11,912 members of a gym were surveyed over 442 days for their attendance.
Results showed that, next to the baseline, the probability of people going to the gym increased at the beginning of the week, month and semester, showing our higher in-built level of motivation at the start of new time periods.
Motivate around fresh start moments.
How can you help people achieve their dreams by communicating around multiple time chunks, such as the start of the week, month or year, or even personal events like birthdays, graduations or job changes?
Target one-shots.
Fresh starts are particularly good at helping people make one-off decisions that perhaps they'd been delaying, such as getting that flu jab. What single task can you help people do around new time periods?
Use to overcome failures.
There are countless fresh start opportunities to help people who have let good habits slip. Frameit as a "new you", which gives an opportunity to separate themselves from past failures. Get them started by being empathic and having them Commit to a Tiny Habit.
• Katy did some great work on inter-temporal choice (how we choose is greatly dictated by when it's for).
She looked at online grocery ordering and found that we tend to make healthier "should" food choices the further we plan into the future, and less healthy "want" choices to satisfy our immediate needs. Ultimately, we have a Present Bias that gives more weight to immediacy, impacting our self-control and ability to stay healthy.
• Her study on flu jabs got people to make a written pre-Commitment to have their jab at a specific date and time. Doing so increased vaccinations by 4.2% (Milkman, Beshears, Choi, Laibson and Madrian, 2011)
“Thanks to the progress of behavioral science, we now have a new set of tools that can help — and produce big returns on small investments.”
• In understanding how to help break old habits and start new ones, Katy looked at the Fresh Start Effect, finding that we're more likely to stick to commitments made at the start of a new time period (e.g. a new week, month or year).
• She co-authored research on motivation and Temptation Bundling, finding that people can be made to do the hard 'should' tasks (e.g. going to the gym) by bundling them with pleasant 'want' experiences (listening to an audiobook). Gym attendance was boosted by 51% next to the no-bundle group.
• In 2018, found Reciprocity Decay showing that our desire to return an act of kindness wanes rapidly over time, impacting acts of goodwill from companies or the effectiveness of charities in raising donations.
• Katy did some great work on inter-temporal choice (how we choose is greatly dictated by when it's for).
She looked at online grocery ordering and found that we tend to make healthier "should" food choices the further we plan into the future, and less healthy "want" choices to satisfy our immediate needs. Ultimately, we have a Present Bias that gives more weight to immediacy, impacting our self-control and ability to stay healthy.
• Her study on flu jabs got people to make a written pre-Commitment to have their jab at a specific date and time. Doing so increased vaccinations by 4.2% (Milkman, Beshears, Choi, Laibson and Madrian, 2011)
“Thanks to the progress of behavioral science, we now have a new set of tools that can help — and produce big returns on small investments.”
• In understanding how to help break old habits and start new ones, Katy looked at the Fresh Start Effect, finding that we're more likely to stick to commitments made at the start of a new time period (e.g. a new week, month or year).
• She co-authored research on motivation and Temptation Bundling, finding that people can be made to do the hard 'should' tasks (e.g. going to the gym) by bundling them with pleasant 'want' experiences (listening to an audiobook). Gym attendance was boosted by 51% next to the no-bundle group.
• In 2018, found Reciprocity Decay showing that our desire to return an act of kindness wanes rapidly over time, impacting acts of goodwill from companies or the effectiveness of charities in raising donations.
682 colonoscopy patients were split into two groups, with one undergoing a longer procedure but with a period of less discomfort added on at the end.
After, patients were asked to recall the total pain felt. The peak-end group reported 10% less pain and a 10% increase in attending a follow-up procedure.
How do you want to be remembered in customers’ eyes?
How do you want to leave them feeling? What little touches can you add to your product or service to leave customers feeling amazing and want to share with their network?
Create a Customer Journey Map
Identify positive experiential opportunities to exploit and painful weaknesses to remedy.
Some pains may be small or cheap to fix, yet play a big part in a person’s memory.
