Start at the End

1. Start with the end: Define your behavioral goal clearly

Because we're wired to influence what others do, we're constantly creating to get what we want.

Behavioral statements are key. A well-crafted behavioral statement clearly articulates the world you're trying to create from an explicitly behavioral perspective. It should include five key elements:

• Population: The group whose behavior you want to change
• Motivation: The core reason people engage in the behavior
• Limitations: Preconditions necessary for the behavior to occur
• Behavior: The measurable activity you want people to do
• Data: How you'll quantify that they're doing the behavior

By starting with a clear behavioral goal, you ensure that all subsequent efforts are aligned and focused on achieving the desired outcome. This approach helps avoid the common pitfall of getting attached to specific solutions or interventions before fully understanding the behavior you're trying to change.

2. Map competing pressures to understand behavior drivers

Everything we create, we create to change behavior.

Understand promoting and inhibiting pressures. Behavior is determined by the balance of competing pressures:

• Promoting pressures: Make a behavior more likely
• Inhibiting pressures: Make a behavior less likely

To change behavior effectively, map out these pressures for your target behavior. Consider:

• Obvious factors like cost, availability, and convenience
• Less apparent influences like social norms, identity, and cognitive biases
• Both rational and irrational pressures that may affect the behavior

By thoroughly mapping these pressures, you create a comprehensive understanding of what drives or hinders the desired behavior, allowing for more targeted and effective interventions.

3. Design interventions that target identified pressures

If we set aside our bias, both those angelic teachers and those demonic marketers are behavioral scientists and changing behavior is not, in and of itself, inherently ethical or unethical.

Create targeted interventions. Once you've mapped the pressures affecting your target behavior, design interventions that specifically address these pressures. Effective interventions can:

• Increase promoting pressures
• Decrease inhibiting pressures
• Often, a combination of both

When designing interventions:

• Focus on volume: Generate many potential ideas
• Combine interventions when possible for greater impact
• Consider scalability and resource requirements
• Aim for optimal distinctiveness: A range of interventions that cover different aspects of the behavior

Remember, the goal is behavior change, not knowledge. You don't need to know exactly which part of an intervention drives the behavior, as long as it produces the desired outcome.

4. Validate insights and interventions through rigorous testing

Good behavioral scientists are T-shaped: they have one area of deep expertise (the legs of the T) and broad interests across other disciplines (the arms of the T).

Implement a testing process. To ensure the effectiveness of your interventions, follow a structured testing approach:

1. Pilot: Small-scale, quick tests to validate basic concept
2. Test: Larger-scale implementation to refine and validate
3. Scale: Full implementation based on successful test results

Key considerations for testing:

• Aim for convergent validity from multiple data sources
• Use both quantitative and qualitative research methods
• Be willing to abandon or modify interventions that don't work
• Focus on behavior change, not just statistical significance

By rigorously testing and validating your insights and interventions, you increase the likelihood of successful behavior change at scale.

5. Focus on reducing inhibiting pressures, not just increasing promoting ones

If we set aside our bias, both those angelic teachers and those demonic marketers are behavioral scientists and changing behavior is not, in and of itself, inherently ethical or unethical.

Leverage the power of inhibiting pressures. While it's natural to focus on increasing promoting pressures, reducing inhibiting pressures often yields better results. Advantages of focusing on inhibiting pressures:

• More universally applicable across populations
• Often easier to implement and more cost-effective
• Tend to have longer-lasting effects
• Can be more predictable in their impact

Examples of effective inhibiting pressure reduction:

• Uber's automatic payment system reducing the hassle of paying for rides
• Eliminating fees for checking bags to encourage air travelers to do so

By identifying and addressing key inhibiting pressures, you can often achieve significant behavior change with relatively simple interventions.

6. Leverage identity and cognitive factors to drive behavior change

Because identity is the most powerful pressure, it is also the one with which we must be most cautious.

Harness the power of identity. Identity is a crucial factor in behavior change. Consider:

• In-group and out-group affiliations
• Stable vs. unstable preferences
• The balance between uniqueness and belonging

Cognitive factors also play a key role:

• Attention and cognitive load
• Priming and framing effects
• Decision-making biases and heuristics

By understanding and leveraging these identity and cognitive factors, you can design more effective interventions that resonate with your target population and drive lasting behavior change.

7. Address ethical considerations in behavior change initiatives

If your outcome behavior is not the result of any of the motivations of the population or the benefit of that behavior or intervention does not outweigh the cost to an alternative motivation, it is unethical.

Prioritize ethics in behavior change. When designing interventions, consider:

• Transparency: Be open about your goals and methods
• Respect for autonomy: Ensure interventions align with people's motivations
• Beneficence: Strive for overall positive outcomes
• Non-maleficence: Avoid causing harm

Key ethical questions to ask:

• Does the intervention respect people's values and motivations?
• Are we being transparent about our methods and goals?
• Does the benefit outweigh any potential costs or negative consequences?
• Are we addressing both the what and the how of behavior change ethically?

By prioritizing ethical considerations, you ensure that your behavior change efforts are not only effective but also responsible and respectful of the populations you're targeting.

8. Implement continuous monitoring to refine and improve interventions

Even scaled interventions eventually stop working.

Monitor and adapt. Behavior change is an ongoing process. Implement continuous monitoring to:

• Track the effectiveness of interventions over time
• Identify shifts in pressures or motivations
• Detect unintended consequences or negative effects
• Refine and improve interventions based on real-world data

Key aspects of continuous monitoring:

• Use both quantitative and qualitative measures
• Set up automated alerts for significant changes
• Regularly review and analyze data to identify trends
• Be willing to modify or discontinue interventions that are no longer effective

By implementing robust continuous monitoring, you can ensure that your behavior change efforts remain effective and relevant over time, adapting to changing circumstances and evolving needs.

9. Consider competing behaviors and unintended consequences

At some level, everything competes with everything else.

Think holistically. When designing behavior change interventions, consider:

• Competing behaviors that may conflict with your target behavior
• Potential unintended consequences of your interventions
• The broader context in which the behavior occurs

Strategies for addressing competing behaviors:

• Identify key alternative behaviors that compete with your target
• Consider co-opting or partnering with complementary behaviors
• Design interventions that address multiple related behaviors

By taking a holistic approach and considering competing behaviors and unintended consequences, you can create more effective and sustainable behavior change initiatives that navigate the complex web of human decision-making and action.

Last updated: October 19, 2024