Yet the latest research shows something inconvenient for that narrative: a sharp reduction in fentanyl overdoses that started before Trump took office, almost certainly in response to policy under his predecessor Joe Biden. As researchers noted in a paper published in the journal Science this week, fatal overdoses from synthetic opioids like fentanyl plummeted after peaking at 76,000 in 2023 in the US, dropping by over a third by the end of 2024. (Full numbers aren’t in yet for 2025, but provisional data from the CDC suggests another double-digit percentage drop.) The researchers proposed a possible explanation, writing that a “major disruption in the illicit fentanyl trade, possibly tied to Chinese government actions,” may have “translated into sharp reductions in overdose mortality beginning in mid- or late-2023 and continued into 2024 across both the US and Canada.” In other words, as Axiom reports, diplomatic pressure has proven far more effective than efforts to crack down on drug dealers on the street.

To meet UK Net-Zero emissions targets, meat consumption must decrease. We present results from two studies evaluating interventions to reduce purchasing of meat-containing meals across university cafeterias in Oxford, UK. Study 1 tested whether two dynamic descriptive norm messages changed meal purchasing. Over eight weeks, four cafeterias displayed a norm message incorporating a socially ‘close’ referent group and three cafeterias displayed a message incorporating a socially ‘distant’ referent group. Two cafeterias were assigned a no-message control condition. A generalised linear mixed effect model suggested both messages decreased odds of cafeteria diners purchasing vegetarian meals, in comparison to control, 'Close' Message: Ratio of Odds Ratios (ORs)=0.79, 95% 95% CI [0.72, 0.86]; 'Remote' Message: Ratio of ORs=0.84, 95% CI [0.76,0.92]. Study 2 involved three pre-post experiments testing whether different interventions changed meal purchasing: re-positioning vegetarian products, increasing vegetarian availability, and introducing vegetarian defaults. Generalised linear models suggested each intervention was associated with significant increases in odds of diners purchasing vegetarian meals, Positioning: OR=1.33, 95% CI [1.24,1.44]; Availability: OR=1.60, 95% CI [1.45, 1.75]; Defaults: OR=1.77, 95% CI [1.61, 1.95]. These study results could be due to norm messaging being less effective at promoting vegetarian meals than interventions in availability, defaults, and positioning. But, given the study designs, they could instead be due to self-selection effects, or regression to the mean.

PCS yields three important discoveries in this investigation: First, context variables are more predictive of behavior for some individuals than others. Second, contrary to common wisdom, there is no “magic number” for how long it takes to form a habit. Instead, the speed of habit formation appears to vary significantly between behavioral domain: Gym habits take months to form and handwashing habits take weeks to form. Third, consistent with prior research on nonhuman animals, more habitual gymgoers are reward-insensitive, responding less to a well-designed behavioral intervention

Massive snowfalls like the one that hit the US east coast this week usually spell trouble for traffic. But critics of America's car-centric transport network are using the snow - and Twitter - to demonstrate how roads should be redesigned to make them safer for pedestrians.

Before the lights went out, my social enterprise, DevelopMetrics, turned those tools loose on the USAID archive—one last look at what half a century of development really taught us. If you allocate grants, run programs, or shape policy, this is the closest thing we have to a postmortem on how tens of billions of dollars in development aid actually behaved over the course of decades in the wild. It offers a model for future learning on a mass scale, and the results affirm some important guiding principles as the development ecosystem considers how to build going forward.

This playbook gives you a system to map, diagnose, and eliminate those forces, so your change work actually changes works. Inside this playbook, you’ll get: -> A 4-step framework for identifying what’s blocking adoption -> How to score and map behavioral friction -> What most change models miss (and how to fix it) -> Real-world strategies to turn insight into implementation

Because here’s what most marketers miss: triggering emotion isn’t the same as encoding emotion. You can make people feel something in the moment and leave zero trace in memory. You can stimulate without imprinting. You can shock, confuse, or provoke and still be completely forgettable. Real emotional coding doesn’t just activate feelings. It attaches those feelings to fundamental human drives. The deep psychological forces that shape how we see ourselves and move through the world.

This paper offers a refreshed and expanded view of how behavioural science can support sustainable development. It presents a comprehensive, evidence-based resource designed to help countries integrate behavioural insights into their policies and programmes for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). At the heart of the paper is a global database of 201 behavioural and nudge interventions, each aligned with one or more of the 17 SDGs. You can explore the full database here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tWy0X2Aq08kIUNYG-Cw5FQsvakdKSyKGKen7_hc2F48/edit?gid=1627241714#gid=1627241714

Sarah Osman

A psychiatrist couldn’t keep up with the demand for mental health care. So he hired grandmothers. He asked himself a simple question: who do people already trust with their problems? The majority said it was grandmothers. They are wise, respected and embedded in the community. He trained them in basic therapy for common mental health disorders and gave them benches in public spaces. The results speak for themselves : → Thousands sought support → Depression symptoms dropped → A randomised trial showed it worked better than standard primary care

The repository of SBC capacity development resources is a user-friendly, living dashboard that brings together a curated collection of freely available resources for SBC capacity development. It includes materials from a diverse range of organizations and practices, organized into 8 areas of work, namely: Advocate and build partnerships Applied social and behavioral science Capacity building Design, plan, and implement Digital engagement Generate and use evidence SBC in emergencies Systems strengthening

How to get people to do exactly what you want, and make them want to do it On live telly, decisions need to be made on the spot. Learn from Maz' years of experience producing everything from Big Brother to the US Apprentice (yes, with... him) and get ready to unlock the secrets of instant behaviour change. This interactive session will give you practical tools to influence behaviour in real-time, leaving you with a brain-bending understanding of how to not only get people to do exactly what you want, but enjoy doing it. Maz Farrelly - Legendary TV producer with over 8 billion views. If you've watched it, Maz probably made it. TV mastermind Maz Farrelly has created and produced some of the biggest shows globally, watched more than eight billion times; from 5 series of Big Brother, to The X Factor, to the US Apprentice (yes, with... him). She's produced everyone from pop stars to politicians, Hollywood A-listers to Astronauts, Beyoncé to King Charles. Maz now uses their 'borrowed' intel to help global brands succeed in getting noticed and being successful. You could call it gaining the 'X Factor' - and Maz should know, she made the show.

video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yK3ElXX5S6E

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.