The development of effective interventions for COVID-19 vaccination has proven challenging given the unique and evolving determinants of that behavior. A tailored intervention to drive vaccination uptake through machine learning-enabled personalization of behavior change messages unexpectedly yielded a high volume of real-time short message service (SMS) feedback from recipients. A qualitative analysis of those replies contributes to a better understanding of the barriers to COVID-19 vaccination and demographic variations in determinants, supporting design improvements for vaccination interventions. Objective: The purpose of this study was to examine unsolicited replies to a text message intervention for COVID-19 vaccination to understand the types of barriers experienced and any relationships between recipient demographics, intervention content, and reply type. Method: We categorized SMS replies into 22 overall themes. Interrater agreement was very good (all κpooled . 0.62). Chi-square analyses were used to understand demographic variations in reply types and which messaging types were most related to reply types. Results: In total, 10,948 people receiving intervention text messages sent 17,090 replies. Most frequent reply types were “already vaccinated” (31.1%), attempts to unsubscribe (25.4%), and “will not get vaccinated” (12.7%). Within “already vaccinated” and “will not get vaccinated” replies, significant differences were observed in the demographics of those replying against expected base rates, all p . .001. Of those stating they would not vaccinate, 34% of the replies involved mis-/disinformation, suggesting that a determinant of vaccination involves nonvalidated COVID-19 beliefs. Conclusions: Insights from unsolicited replies can enhance our ability to identify appropriate intervention techniques to influence COVID-19 vaccination behaviors.

Our approach to goals and challenges can be categorized into two main motivational mindsets: prevention focus and promotion focus. These concepts, developed by social psychologist Tory Higgins, describe how we frame our desires and how that shapes our behaviour.

In this video, behavioural expert Bri Williams reveals why we are better to talk about a product's users than the product itself when sharing a statistic.

Here, we develop a novel cognitive framework by organizing these interventions along six cognitive processes: attention, perception, memory, effort, intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation. In addition, we conduct a meta-analysis of field experiments (i.e. randomized controlled trials) that contained real behavioural measures (n = 184 papers, k = 184 observations, N = 2 245 373 participants) from 2008 to 2021 to examine the effect size of these interventions targeting each cognitive process. Our findings demonstrate that interventions changing effort are more effective than interventions changing intrinsic motivation, and nudge and sludge interventions had similar effect sizes.

An in-depth analysis of replies to COVID-19 vaccination outreach reveals thanks, angst — and much more.

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_TOX9mjEtw

The first objective was to provide an overview of all activities that were employed during the course of a research project to develop a relapse prevention intervention for interdisciplinary pain treatment programs. The second objective was to examine how co-design may contribute to stakeholder involvement, generation of relevant insights and ideas, and incorporation of stakeholder input into the intervention design.

Gamification services are hailed as effective tools for influencing users’ behaviours, increasing engagement, motivation, and enhancing learning. In the field of behaviour change, transformative outcomes have been reported for gamification services; with some conceptualisation undertaken regarding transformative gamification services. However, there is a lack of research on practical implementation of transformative gamification services. Also, previous studies have often isolated a single component of gamification and not discussed the synergistic effects and behavioural outcomes of the experiences that the combination of gamification elements can create. To bridge this gap, we provide an implementation framework for transformative gamification services. This is achieved by identifying different components of transformative gamification from a social marketing and transformative service research (TSR) lens and their behavioural outcomes. To do this, we delve into game design, gamification and behaviour change literature and suggest a practical implementation framework which incorporates users' perspectives in the form of transformative values, user engagement types (play typologies), and consumption/service encounter experiences. This research contributes to gamification theory and practice by furthering the understanding of transformative gamification services in social marketing and TSR. It also provides behaviour change practitioners with detailed steps for implementation of such services aiming to create positive behavioural changes.

This highlights some really important things to consider in creating behavior change interventions - there isn't one “user journey“ - as Amy said many times, personalization will matter (and we can have a whole other conversation on what personalization means). There may be a “dose“ effect for some people where they need to accumulate a certain understanding before any message works and it is more about the dose than the personalization (or not) of the most proximal message.

