"My little pitch is that a social movement worth celebrating doesn't only un-falsify people's preferences and unleash them to say what they actually think. It also casts a fresh light on the past. It doesn't just elicit preexisting judgement, it produces new ones."

So what counts as the “right” kind of problem for behavioral science to solve? Put more bluntly: How might our sense about what we should solve, or even what qualifies as a problem worth solving, be biased by how we think about what we can solve?

Given the central role of anger in shaping adversarial policy preferences in the context of intergroup conflict, its reduction may promote conflict resolution. In the current work, we drew on psycholinguistic research on the role of language in generating emotions to explore a novel, extremely subtle means of intervention. Specifically, we hypothesized that phrasing conflict-relevant policies in noun form (vs. verb form) would reduce anger and impact policy support correspondingly. Results across three experimental studies in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict supported these expectations for both support for concessions (Studies 1–3) and retaliatory policies (Study 3), with reduction in anger mediating the salutary impact of noun form (vs. verb form) on policy support. These results expand our understanding of the influence of language on emotions and policies in the context of conflict and have applied relevance for conflict-resolution efforts. (1) (PDF) A Rose by Any Other Name? A Subtle Linguistic Cue Impacts Anger and Corresponding Policy Support in Intractable Conflict. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322150387_A_Rose_by_Any_Other_Name_A_Subtle_Linguistic_Cue_Impacts_Anger_and_Corresponding_Policy_Support_in_Intractable_Conflict [accessed May 02 2019].

Use of natural language to represent behaviour-change theories has resulted in lack of clarity and consistency, hindering com-parison, integration, development and use. This paper describes development of a formal system for representing behaviour-change theories that aims to improve clarity and consistency. A given theory is represented in terms of (1) its component constructs (for example, ‘self-efficacy’, ‘perceived threat’ or ‘subjective norm’), which are labelled and defined, and (2) rela-tionships between pairs of constructs, which may be causal, structural or semantic. This formalism appears adequate to rep-resent five commonly used theories (health belief model, information–motivation–behavioural skill model, social cognitive theory, theory of planned behaviour and the trans-theoretical model).

To ensure these partnerships are beneficial to all involved—companies, employees, customers, and researchers­—behavioral scientists need a set of ethical standards for conducting research in companies. To address this need, we created The Behavioral Scientist’s Ethics Checklist. In the checklist, we outline six key principles and questions that behavioral scientists and companies should ask themselves before beginning their research. To illustrate how each principle operates in practice, we provide mini case studies highlighting the challenges other researchers and companies have faced.

To gain a better understanding of how to build a successful nudge unit, we recently talked to 14 experts who have led initiatives in sectors from financial services and healthcare to advertising and retail (see sidebar, “Fourteen experts forging the future”). Most stressed that while nudging is a catchy term, it does not do full justice to the broad applications of behavioral science to the businesses for which they and their units are responsible. Behavioral science, for instance, encompasses debiasing and other tools for driving behavioral change, including incentives, education, and awareness.

Looking at their actions today, it can be hard to understand why these physicians would dismiss information that could have saved lives. But researchers who study the history of science say the spread of new innovations isn't always rational or linear. That's especially true when a new idea comes up against widely-held scientific beliefs. "We don't like to have beliefs that are different from the people around us," says philosopher of science Cailin O'Connor. "We don't like our actions to not conform with the people who we know and love." This week on Hidden Brain, we explore how information and misinformation spread in the world of science, and why evidence is often not enough to convince others of the truth.

Although heuristics may not always give the most accurate judgment in social situations, avoiding them is usually not an option. Social heuristics are innate in us, to help us make sense of complex social interactions. Nonetheless, it is crucial to bear in mind that an overreliance on heuristics can potentially result in judgment errors that manifest themselves as social stereotypes.

This report is a summary of the work of the Behavioural Insights Team and its partners from September 2017 to November 2018. It includes highlights from our six offices around the world – in London, Manchester, New York, Singapore, Sydney and Wellington. We also cover our growing portfolio of BI Ventures, products that draw on behavioural insights to make positive social impact.

This report aims to capture both the spread and form of behavioral science in 10 countries, selected based on being innovators or early adopters in the field: Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Netherlands, Peru, Singapore, the U.S., and the UK. We hope that the experiences of these ten countries – including information on As of November 2018, there are at least 202 public entities all over the world applying behavioral insights to their policies (OECD, 2018) COUNTRY PROFILES - INTRODUCTION — 07 — how public bodies within these countries are integrating behavioral insights, how they are working to apply behavioral insights, and how these behavioral functions have been structured and staffed – can serve as useful information for all those working to leverage behavioral science to improve society. Given the expansion of behavioral science within governments; the shifting behavioral insights landscape; and the limit to, and wide distribution of, public information; this report presents a representative snapshot of the state of behavioral science within the governments of the profiled countries.

The Cultural Web is a tool used to map the culture of an organisation and is a way of seeing and understating the different influences that affect organisational culture. It can be used to map existing culture and it can also used to map future culture based on the question: ‘What does the culture need to look like to make this change happen’? The two maps can then be compared in order to promote discussion and highlight what, where and how change can be implemented.

Theory of Change Online (TOCO) is the only web-based software (no download required) that you can use to design and edit and store your Theory of Change, learn the concepts of theory of change, and capture your outcomes, indicators, rationales and assumptions in an interactive graphical environment.

Generate human centric microcopy for all purposes.

How and when to give different types of feedback on creative designs

templates showing different graphic ways to present frameworks

Often, there's a disproportionate focus on pre-existing attitudes or other exogenous factors explaining why behavioural interventions may not work. In other words, attitudes or other factors got in the way of the intervention being effective. But that's not necessarily the case, as this study suggests. Instead, it might be the nature of the intervention itself which blocks the behaviour (change).

tories, and their ability to transport their audience, constitute a central part of human life and consumption experience. Integrating previous literature derived from fields as diverse as anthropology, marketing, psychology, communication, consumer, and literary studies, this article offers a review of two decades’ worth of research on narrative transportation, the phenomenon in which consumers mentally enter a world that a story evokes. Despite the relevance of narrative transportation for storytelling and narrative persuasion, extant contributions seem to lack systematization. The authors conceive the extended transportation-imagery model (ETIM), which provides not only a comprehensive model that includes the antecedents and consequences of narrative transportation but also a multidisciplinary framework in which cognitive psychology and consumer culture theory cross-fertilize this field of inquiry. The authors test the model using a quantitative meta-analysis of 132 effect sizes of narrative transportation from 76 published and unpublished articles and identify fruitful directions for further research.

This principle of storytelling (more accurately, story-creating) does not only apply to bizarre YouTube videos featuring shapes. We are all perpetual storytellers in and of our own lives—in fact, we often see our lives as a “journey.” When we tell our friends anecdotes from the past, when we gossip or tell jokes, we are striving to find meaning and order in our lives through storytelling.