Negative experiences are a hidden opportunity...
...to re-establish a positive peak and / or end. Things will go wrong, whoever’s at fault, so allow flexibility and an authentic humanity to surface, not just to save the relationship but to allow the brand to shine.
Handle a problem well enough and that’s what customers will remember, not the problem itself.
226 people were asked to go to the gym and split into three groups: a control and two other groups given devices with audio books. Recommenders were told to restrict playback to when at the gym and Committers had to store their device in the locker after use.
It was found that commiting to this restriction boosted gym visits by 51% next to the control.
Bundle feats with treats.
What sort of behaviors do you want to encourage with your team or customers? Temptation bundling can be very effective in areas where short-term self-control is weakest, like saving, exercise or food choices. What complementary experiences can you bundle alongside the toughest tasks?
Ideas include only listening to your favorite podcasts if cleaning the house, getting a coffee on the way to work only if you cycle or walk, or committing to a nice hot bath only if you’ve kept to your weekly spending budget.
Keep it fresh.
Commitments are a powerful way to maintain long-term behavior change (Royer et al., 2012). However, life does get in the way and we tend to eventually hedonically-adapt to all good things. Keep engagement high by highlighting people’s past successes and creating new bundled experiences that are uniquely attractive. For instance, a gym having all streaming services, even those you might not have access to at home.
The food choices of 89 people both dieting and not dieting were analyzed in a cafe. Diners were given a menu with either information highlighting low-calorie options or not (the control).
Results showed that dieters primed with the reminder of their future goal consistently made healthier food choices than unprimed dieters.
Who is the target group?
They could be people who are motivated to protect the environment, improve productivity at work or improve the quality of their lives. Note: they must have already stated a desire for this goal. Your prime will merely aim to nudge their existing Commitment to meeting their own aspirations.
Where can you trigger these long-term motivations?
As well as environment, timing also matters, so make sure that you do so very close to the actual decision point, i.e. at the start of a meeting, at the ordering counter or on the inside of a restroom door.
What's the specific behaviour that you're allowing them to perform to help move them towards their long term goal?
It has to be obvious and easy to do, such as clearly identifying an eco-friendly substitute, bolting on a salad or opting for an equally-priced, dairy-free option.
City Planners of Garden Grove, California installed Active Radar Speed Signs at 5 locations to provide real-time feedback on the speed of 58,000 drivers. LEDs would also flash if drivers exceeded speed limits by more than 5MPH.
After installation of the feedback systems, average speed dropped 22% from 44 to 34mph.
First, determine the behavior to change. Measure, capture and store the relevant data.
Communicate it back to the individual in a relevant, context-sensitive way that ultimately provokes an emotional reaction.
Provide clear consequences for action or inaction. It’s critical to get the right balance between not being too subtle and not being too intrusive or authoritarian (which we filter out).
Lastly, allow for opportunities to immediately rectify the behavior - which should also be tracked - completing the loop and eventually changing the behavior pattern. Remember to reward compliance as much as you penalize inaction to increase effectiveness.
32 dog-phobic children were split into 3 groups and shown 8 videos of either one child playing with a dog, many children with different dogs or no dogs, and then asked to interact with a dog themselves.
Those who watched another child play with a dog performed far better. Those who watched many children also kept this up a month later.
Provide mental shortcuts through the judgements of others; the more people, the more persuasive. First-time consumers of your product will benefit the most from this approach.
Persuade with similarity. We're most influenced by those who we deem similar to ourselves. Communicate characteristics relevant to that segment, such as proximity, gender / age, profession or social class to successfully direct behavior.
Use role-models. Understand the emotional drivers of your audience and seek out positive, aspirational individuals to direct specific consumer decisions and reinforce behaviors.
Faced with a set of options, when we’re not sure what’s the “right” choice, Defaults offer a helpful guide.
They help people avoid expending vast amounts of cognitive energy to decide between what could be a large number of options.
