reactance

This commentary argues that social marketing and the application of behavioural sciences to policy constitute two converging paths towards better policies. It highlights points of convergence and divergence between both disciplines and the potential benefits of further embedding social marketing principles and methods within the recent trend of applying behavioural sciences to policy.

A free online course on behavioural insights for public policy from the Behavioral Economics Team of the Australian government

He told me his First Rule of Consulting: No matter how much you try, you can’t stop people from sticking beans up their nose... Time and time again, I come across situations where I think, “OMG! They are trying to stick beans up their nose!” It explains what’s happening and what I should do next. The only thing I can do in a beans-and-noses situation (notice my clever use of flight-attendant grammar forms?) is wait. Wait until the bean is in its final resting place. Then, with a calmness only seen in yoga instructors, I can turn to the nose owner and ask, “So, how is that working for you? Did it do everything you’d hoped?” Of course, if they answer they enjoyed it and it was wonderful, then they are not someone I can relate to or help in any way. However, if sticking a bean deep into their nostril doesn’t meet the very high expectations they’d had, I can now start talking alternative approaches to reaching those expectations.

4 types of nudges/sludges and characters to represent them

We test the effectiveness of an entertainment education TV series, MTV Shuga, aimed at providing information and changing attitudes and behaviors related to HIV/AIDS. Using a simple model we show that “edutainment“ can work through an individual or a social channel. We conducted a randomized controlled trial in urban Nigeria where young viewers were exposed to MTV Shuga or to a placebo TV series. Among those exposed to MTV Shuga, we created additional variation in the social messages they received and in the people with whom they watched the show. We find significant improvements in knowledge and attitudes towards HIV and risky sexual behavior. Treated subjects are twice as likely to get tested for HIV eight months after the intervention. We also find reductions in STDs among women. These effects are stronger for viewers who report being more involved with the narrative, consistent with the psychological underpinnings of edutainment. Our experimental manipulations of the social norm component did not produce significantly different results from the main treatment. The individual effect of edutainment thus seems to have prevailed in the context of our study.

The 2012 review found 6 studies (combined N = 23 048). In a meta-analysis, the pooled odds ratio for condom use was 2.01 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.42-2.84) for the most recent sexual encounter and 2.10 (95% CI: 1.51-2.91) for a composite of all condom use outcomes. Studies had significant methodological limitations. Of 518 possible new citations identified in the update, no new articles met our inclusion criteria.

It was a fun presentation mixing the good and the bad. A chance to groan, cringe, shake one’s head in disapproval but also to smile and laugh. The goal was to learn from the mistakes and successes of others. Below is a brief roundup of the presentation, with some of the components of modern day storytelling. At the end of this post you’ll find a “cheat sheet” of do’s and dont’s when posting publicly which you can download, print and keep handy.

Trauma patients as depicted on television dramas typically go from ED to OR, and survivors usually return home. Television portrayal of rapid functional recovery after major injury may cultivate false expectations among patients and their families.

Start your meetings and gatherings with over 200 questions designed to build trust, connectedness, and psychological safety.

SHOPS Plus developed the Social Marketing Organizational Development Assessment Tool that benchmarks progress in the institutional development of social marketing organizations. The tool assesses a social marketing organization across three areas of sustainability: technical, institutional, and financial.

demand for depression drugs is also witnessing a decline as end-users have more coping options at their disposal. The huge popularity of mental health apps, such as Headspace, Calm, Moodnotes, Pacifica, and SuperBetter has given patients more control over how they manage depression.

How to conduct user research for systems with confidential or otherwise sensitive data, for example in domains like healthcare or financial services, where it can be problematic to record screens or otherwise share the user's information.

Common sense suggests that people struggling to achieve their goals benefit from receiving motivational advice. What if the reverse is true? In a preregistered field experiment, we tested whether giving motivational advice raises academic achievement for the advisor. We randomly assigned n = 1,982 high school students to a treatment condition, in which they gave motivational advice (e.g., how to stop procrastinating) to younger students, or to a control condition. Advice givers earned higher report card grades in both math and a self-selected target class over an academic quarter. This psychologically wise advice-giving nudge, which has relevance for policy and practice, suggests a valuable approach to improving achievement: one that puts people in a position to give.

Addressing massive challenges like climate change and poverty requires that we take a long-term view and have a preventative mindset. Since these perspectives challenge the deeply ingrained ways we have evolved to think and behave, we need to pay attention to why prevention is hard to think about and navigate the cognitive road blocks that stand in the way of progress. By presenting issues and information in ways that unlock support for preventative approaches, we can galvanize the ideas and actions social and environmental change requires.

Yet the characteristics of online environments – the deliberate design and the ability to generate enormous quantities of data about how we behave, who we interact with and the choices we make, coupled with the potential for mass experimentation – can also leave consumers open to harm and manipulation. Many of the failures and distortions in online markets are behavioural in nature, from the deep information asymmetries that arise as a result of consumers being inattentive to online privacy notices to the erosion of civility on online platforms. This paper considers how governments, regulators and at least some businesses might seek to harness our deepening understanding of human behaviour to address these failures, and to shape and guide the evolution of digital markets and online environments that really do work for individuals and communities.

Summary: Exposure to a stimulus influences behavior in subsequent, possibly unrelated tasks. This is called priming; priming effects abound in usability and web design.

In other words, it’s not a question of consumer choices being made that are bad, but of whether consumer choice exists. So when we ask why we ‘choose (or not)' highly energy efficient products, maybe we should ask instead if we're actually ‘picking (or not)' super energy efficient products. Picking vs. choosing. This is not a question of semantics. Far from it.

This idea, that five to eight users will reveal 85% of all usability problems, is an old myth. It’s not true. It’s never been true.

Before we get started…there’s a free PDF download available that’s related to this post. It has: 3 prompts to help you brainstorm what your comic could be about. 3 comic creation tips to help think more visually and help you create a comic. 5 comic page layouts you can use to sketch out your comic!