BEHAVIOR CHANGE TACTIC
Public Commitments
Public commitments are stating one's intention to perform a behavior or achieve a certain outcome so that others become aware of it. The commitment need not be truly public (i.e. possible for any person to learn), and can be limited to family, coworkers, a small group of friends, etc.Public commitments are often layered with rewards (e.g., "I will walk 10 miles for every $100 donated by my Facebook friends") or punishments (e.g., "I will do [something embarassing] if I fail to follow-through"). Public commitments are a form of commitment device, where loss of social status or other social consequences may be implied.Some studies have found mixed results with public commitments, so this tool should be handled carefully. It is believed that in some contexts, some of of the benefit someone receives from performing a behavior or reaching a goal is actually imparted by the social status they receive in stating their intention to do so. Thus, the actual performance become less important (especially when compared with the cost, which is typically borne over many weeks or even years).
Studies involving Public Commitments
PAPERS
On the Elicitation of Preferences for Alternative Therapies.
BEHAVIOR
Healthcare Consumption
TACTICS
Framing Effects
PAPERS
Default Options In Advance Directives Influence How Patients Set Goals For End-Of-Life Care
AUTHORS
George Loewenstein, Scott Halpern, Elizabeth Cooney, Kevin Volpp
BEHAVIOR
Healthcare Consumption
TACTICS
Smart Defaults
PAPERS
Campaigns Against Vote-Selling in the Philippines: Do Promises Work?
AUTHORS
Allen Hicken, Dean Yang, Nico Ravanilla, Stephen Leider
BEHAVIOR
Voting
TACTICS
Public Commitments
Related behavior change tactics
TACTICS
AI or Chatbot
Using a chatbot or simulated conversational interaction.
TACTICS
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
ACT is a therapeutic approach originalled developed by Steven Hayes. It borrows from previous concepts like cognitive behavioral therapy and Morita therapy. The principles of ACT are fairly systematic and lend themselves well to program design, finding empirical support in adaptations like 2morrow's smoking cessation and pain management interventions.
TACTICS
Active Choice
Active choice, sometimes referred to as enhanced active choice or forced choice, refers to removing default options and often increasing the salience of potential decisions through emphasizing the consequences of one or more of the options. Coined by Punam Anand Keller and colleagues in 2011, it was originally intended to address concerns around paternalistic nudging for use in situations where forcing the default option may be considered unethical. In one of the original studies, CVS customers were given the choice to enroll in automatic refills of medications via delivery. The choices they were presented were ""Enroll in refills at home"" vs “I Prefer to Order my Own Refills.”
TACTICS
Automation
Automation refers to having another person, group, or technology system perform part or all of the intended behavior. A prominent example is Thaler & Bernartzi's Save More Tomorrow intervention, which invested a portion of employees' earnings into retirement funds automatically and even increased the contribution level to scale with pay raises. Other examples include automatically scheduling medical appointments so the patient needn't do it themselves and mailing healthy recipe ingredients to the person's home to reduce the burden of shopping.
TACTICS
Behavior Substitution
Behavior substitution refers to attempting to eliminate a problematic behavior by replacing it with another one. Often, the substituted behaviors are intended to have similar sensory qualities (e.g. drink flavored sparkling water instead of soda). The goal is typically to disassociate the original behavior from its cue, enabling the more positive behavior to be triggered automatically.
TACTICS
Behavioral Activation (BA)
Behavioral activation is a therapeutic approach that typically pairs activity scheduling with either monitoring tools or goal-setting. For example, someone might aim to balance activities they "should" do but underperform, like self-care behaviors, with activities they enjoy. Users of this technique may also track which activities cause certain cognitions or affective states, like those associated with depression.