This is especially the case for those who don’t know much about the products or services, where Default options can take away the fear of getting that first decision wrong.
They're also a powerful remedy to any potential Analysis Paralysis, and are particularly helpful when making multiple choices one after the other.
Consider that you’re buying a computer, with a range of possible customisations to various parts.
If there were no default choices set, we’d quickly become overwhelmed with what was the right choice in each step.
If you have complicated product ranges or customisations, are you setting helpful Defaults? If you are, think hard about whether these need improving to reduce effort further.
But also, a word of warning.
Defaults can be terribly misused to force people into decisions that they don’t want.
Take people down the wrong path and you’ll quickly trigger Reactance; an angry feeling where people will want to reclaim their independence, often doing the opposite of what you Default them to.
Ensure that your Defaults have peoples’ own intentions in mind and don’t deviate too far from what people would do of their own choosing.
What Defaults are you setting? How can these be improved to help smooth out decision-making and guide people to better outcomes, either for themselves (e.g. helping them save more money) or for the wider group (e.g. defaulting meeting times to 15 minutes instead of 30).
Defaults are set everywhere. They’re powerful and have a big influence on behavior with little effort.
Faced with a set of options, when we’re not sure what’s the “right” choice, Defaults offer a helpful guide.
They help people avoid expending vast amounts of cognitive energy to decide between what could be a large number of options.
This is especially the case for those who don’t know much about the products or services, where Default options can take away the fear of getting that first decision wrong.
They're also a powerful remedy to any potential Analysis Paralysis, and are particularly helpful when making multiple choices one after the other.
Consider that you’re buying a computer, with a range of possible customisations to various parts.
If there were no default choices set, we’d quickly become overwhelmed with what was the right choice in each step.
If you have complicated product ranges or customisations, are you setting helpful Defaults? If you are, think hard about whether these need improving to reduce effort further.
But also, a word of warning.
Defaults can be terribly misused to force people into decisions that they don’t want.
Take people down the wrong path and you’ll quickly trigger Reactance; an angry feeling where people will want to reclaim their independence, often doing the opposite of what you Default them to.
Ensure that your Defaults have peoples’ own intentions in mind and don’t deviate too far from what people would do of their own choosing.
What Defaults are you setting? How can these be improved to help smooth out decision-making and guide people to better outcomes, either for themselves (e.g. helping them save more money) or for the wider group (e.g. defaulting meeting times to 15 minutes instead of 30).
Defaults are set everywhere. They’re powerful and have a big influence on behavior with little effort.
161 people were told that they’d just moved to a new US state and that here, the default was (or wasn’t) to be an organ donor. They were then asked to accept or change this donation status.
Results showed that only 42% donated when the default was to opt out, but 82% when defaulted to opt in.
Defaults are powerful. They’re chosen because consumers take mental shortcuts (especially when tired) and because there’s implied trust that they’re the ‘right’ choice. Defaults also act as a reference point against better or worse options. (Dinner et al., 2011).
Defaults can be set around anything: from the standard package you offer to new subscribers, to the pre-set top-up amount for your mobile wallet, to whether each order of pizza should come with salad. Each default can dramatically affect conversion levels and behavior.
Get the balance. Ensure your defaults feel natural and in line with consumer aspirations. The more extreme the default you set (i.e. defaulting to the most expensive option), the more effort consumers will expend weighing up the cognitive / emotional costs of not choosing the default, impacting their experience and reducing overall trust.
Whilst we all like to think we make rational, optimal decisions, sometimes, our impulses get the better of us.
In an attempt to preserve our cognitive capacity, we make what’s called fast, reactionary “System 1” judgements.
These might not be very good at all for us.
Let me explain.
Consider you’re stressed out after a long day, and launch your favourite social media app to unwind. You see someone sharing a wild conspiracy theory that you know to be untrue.
You’re angry, and quickly write out a frustrated comment that criticises this person, using strong language that would offend.
At this point, hitting “send” would cause a lot of damage you can’t come back from.
