BEHAVIOR CHANGE TACTIC
Social Norms
Social norms are shared expectations on how people within a certain group will or should behave. They are often considered as unwritten rules that govern behavior and tend to be very influential.Influencing behavior using social norms can take a variety of forms. For example, some studies aim to correct misunderstandings around descriptive norms (what people in a group actually do). One trial involving the UK Behavioural Insights Team increased tax compliance by emphasizing that the vast majority of people pay their taxes on time, which influenced non-compliers to become more like the majority. People generally do not like to deviate from the norm, which may explain the success of this tactic.Other approaches involve attempting to change social norms or create new social norms, which is substantially harder. One prominent example was the promotion of the ""designated driver"" (DDs) in the US during a period of high automobile fatalities. Public health officials influenced Hollywood producers to include the designated driver in film and television scenes, which caused viewers to: 1) likely believe the use of DDs was much more common than it actually was, and 2) likely consider using a DD was what they ""should"" do (i.e. the injunctive norm). Following the public health campaign, awareness and compliance with the DD protocol rose substantially, and auto fatalities dropped precipitously.
Studies involving Social Norms
PAPERS
Tax Compliance via Social Norms
BEHAVIOR
Taxes
TACTICS
Social Norms
PAPERS
Unpublished.
BEHAVIOR
Ethics & Compliance
TACTICS
Social Norms
PAPERS
Reminders, Raffles and Rent Payments
TACTICS
Micro-Incentives, Lotteries, Reminders, Cues, & Triggers
PAPERS
Opioid prescribing decreases after learning of a patient’s fatal overdose
AUTHORS
Jason Doctor
BEHAVIOR
Healthcare Delivery, Prescribing Medications
TACTICS
Social Norms, Framing Effects, Feedback
PAPERS
Delivering information about retirement saving among Hispanic women: two Facebook experiments
AUTHORS
L Rodriguez, L Blanco
BEHAVIOR
Savings
TACTICS
Social Norms
PAPERS
Can an Email Make it Easier to Schedule Tutoring?
BEHAVIOR
Attendance
TACTICS
Reduce Friction or Barriers, Checklists
PAPERS
Offering Inputs for Sale When Farmers Have Liquidity Can Drive Up Adoption
TACTICS
Commitment Devices
PAPERS
Increasing Financial Aid Awards with Reminders.
BEHAVIOR
Financial Aid
TACTICS
Checklists, Reminders, Cues, & Triggers
PAPERS
Plan-Making Reminders Improve Timely Loan Payments
BEHAVIOR
Loan Repayment
TACTICS
Implementation Intentions, Reminders, Cues, & Triggers
Products leveraging Social Norms
PRODUCTS
Nest Thermostat
Behaviors
Conservation Behaviors
Tactics
Environmental Restructuring, Automation, Social Norms +6 more
PRODUCTS
Vote.org
Behaviors
Mental Health & Self-Care
Tactics
AI or Chatbot, Goal Setting, Implementation Intentions +5 more
PRODUCTS
Opower
Behaviors
Other, Civic Participation
Tactics
Reduce Friction or Barriers
PRODUCTS
Fabulous
Behaviors
Physical Activity, Diet & Nutrition, Self-Management
Tactics
Education or Information, Reminders, Cues +8 more
PRODUCTS
Nudge Rewards
Behaviors
Physical Activity, Diet & Nutrition, Disease Management
Tactics
Education or Information, Reminders, Cues +5 more
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.