots either from the front to the rear of the mouth, thus inwards (e.g., BODIKA), or from the rear to the front, thus outwards (e.g., KODIBA). These muscle dynamics resemble the oral kinematics during either ingestion (inwards), which feels positive, or expectoration (outwards), which feels negative. In 7 experiments (total N = 1261), participants liked products with inward names more than products with outward names (Experiment 1), reported higher purchase intentions (Experiment 2), and higher willingness-to-pay (Experiments 3a–3c, 4, 5), with the price gain amounting to 4–13% of the average estimated product value.