This is where our slower “System 2” thinking becomes vital.
Here, reflective thought is the order of the day. It’s more cognitively-expensive to think about what the deeper implications of hitting “send” would be. However, now would be a good time to do so.
Social media apps are increasingly providing us opportunities to do just this. Banks could do the same. “Are you sure you want to withdraw all your savings?”
Providing users a “cooling off period” for impactful moments now can allow for better decisions that help us more in our future.
Whilst we all like to think we make rational, optimal decisions, sometimes, our impulses get the better of us.
In an attempt to preserve our cognitive capacity, we make what’s called fast, reactionary “System 1” judgements.
These might not be very good at all for us.
Let me explain.
Consider you’re stressed out after a long day, and launch your favourite social media app to unwind. You see someone sharing a wild conspiracy theory that you know to be untrue.
You’re angry, and quickly write out a frustrated comment that criticises this person, using strong language that would offend.
At this point, hitting “send” would cause a lot of damage you can’t come back from.
This is where our slower “System 2” thinking becomes vital.
Here, reflective thought is the order of the day. It’s more cognitively-expensive to think about what the deeper implications of hitting “send” would be. However, now would be a good time to do so.
Social media apps are increasingly providing us opportunities to do just this. Banks could do the same. “Are you sure you want to withdraw all your savings?”
Providing users a “cooling off period” for impactful moments now can allow for better decisions that help us more in our future.
2,064 male students from 9 schools in Chicago were enrolled in a two-year-long program that encouraged system-two slow thinking on how to manage situations of conflict.
Participation in the program reduced total arrests by 35% and violent crime arrests by 50%.
Add a little friction.
We constantly weigh up effort vs rewards, so seeing one long sign-up form can lead us to make a fast system-one decision not to do so.
A process that’s Chunked, features reflective Goal Primes and clearly shows the product benefits will work better.
Provide warnings for damaging decisions.
Instagram have launched "comment warning", live-analysing a comment and notifying of potential offense, without removing the Autonomy to post. This allows for reflection and avoids Reactance.
Build in reflective periods for big decisions.
Knee-jerk, short-term decisions can harm our longer-term goals. E.g., financial firms can help us make smarter decisions about withdrawing all our savings by building in a reflective delay, especially when such decisions conflict with our prior Commitmentsand goals.
84 people were shown an ad for a known clothing brand that they either had an existing loyalty to or not, written either assertively or not. Based upon the ad, they were then asked how much from a $25 gift card they'd spend.
People spent less money after viewing an assertive ad next to a non-assertive ad, especially when loyal.
Don’t misuse behavioural principles.
We've seen a rising use of faux-scarcity to create an uneasy sense of urgency as well as an aggressive use of Defaults that aren't in customers' best interests. Such applications turn positive activities, like booking a holiday into ones riddled with stress.
Give some control (Miller et al., 2007).
Having a feeling of choice can reduce feelings that our freedoms are being taken away. Mix Autonomy with Certainty by reminding of the inevitability ahead while granting other areas where you can give back control in meaningful ways.
Give lots of warning up-front
If you're planning a big change that will clearly trigger reactance (Richards and Banas, 2015), giving time for the news to sink in, let people familiarise themselves with the new, uncomfortable normal will then reduce reactance when the change does come about.
88 students were told about an exercise training camp and split into 2 groups: either having a choice about the four fitness programs on offer or having one randomly assigned. They were then asked to rate their anticipated satisfaction of the program out of 9.
Those given some autonomy reported higher levels of anticipated satisfaction than those who weren’t.
Choice = autonomy = certainty.
For instance, giving people a choice to still use the old version of your software platform for a given timeframe will reduce anxiety and uncertainty.
Product type matters.
People desire autonomy for pleasure purchases (i.e. vacations) more than for practical ones (i.e. business trips).
Place more focus on the former in order to maximise feelings of control and consumer satisfaction (Botti & McGill, 2011).
Change behavior with the ‘4As’.
Feeling that any change originated from within is vital.
