Social support refers to the perception or reality that other people will provide assistance in a given context. It is a key component of several behavior models and plays an important role in mediating behavior change.
Implementation intentions are specific details for when and how a behavior should or will be performed.
These are often formulated as ""if-then"" rules, such as:
- "if I crave something sweet, I'll have fruit instead of candy"
- "if I am in the mood for a cigarette, I'll wait 5 minutes—then, if I still want it, I can have one"
Other examples include studies where flu vaccination uptake was higher in groups of people nudged to make more specific plans (i.e. picking a specific time and date, along with a mode of transport to a specific clinic). The same general effect was observed with voting behaviors.
These are a generally low-cost tool to slightly improve the gap between intention and performance of a behavior.
Social support refers to the perception or reality that other people will provide assistance in a given context. It is a key component of several behavior models and plays an important role in mediating behavior change.
Identity priming refers to attempting to influence someone's behavior by emphasizing their being part of to a certain group or being a certain type of person. These often leverage social norms—particularly injunctive norms—and introjected regulation.
For example, voter turnout campaigns often emphasize the person's membership to the community or previous voting history in reminder letters.
Motivational interviewing (MI) is a therapeutic approach that aims to influence behavior by eliciting goals, motivation, insights, and specific behavioral plans through structured dialog. It's largely associated with William Miller and Stephen Rollnick, and bears some relation to the Socratic method (as does the original cognitive therapy approach). While originally developed as part of a treatment for substance abuse, the method has been generalized and found empirical support in assisting behavior change in diet, exercise, and other areas.
Group incentives refer to structure where an individual's likelihood or size of reward is influenced by others. The intention is to leverage positive peer pressure by causing compliant participants to influence less compliant participants to improve their behavior.
For example, sales teams may be offered a bonus based on an office's collective revenue generation or provided all individuals meet a baseline level of performance. Similarly a multi-site franchise may offer an incentive for whichever location improves their performance the most over the prior month.
Reducing friction or barriers to performing a behavior is simply making it easier or removing things that may be preventing someone from doing something.
This is a foundational technique in changing behavior, and part of the UK Behavioural Insights Team's 4-point approach ("Make it easy"). That said, knowing where the friction and barriers exist may not always be straightforward, and different groups of people may experience different barriers in different contexts.
Note: It is possible to remove too much friction. In a well-popularized study, a travel booking site found that delays in loading the best deals or travel options actually increased conversions. Similarly, longer input forms in digital interactions sometimes outperform, as people may consider the results more personalized or experience greater cognitive dissonance after having invested so much time in exploring the service.
