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.
Could this guide us towards a structured approach for assessing the level of community involvement in SBC programmes? At the highest level, “Citizen Control“, communities independently lead programmes with full decision-making authority. “Delegated Power“ and “Partnership“ designate significant community influence on programme decisions, either through majority control or collaborative governance. In contrast, “Placation“, “Consultation“, and “Informing“ indicate lower degrees of participation, where community input may be sought but is not necessarily instrumental in shaping outcomes.
This manual includes information about Open Policy Making as well as the tools and techniques policy makers can use to create more open and user led policy.
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.
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.
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.
100+ open source innovation tools from the greatest design & strategy agencies in the world.
Ideal for both offline or online workshops. All tools are pixel perfectly packaged in a vectorized PDF or PNG and can be downloaded for free.
“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/
If you’re trying to think and act more creatively and more critically, focus on asking better, more interesting questions of the briefs you’re tasked with answering. What we teach children can and should be applied to our own professional lives, too. A focus on problems and solutions first, promotes consistent, ‘safe’ answers, but won’t move the work on. Spending time on asking and answering better questions will help refine the understanding of a problem and will create the conditions for new, interesting and challenging solutions.
But she did explain how researching and designing for the majority or “average user” actually end up ignoring, othering, and harming the people our designs are meant to serve. Indi shared how she finds patterns in people’s behaviors, thoughts, and needs—and how she uses that data to create thinking styles that inform more inclusive design decisions.
Indi talked about…
Why researchers should look for patterns, not anecdotes, to understand real user needs.
What are thinking styles and how to uncover and use them.
Why your “average” user often doesn’t exist in the real world, and how we can do better.
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.
Causal layered analysis, a theory and practice of organisational, social and civilisational change, seeks to transform the present and the future, through deconstructing and reconstructing reality at four levels. The levels are: the litany or day to day unquestioned views of reality, the systemic, the worldview/stakeholder perspective and the deepest, often unconscious, myths and metaphors. Problems are considered at all four levels and multiple worldviews and stakeholders are brought into to consider alternatives. By moving up and down layers and considering alternative perspectives, transformative policy and strategic solutions are created.
I hope this post gives some ideas to product leads on how to use the Decision Stack as a mental model in all sorts of conversations. The stack is a really powerful coaching tool.
It is a framework that helps you to discuss things like:
How to achieve alignment and directional clarity across the board. Use the Stack to connect the dots. Ask why things are the way they are and how the organization is planning to reach their goals.
Use it to discuss goals and where shared goals would be possible.
Use it to discuss team topologies, team empowerment, and mandate.
While failure in social marketing practice represents an emerging research agenda, the discipline has not yet considered this concept systematically or cohesively. This lack of a clear conceptualization of failure in social marketing to aid practice thus presents a significant research gap.
The Behaviour Change Strategy Matrix means you can approach behaviour change methodically. Assess the complexity of the desired behaviour change and the target group's readiness in order to select a behaviour change strategy. So that you can design solutions that truly resonate with your target group's abilities and willingness to change.
Getting the question right is the most important component in information design, and it’s the most common point where information design goes wrong.
This is because information is always relative. Always. Before you can undertake any kind of visualization exercise, you need to know what question you want to answer, and for whom.
So I propose the beginnings of a theory of information relativity:
1. All information is relative, and it’s always relative: relative to the observer and the observer’s point of view; relative to the culture and its values; relative to the situation; relative to what has come before, and to what will come next.
2. The value of information is always relative because it is directly related to it’s usefulness, which depends on the user, the context and the situation.
3. Information design must therefore be driven by the context within which it will be experienced. Information design must serve the needs of real human beings doing real things. Information wants to be used.
“One of the greatest gifts strategists can give themselves is the humility to appreciate that tactical ideas are neither their strength nor their responsibility. Setting up goals and scoring them are two very different things. To do one well you usually need to ignore the other.
...Strategy is not lesser than creativity, because it pre-empts and prepares it for victory. A brand must travel through the confusing forests of targeting, positioning and objectives before it can set up camp on the fertile field of creativity.“
This article reviews 10 techniques used to identify opinion leaders to promote behavior change. Opinion leaders can act as gatekeepers for interventions, help change social norms, and accelerate behavior change. Few studies document the manner in which opinion leaders are identified, recruited, and trained to promote health. The authors categorize close to 200 studies that have studied or used opinion leaders to promote behavior change into 10 different methods. They present the advantages and disadvantages of the 10 opinion leader identification methods and provide sample instruments for each. Factors that might influence programs to select one or another method are then discussed, and the article closes with a discussion of combining and comparing methods.
Fast forward to 2023, and there is a new zeitgeist around complexity and systems change. Depending on who you are, dear reader, I’m either late to the zeitgeist, or in the vanguard, but it basically boils down to this:
We need to stop trying to design the solution, and instead design for the conditions that enable the emergence of many solutions.
Fostering more, quality and trusted relationships is a critical enabler of that emergence.
For the catalysers of complex system change (often government), that means starting to value relationships as a key outcome.
Hi, I'm Robert
I hope this concept card is useful for you and helps you add a new tool to your toolbox.
As someone who helps teams develop products, services and experiences, I did not see many open resources out there that combine behavioral science with other strategy and design processes, so I decided to take my experience and create frameworks and boards to share for free.
If you have questions on the framework you can connect with me on Linkedin or see my website.
When it comes to reducing obesity,
evidence shows that changing food
environments is more effective than
measures that try to educate or
change the behaviour of individuals.
The interventions that participants
consider to be most acceptable are the
same as those that they perceived to
be most effective at tackling obesity.
However, the interventions that were
reported to be least effective and least
acceptable — such as reducing portion
sizes and the taxation of unhealthy
foods — may actually have the greatest
potential for promoting healthy eating at
the population level. While we must be
cautious with how we interpret correlations
like this, it suggests that addressing the
disconnect between the evidence base
and public understanding may be a viable
way of influencing public acceptability