Ask about the behavior, advise them impartially of the facts and of better routes, but that they must make their own choice.
If keen to change, assist them to make a commitment to do so by a given date, and arrange a follow-up to support this behavior change.
195 students were asked to fill out a lunch order survey in return for a free lunch. They were split into two groups and asked either a few hours prior to or just before lunchtime.
Those asked with the delay made food choices 11% lower in calories than those just before lunch.
Adapt with time-to-delivery.
Online grocers could change what’s shown to the user based on how many days out their delivery slot is, showing more aspirational goods in the week prior and impulsive goods the day before.
Build around customers’ goals.
Have them make a preference on your site for their future self i.e. that they want to lose weight or save more money this year. Then, have this preference dictate what products are shown to them online, along with a subtle reminder that you’re helping with their bigger goals.
Encourage “future lock-ins.”
Banks could improve consumer savings by allowing pre-registration for a future savings account. Consider locking in other types of ‘should’ decisions that will benefit the consumer’s future well-being, as well as reducing your costs through better demand forecasting.
67 people were asked if they prefer Coke, Pepsi or have no preference, split into taster groups and given 3 rounds of both in either unlabeled or labeled cups.
Taste preferences were split evenly when the drinks were unlabeled, but when labeled, they exhibited a strong taste preference for Coke, underlining the bias of brand attachment in consumer choice.
Test your assumptions. Decision-Makers often start new projects under judgements that are both unproven and erroneous. Bring key Decision-Makers together to list assumptions honestly. Use these as a basis for testing the validity of the idea in its simplest form. This avoids unnecessary costs further down the line. See the Lean Startup Model for further details.
Consider conflicting alternatives to strengthen your strategic decision-making process. Seek impartial feedback from trusted others who are less emotionally invested in the chosen route than you.
Repeatedly point out what you do well, especially with attention to small details around customer care or craftsmanship in process. Consumers will begin to notice and start to look for further evidence to support these newly-held beliefs.
150 teachers in Chicago were either offered a cash incentive up front or after their students’ math test, with better results leading to more money. Subject to results, the money-up-front group would suffer deductions for unmet targets to create a feeling of loss aversion.
Teachers receiving money up front were found to have much better results than those rewarded at the end.
Increase conversion with trial offers. Though some consumers might not be willing to pay the market price for your product, they may pay the market price to avoid it being taken away.
Offer delayed payments to shift consumers’ judgements from paying to get the product to paying to avoid losing it. For instance, a month delay in paying subscription fees. This means that any extra budgetary cost is then re-estimated as a question of how it can be fitted into an existing budget.
Replace faulty products immediately with an identical or superior model (Novemsky & Kahneman, 2005). Doing it quickly will limit the pain of loss aversion, which builds over time (Strahilevitz and Loewenstein, 1998).
300 customers at a car wash were split into two groups and given one of two different loyalty cards for a free wash upon completion: either one with space for 8 stamps or one for 10 (with 2 spaces pre-stamped).
Despite both cards requiring the same amount of effort, completion of the non-pre-stamped 8 card over a 9-month period was only 19% whereas the pre-stamped 10-card was 34%.
Get them started. Endow progress with a fraction of points, stars or a brand-specific measure. Make sure you endow enough to motivate use, aiming for between 10-25% of the total effort required for the first reward. As well as helping with initial effort, make the reward itself substantial and meaningful to assist habit-forming.
Never endow at the end. The closer we are to a goal, the more we value our own internal efforts to complete it. Doing so on their behalf will devalue existing effort, perceived reward value and reduce loyalty strength.
Make it seamless.In Christmas 2013, 1 in 8 Americans got a Starbucks Gift Card. On redemption they were automatically endowed with progress in the form of loyalty stars, creating 1.5m new loyalty members as a result. How can you seamlessly channel gift customers through to your loyalty scheme?
108 people were told they were the head of an airline that was either 90% complete on a $10m plane project, or shown an equivalent $1m proposal to research and develop this plane. In both cases, a competitor had created a similar plane of superior quality.
