A unique compendium of the latest behavioural insights, distilled, applied and combined to strengthen your ideas

The Three Intrinsic Motivation Questions: Play, Purpose and Potential When someone comes to me for coaching, if they are at a big fork in the road, I’d suggest three questions. Each can help us to reflect on the three levers of intrinsic motivation. The diagram is a bit more convoluted than the original…but it reflects the complexity of life and the journey towards creating a life we love.. should you take on that new project? Yes…if it connects with your deepest sense of intrinsic motivation PLAY: WILL THIS PROJECT CREATE PURE JOY FOR ME, RIGHT NOW? PURPOSE: DOES THIS PROJECT CONNECT TO MY UNIQUE ZONE OF GENIUS OR MY BIGGEST, HAIRIEST, AUDACIOUS GOALS? POTENTIAL: WILL THIS PROJECT HELP CREATE A LIFE I LOVE?

An open source collection of Design Principles and methods.

Now a new study by researchers at The Ohio State University has taken this even further, discovering that people who become immersed in the fiction they read use the same part of the brain to think about fictional characters as they do to think about themselves.

To get the brain to accept a story which explains why a consumer bought a product, it needs information presented in a particular way. The best way to deliver this information is to explain a customer’s anxieties, motivations, purchase-progress events, and purchase-progress situations. When combined, they form what I call Characters.

This is the story of a marriage, told through an email being drafted in real time. It takes about five minutes to read/experience.

https://twitter.com/juliayorks/status/1588182939933605888?s=20&t=m8xmsJ8zgWPAAb-FpU2L3w For YEARS, I used the Save the Cat beat sheet template when writing my features. But, I'm currently working with a director who thinks about story using the 8 sequence method, and I liked that too! So, I created a new template that marries both... and then some.

When it comes to reducing obesity, evidence shows that changing food environments is more effective than measures that try to educate or change the behaviour of individuals. The interventions that participants consider to be most acceptable are the same as those that they perceived to be most effective at tackling obesity. However, the interventions that were reported to be least effective and least acceptable — such as reducing portion sizes and the taxation of unhealthy foods — may actually have the greatest potential for promoting healthy eating at the population level. While we must be cautious with how we interpret correlations like this, it suggests that addressing the disconnect between the evidence base and public understanding may be a viable way of influencing public acceptability

Sir Humphrey, incensed that Hacker is pushing ahead with his “Grand Design”, delivers a masterclass in how to conduct a government opinion poll.

Katie De-loyde at the University of Bristol and colleagues created three mock-ups of menus, of the sort you might see in a food delivery app. Each of these menus featured three burritos — beef, chicken and vegetarian. For each burrito, the price (the same for each), the calorie content, a Fairtrade logo, a spice indicator and a photo of the product were all included. In one mock-up, the team also included a ‘social nudge’ (something designed to encourage people to act according to social norms): the vegetarian burrito sported a gold star with the words ‘Most Popular’. In another version of the menu, each burrito was instead accompanied with an ‘eco-label’, indicating its ranking on a traffic light type scale of sustainability. The beef got a red 5 rating (for unsustainable), the chicken a yellow 3 (neither sustainable nor unsustainable) and the vegetarian a green 1 (sustainable).

Character.AI is bringing to life the science-fiction dream of open-ended conversations and collaborations with computers. We are building the next generation of dialog agents—with a long-tail of applications spanning entertainment, education, general question-answering and others. Our dialog agents are powered by our own proprietary technology based on large language models, built and trained from the ground up with conversation in mind. How does the Character.AI beta work? The Character.AI beta is based on neural language models. A supercomputer reads huge amounts of text and learns to hallucinate what words might come next in any given situation. Models like these have many uses including auto-complete and machine translation. At Character.AI, you collaborate with the computer to write a dialog - you write one character's lines, and the computer creates the other character's lines, giving you the illusion that you are talking with the other character.