Promoting agency – people's ability to form intentions and to act on them freely – must become a primary objective for Behavioural Public Policy (BPP). Contemporary BPPs do not directly pursue this objective, which is problematic for many reasons. From an ethical perspective, goals like personal autonomy and individual freedom cannot be realised without nurturing citizens’ agency. From an efficacy standpoint, BPPs that override agency – for example, by activating automatic psychological processes – leave citizens ‘in the dark’, incapable of internalising and owning the process of behaviour change. This may contribute to non-persistent treatment effects, compensatory negative spillovers or psychological reactance and backfiring effects. In this paper, we argue agency-enhancing BPPs can alleviate these ethical and efficacy limitations to longer-lasting and meaningful behaviour change. We set out philosophical arguments to help us understand and conceptualise agency. Then, we review three alternative agency-enhancing behavioural frameworks: (1) boosts to enhance people's competences to make better decisions; (2) debiasing to encourage people to reduce the tendency for automatic, impulsive responses; and (3) nudge+ to enable citizens to think alongside nudges and evaluate them transparently. Using a multi-dimensional framework, we highlight differences in their workings, which offer comparative insights and complementarities in their use. We discuss limitations of agency-enhancing BPPs and map out future research directions.

Planned Parenthood sexual health chatbot

Anticipated regret can indeed be a powerful motivator. When you think about what you don’t want in the future—and the picture in your mind is unpleasant enough—it can influence the decisions you make right now. While anticipated regret sometimes comes across as fearmongering, it can be done more artfully. In behavior change communications, we can apply the right dose of this strategy to prompt a person to action.

Story revolves around transformation and change, defined as the “Transformational journey of a human being.“ First type: A character changes drastically for the better, exemplified by “A Christmas Carol“ and “Groundhog Day.“ Second type: A character remains steadfast in their beliefs, changing the people around them instead. Third type: A character fails to change or realizes the need to change too late, resulting in a tragedy. The essence of a story is determined by its support of transformation, guiding what to include or exclude in the narrative.

In their landmark 1959 report often referenced in leadership theory, social psychologists John R. P. French and Bertram Raven pinpointed five bases of power: Legitimate: when people perceive that your rank in a formal hierarchy—e.g., manager, CEO, or president—gives you the right to “prescribe” their behavior Reward: when people perceive your ability to distribute rewards for completed tasks or met goals Coercive: when people perceive your ability to distribute punishments and disincentives (the opposite of reward power) Expert: when people perceive your special knowledge or expertise, which causes them to defer to your expertise Referent: when people feel “oneness” with you or a desire to be like you, leading to their respect and admiration of you Referent power is considered the most potent because it doesn’t require that a leader micromanage, use coercion, or reward to influence others. People follow a leader with referent power based on who the leader is and how they behave. According to French and Raven, referent power has the broadest range of influence of any power, allowing it to be leveraged on a large scale.

Results indicated that emotional shift messages generated more talk than single-valence messages because they elicited greater emotional intensity and deeper message processing.

Out of the 93 behavior change techniques that can be used, on average only 7 were chosen, and the most common were related to: 1. Feedback on behavior 2. Goal setting 3. Action planning As the study says: “within the “Goals and Planning” BCT group, only 3 out of 9 BCTs were utilized.

Start with the Quick 2+1™ to find your answer. The next phase is to trust your intuition to Label™ and Mirror™ the circumstances or dynamics that may have led to the confrontation. Then use a little Dynamic Silence™ to allow room for a response from the other side. Once they respond, use mirrors and labels to encourage them to keep talking and gather the information you need to get to the heart of the matter.

Do you wonder why people are so inconsistent? Why people often seem to contradict themselves? Why they believe things they know aren't true? Why they say “Don't do X and then do that very thing? Robert Kurzban explains why. The reason is that the human mind is modular, made up of a large number of parts with different functions. Sometimes these parts conflict with one another.