In either case, should they still invest the $1m? Those in the 90% sunk cost condition were far more likely to keep on spending than those who had yet to invest anything.
Remind consumers of past personal efforts or the amount of time spent with the brand to increase feelings of a sunk cost. Reframing past efforts as incomplete or as ongoing progress will also induce the effect and assist sales.
Test your product ideas sooner using a more agile product methodology. This will minimize time, cost and effort wasted on unproven potential failures to which you will become increasingly attached, especially if you’re personally accountable for their success.
Take 15 mins for mindfulness practice - focusing on the present moment and less on the past and future - to increase your resistance to the Sunk Cost bias. (Hafenbrack et al., 2013). Check out the Headspace app.
850,000 teachers' retirement plans were assessed. Each teacher's main decision was to divide their pension between two funds: one low risk (bonds) and one high risk (stocks). They could switch between the two at no cost.
Results found that despite the massive differences in rates of return between the two funds, only 20% ever switched from their initial fund allocation.
What's the status quo in your situation?
Build a strategy around identifying and removing the practical and emotional switching costs that are preventing change.
Make it exciting!
It isn't enough to just remove the barriers. Offer a Contrasting view of the net gain of the change, painting a clear, positive picture with a personalized Goal Prime showing them how their life will be better.
You’re setting them everywhere, sometimes without thinking. These strongly influence the status quo. What new behavioral goal are you looking to foster in your users? Update your defaults to suit.
52 people were split into two groups and given IKEA boxes: either fully-assembled or unassembled that they were asked to put together.
Those tasked with assembling their box were willing to pay a 63% premium for it during the subsequent bidding process over those given the pre-assembled boxes.
Provide personalization optionsearly in your order flow to engender a sense of ownership and significantly improve conversion. Apple do this with their customizations for a new computer, as do new car showrooms. How can you add a low-risk, satisfying sense of creation into your existing products or services, especially around your USPs?
Don’t create choice overload and stress with too many pre-purchase customizations. Similarly, keep any post-purchase building effort simple, fun and low risk. What core parts of your product manufacture should always remain out of customer hands?
Frame involvement as a value-add experience and not a labour-cost-saving exercise. How much this is felt may depend on your brand, your product and what you allow to be crafted by customers.
172 people were told of a fundraiser called Sheila who needed to sell 100 candy bars for her sports team and told she had to sell either 1 or 21 more bars to meet her quota. They were then asked how likely they were to buy a candy from her.
Those in the almost-complete task state were far more likely to help than when there were many left.
Visualize to motivate.
Showing quantifiable task progress with a visual and numerical indicator will increase completion speed (Cheema & Bagchi, 2011).
How can you heighten desire to close in on the reward?
Note that effort levels will fall after the current reward has been attained, so reframe progress around the next goal.
Be ahead of the curve.
Endow Progressand put more weight on task completion at the start than when close to the goal.
Place easier tasks at start and middle, saving harder or bigger ones for just before reward.
Reframe task size.
Motivation to complete a task is directly proportionate to its size. So, for viewers new to Breaking Bad, instead of Netflix initially highlighting all 5 seasons, reframe the task as a single season with a sense of completion.
Once season 1 is watched, reframe season 2 as a natural extension of 1 but distinct from 3-5.
218 people were split into 3 groups, given either a coffee mug or a chocolate bar and told they could swap their item for the other; or given neither and told they could choose either.
Those who’d been endowed with either item were far more likely to stick with it than those who were given neither.
Perceived ownership is powerful, allowing consumers to attribute increased value and emotional connection on what you’re offering, creating a strong desire to buy that increases over time.
It’s driven by a price gap between how much we’re willing to pay for an item and the price we’re willing to sell it for. This is due to a mix of Loss Aversion, Framing (i.e. buyer or seller) and the evolutionary advantage of overvaluing our tradable possessions. Doing so increases our resources and chances of survival.