We built this database containing our favorite 200+ Behavioral Design resources, tools, and guides to celebrate our recent 200th newsletter anniversary. Given that we’ve shared over 1,900 pieces of Behavioral Design content over the years, we can say that we know our stuff – but in the end, we’ve just created here what we wish existed. Hope you like it too!

Wow - detailed and useful guide to creating a strategy

With this thread, you’ll learn 9 lessons: 1. The Data Quality Framework 2. The Participant Relationship 3. Perfect introductions 4. Instructions that work 5. Helpful signposting 6. An enjoyable experience 7. Getting feedback 8. Progressive piloting 9. Types of quality control

Qualtrics recommendation is to use the commitment request as that performed the best. However, the textual and factual attention checks also performed better than the control.

Our results showed that while most respondents understand why attention checks are conducted, a nonnegligible proportion of respondents evaluated them as controlling or annoying. Most respondents passed the attention check; however, among those who failed the test, 61% seem to have failed the task deliberately. These findings reinforce that noncompliance is a serious concern with attention check instruments. The results of our experiment showed that more respondents passed the attention check if a comprehensible reason was given.

We acquire a lot of information about the world through texts, which can be categorized at the broadest level into two primary genres: narratives and exposition. Stories and essays differ across a variety of dimensions, including structure and content, with numerous theories hypothesizing that stories are easier to understand and recall than essays. However, empirical work in this area has yielded mixed results. To synthesize research in this area, we conducted a meta-analysis of experiments in which memory and/or comprehension of narrative and expository texts was investigated. Based on over 75 unique samples and data from more than 33,000 participants, we found that stories were more easily understood and better recalled than essays. Moreover, this result was robust, not influenced by the inclusion of a single effect-size or single study, and not moderated by various study characteristics. This finding has implications for any domain in which acquiring and retaining information is important.

We present four strategies, informed by behavioural science, that government and researchers can deploy to improve the use of evidence in policy decisions.

Developed over several years, the BehaviourWorks Method is a tried and tested approach to changing behaviours. Consisting of three primary phases - Exploration, Deep Dive and Application - The Method can be used in full, or in parts, to gather evidence on the behaviour change approach that is most likely to work.

We’re delighted to invite you to download the latest version of the Behavioral Science Annual – a collection of case studies filled with social interventions and applied behavioral science. This year the Annual is truly global, meaning you’ll find a whole collection of international cases, from: Tackling childhood malnourishment in Andean communities Incentivizing COVID-19 vaccination among Chicago youth Reducing drink driving on Australian country roads Creating the habit of hand washing with soap in rural Indian schools Addressing the high drop-off rates of stem-cell donors Preventing hidden hunger in West African countries Reducing food waste by redesigning bread packaging Giving new life to the end slices of a loaf Making the health benefits of Yogurt+ attractive and understandable Fighting night crime in Melbourne’s darkest streets Tackling overcrowding in French train stations Reducing waste being dumped outside of bins in London’s borough of Westminster

This toolkit is a short guide to strategic communications, based on extensive research and building on the experience of activists and communicators from around the globe. It aims to provide a framework rather than a blueprint; helping you to ask the right questions rather than giving you the right answers. It’s designed to be helpful for anyone who communicates as part of their voluntary or paid work. It’s written with a focus on European LGBTI activists, but we hope it will be useful to others with a similar vision

Approximately 1 in 5 Australians experience a mental disorder every year, costing the Australian economy $56.7 billion per year; therefore, prevention and early intervention are urgently needed. This study reports the evaluation results of a social marketing pilot program that aimed to improve the well-being of young adults. The Elevate Self Growth program aimed to help participants perform various well-being behaviors, including screen time reduction, quality leisure activities, physical activity, physical relaxation, meditation and improved sleep habits. A multi-method evaluation was undertaken to assess Elevate Self Growth for the 19 program participants who paid to participate in the proof-of-concept program. Social Cognitive Theory was used in the program design and guided the evaluation. A descriptive assessment was performed to examine the proof-of-concept program. Considerations were given to participants’ levels of program progress, performance of well-being behaviors, improvements in well-being, and program user experience. Participants who had made progress in the proof-of-concept program indicated improved knowledge, skills, environmental support and well-being in line with intended program outcomes. Program participants recommended improvements to achieve additional progress in the program, which is strongly correlated with outcome changes observed. These improvements are recommended for the proof-of-concept well-being program prior to moving to a full randomized control trial. This paper presents the initial data arising from the first market offerings of a theoretically mapped proof-of-concept and reports insights that suggest promise for approaches that apply Social Cognitive Theory in well-being program design and implementation.