The new toolkit crosses local, central and international government action. It has many of the elements of the previous framework but also covers new ground. The most obvious is that we have changed the horizontal axis to better reflect the way government works in practice. This has meant including a number of new areas namely, influencing, engaging, designing, developing, resourcing, delivering and controlling (or managing). The vertical axis still follows the same logic from ‘softer’ more collaborative power at the top, down to more formal government power at the bottom of the axis. The update includes many familiar things from nudging behaviour to convening power and also adds new areas like deliberative approaches such as citizen juries. This is the framework for Policy Lab's new Government as a System toolkit. The new Government as a System toolkit framework. When looking across the whole system, it now has 56 distinct actions. Of course this isn’t an exhaustive set of options, you could create more and more detail as there is always more complexity and nuance that can be found in government. Importantly, we want policymakers to be considering how multiple levers are used together to address complex problems.

Over the past decade, behavioural scientists have identified five different holistic effects which can all impact on the overall effectiveness of a behaviour change intervention. Some of these effects or concepts can be positive, whereas others may end up neutralising the effect of any nudge, or worse, having a negative impact: Licensing effects Compensating effects Positive spillover effects Displacement effects Systemic effects or what we are calling ‘nudge fatigue’

In the first in his series of columns Ogilvy UK's head of strategy argues that accommodating behaviour - rather than adapting it - might be key to its change

Scientific evidence regularly guides policy decisions1, with behavioural science increasingly part of this process2. In April 2020, an influential paper3 proposed 19 policy recommendations (‘claims’) detailing how evidence from behavioural science could contribute to efforts to reduce impacts and end the COVID-19 pandemic. Here we assess 747 pandemic-related research articles that empirically investigated those claims. We report the scale of evidence and whether evidence supports them to indicate applicability for policymaking. Two independent teams, involving 72 reviewers, found evidence for 18 of 19 claims, with both teams finding evidence supporting 16 (89%) of those 18 claims. The strongest evidence supported claims that anticipated culture, polarization and misinformation would be associated with policy effectiveness. Claims suggesting trusted leaders and positive social norms increased adherence to behavioural interventions also had strong empirical support, as did appealing to social consensus or bipartisan agreement. Targeted language in messaging yielded mixed effects and there were no effects for highlighting individual benefits or protecting others. No available evidence existed to assess any distinct differences in effects between using the terms ‘physical distancing’ and ‘social distancing’. Analysis of 463 papers containing data showed generally large samples; 418 involved human participants with a mean of 16,848 (median of 1,699). That statistical power underscored improved suitability of behavioural science research for informing policy decisions. Furthermore, by implementing a standardized approach to evidence selection and synthesis, we amplify broader implications for advancing scientific evidence in policy formulation and prioritization.

Thinking Styles are the archetypes that you would base characters on, like characters in TV episodes. (Try writing your scenarios like TV episodes, with constant characters.) Characters think, react, and made decisions based on their thinking style archetype. BUT they also switch thinking styles depending on context. For example, if you take a flight as a single traveler versus bringing a young child along–you’ll probably change your thinking style for that flight, including getting to the gate, boarding, and deplaning.

Free Behavior Design, Innovation and Change Tools These frameworks started out as internal tools we would use on client projects at Aim For Behavior, that would help us save time and create better outcomes for the customers and the companies we were working with. We are always adding more frameworks or iterating the current ones based on the feedback.

“We tested the effectiveness of different messages aimed at addressing climate change and created a tool that can be deployed by both lawmakers and practitioners to generate support for climate policy or to encourage action,” says Madalina Vlasceanu, an assistant professor in New York University’s Department of Psychology and the paper’s lead author. The tool, which the researchers describe as a “Climate Intervention Webapp,” takes into account an array of targeted audiences in the studied countries, ranging from nationality and political ideology to age, gender, education, and income level. “To maximize their impact, policymakers and advocates can assess which messaging is most promising for their publics,” adds paper author Kimberly Doell, a senior scientist at the University of Vienna who led the project with Vlasceanu. Article: https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/cr5at Tool: https://climate-interventions.shinyapps.io/climate-interventions/

From a process perspective, our task then becomes figuring out the optimal behavioral flow that reduces the friction between intentions and desired behaviors and stimulates progression through the journey – assuming at least a moderate interest in what is being offered by the organization.