Allow people to feel ownership of a product prior to purchase. Examples include: making it effortless to add that product to their basket, visually personalizing a product early in the ordering process, highlighting how soon it could be at your door or allowing free week-long test drives of that car you’ve always wanted.
Information has a wonderful way of looking very different, depending on how it’s communicated.
From turning glasses half empty into those half-full, as Designers, we have a great role to play in using framing to help people see things differently and hopefully, for the better too.
Framing is one of your most powerful behavioral tools. Everything can be reframed, depending on what you want.
For example, online second-hand clothing marketplace Vinted has devised a clever strategy to reframe the commonly-used “Service Fee” as a “Buyer protection fee”. By reframing it as buyer protection and clearly communicating how this amount is calculated, this assurance goes beyond merely paying for the item.
Now, customers will also feel confident that they’re taking extra steps towards safeguarding their purchase.
Information has a wonderful way of looking very different, depending on how it’s communicated.
From turning glasses half empty into those half-full, as Designers, we have a great role to play in using framing to help people see things differently and hopefully, for the better too.
Framing is one of your most powerful behavioral tools. Everything can be reframed, depending on what you want.
For example, online second-hand clothing marketplace Vinted has devised a clever strategy to reframe the commonly-used “Service Fee” as a “Buyer protection fee”. By reframing it as buyer protection and clearly communicating how this amount is calculated, this assurance goes beyond merely paying for the item.
Now, customers will also feel confident that they’re taking extra steps towards safeguarding their purchase.
96 people were told they’d be given some ground beef to taste, with half told it’d be “25% fat” (negative frame) and half told it’d be “75% lean” (positive frame). They were then asked to rate the quality of the beef out of 7.
Those presented with a positive frame rated the beef as higher quality than those presented with a negative one.
Create a frame using context, words or imagery to help others to see things according to your needs.
Wildly different perceptions are made possible by reframing the same evidence.
Reframe statistics as factually-accurate positives against competitors.
Facts are dramatically reinterpreted when set amongst different data.
• Create an opportunity to act.
We’re more likely to take up a special offer when the marketing message is framed as a potential loss than a gain (Gamliel and Herstein, 2012).
36 children, young adults and adults were asked to choose between a delayed reward of $1,000 and a number of smaller ones now.
All were quick to accept smaller rewards now over a larger delayed one. The longer the delay, the less perceived value the reward had, so $1,000 next week felt equal to $900 today but $1,000 in five years felt like $600 today.
Embrace the power of now.
Immediate gains are valued more greatly than those far off. Similarly, far-off costs seem less painful. Amazon heighten the immediate gain by taking a hit now, for longer term business payoff.
Where in your business can you capitalize upon 'the now'?
Prevent impulsive financial or health decisions by:
• Reframing future rewards around time (by stating a specific date) or by surfacing the painful zero outcomes of short-term choices (Wu & He, 2012).
• Goal Priming. Painting a vivid, personal, emotional picture of someone's future reality will boost their ability to make longer-term decisions now.
Dissuade from inferior choices today with a lock-in for tomorrow
This is when a choice now locks in a set of future inferior outcomes, aggregating any gains and forcing a stronger consideration of less impulsive choices.
Over 27,000 Israelis were mailed a self-administering Colorectal Cancer test kit. The kit either included an “if–then” leaflet with instructions of when, where, and how to perform the test or a standard leaflet with no such planning instructions (control group). They were then asked 2 and 6 months later whether they took the test.
71.4% of the If-then plan recipients took the test compared to 67.9% of the control group meaning If-Then plans resulted in 6.6% more of participants taking the test.
Whether designing for yourself or for others, here's how to make an easy, effective If-Then Plan:
First, define the goal.
If for you, it might be to exercise more. If for others, it might be to reduce an organisation's water waste. What existing behaviour are you looking to reduce or reinforce? Alternatively, what new, aspirational behaviour might you be looking to foster?