Eight archetypes of gamification emerged from the analysis of health-related mobile apps: (1) competition and collaboration, (2) pursuing self-set goals without rewards, (3) episodical compliance tracking, (4) inherent gamification for external goals, (5) internal rewards for self-set goals, (6) continuous assistance through positive reinforcement, (7) positive and negative reinforcement without rewards, and (8) progressive gamification for health professionals. The results indicate a close relationship between the identified archetypes and the actual health behavior that is being targeted.

Food waste is a systemic problem, with waste occurring at all stages in the supply chain and consumption process. There is a need to unpack which strategies, approaches and tools can be applied to reduce the amount of food wasted. Understanding the extent of social marketing principles used offers insights into the additional means that can be applied to increase voluntary behavioral change.

It explores the toolbox of the behavioral manager as Samuel answers ten questions from Henrik related to organizational behavior change.

Social and behavioral science research proliferated during the COVID-19 pandemic, reflecting the substantial increase in influence of behavioral science in public health and public policy more broadly. This review presents a comprehensive assessment of 742 scientific articles on human behavior during COVID-19. Two independent teams evaluated 19 substantive policy recommendations (“claims”) on potentially critical aspects of behaviors during the pandemic drawn from the most widely cited behavioral science papers on COVID-19. Teams were made up of original authors and an independent team, all of whom were blinded to other team member reviews throughout. Both teams found evidence in support of 16 of the claims; for two claims, teams found only null evidence; and for no claims did the teams find evidence of effects in the opposite direction. One claim had no evidence available to assess. Seemingly due to the risks of the pandemic, most studies were limited to surveys, highlighting a need for more investment in field research and behavioral validation studies. The strongest findings indicate interventions that combat misinformation and polarization, and to utilize effective forms of messaging that engage trusted leaders and emphasize positive social norms.

All in all, participants got to see the hidden perspectives of a reference group: their fellow students. The stories and assurances didn’t come from professors or administrators, people outside their reference group. By learning these new perspectives, students might look at their adversities on campus a little differently, as a normal part of adjusting to college. Like encouragement we might get from a close friend at a time when we feel adrift, the message in our study sought to make people feel less like a ship lost at sea and more like co-travelers taking the first steps on a journey full of possibility. The stories turned uncertainty about belonging into a basis of connection rather than shame.

Behavior Audit - user journey Miro board

1. Introduction 6 1.1. Definitions 6 1.2. What is behaviour, and why does it matter in a crisis? 6 2. What will people do in a crisis? 7 2.1. What common assumptions are made about crisis behaviour? 7 2.2. How can we anticipate actual crisis behaviour? 9 2.3. How does trust in government, or lack of it, influence crisis behaviour? 11 3. How can communications encourage the right behaviours in a crisis? 12 3.1. How should we communicate in a crisis? 12 3.2. How should we communicate about threats and risks? 14 3.3. How can communications change public risk perception? 17 3.4. How can we make the most of the public’s assistance? 19 3.5. How can communications encourage compliance with guidance and regulations? 21 4. How can communications discourage harmful behaviour in a crisis? 23 4.1. How can we avoid negative backlash effects? 23 4.2. How can communications help maintain social order? 24 4.3. How can communications maintain trust in a crisis? 26 5. Case study: COVID-19 pandemic

plus Field Guide companion doc to this download on same page