Identify your "If" context
This will become the future cue or environment that we'll recognise. It'll provide a clear, detectable moment to do something, even if you're busy or tired. Pick scenarios that are encountered often (E.g. on a daily basis, like an office lobby) to boost effectiveness.
E.g. "If/when I'm waiting for the elevator…"
Choose a behavioural "then" response
This is the specific behaviour that will get you closer to the goal you defined. The easier it is to recall and do, the more it will be done. For instance, what small, relevant and easy-to-recall behaviour can I do IF I'm waiting for the elevator?
E.g. "I will take the stairs"
Planning these steps out in advance and defining exactly how one should respond in the situation creates a strong, repeatable link between seeing and doing.
E.g. "If I have to wait for the elevator, then I will take the stairs"
Note: If designing for others, to ensure it'll be easy and fits within the context you're designing for, consider roleplaying it out before you roll it out. Role before you roll, if you will.
Inform, do not instruct.
A vivid, relatable and subtly persuasive image or message will be more effective to change consumer behaviour, whereas instructing them could be met with reactance. Remove this threat to personal freedom by giving consumers more autonomy when they make decisions.
Ideally, If-Thens should be defined at least in part by the person themselves. However, there are creative workarounds; companies could set and share strategic goals, with employees writing their own If-Then Plans to help achieve such goals.
• It started with a bowl of cashews at a university dinner party. After Thaler’s friends thanked him for removing the addictive nuts from the table, he wondered why people felt happier that they now had less choice; it contradicted economic theory around more choice being better! A curious anomaly…
• 1979 He saw that Kahneman and Tversky's Prospect Theory better predicted human behavior. Their finding that we use shortcuts to make decisions that lead to biases motivated him to turn his own stories into experiments…
“Creating a reputation as a “sludge-free” supplier of goods and services may be a winning, long-run strategy”
- Thaler (2018) The Evolution of Behavioral Economics
• 2004 Designed the ‘Save More Tomorrow’ program with Shlomo Benartzi to help people save more as their wages went up, using Defaults + Foot In The Door to get savings from 3.5% to 13.6% after 5 years, next to 5% without help.
• 2008 Wrote ‘Nudge’ with Cass Sunstein, defining nudges as interventions to help people make the choice they'd have made if informed and rational, happening within a ‘Choice Architecture’: the environment in which people make decisions, like a menu in McDonald’s or on your iPhone screen.
• 2018 Found, from looking at Swedish pensions, that default-based nudges last for many years, even when risk goes up! He’s since spoken out of the misuse of nudges in industry, calling them ‘sludges’.
• 2021 'Nudge - The Final Edition' was updated with new examples and a deeper dive into sludge.
• It started with a bowl of cashews at a university dinner party. After Thaler’s friends thanked him for removing the addictive nuts from the table, he wondered why people felt happier that they now had less choice; it contradicted economic theory around more choice being better! A curious anomaly…
• 1979 He saw that Kahneman and Tversky's Prospect Theory better predicted human behavior. Their finding that we use shortcuts to make decisions that lead to biases motivated him to turn his own stories into experiments…
“Creating a reputation as a “sludge-free” supplier of goods and services may be a winning, long-run strategy”
- Thaler (2018) The Evolution of Behavioral Economics
• 2004 Designed the ‘Save More Tomorrow’ program with Shlomo Benartzi to help people save more as their wages went up, using Defaults + Foot In The Door to get savings from 3.5% to 13.6% after 5 years, next to 5% without help.
• 2008 Wrote ‘Nudge’ with Cass Sunstein, defining nudges as interventions to help people make the choice they'd have made if informed and rational, happening within a ‘Choice Architecture’: the environment in which people make decisions, like a menu in McDonald’s or on your iPhone screen.
• 2018 Found, from looking at Swedish pensions, that default-based nudges last for many years, even when risk goes up! He’s since spoken out of the misuse of nudges in industry, calling them ‘sludges’.
• 2021 'Nudge - The Final Edition' was updated with new examples and a deeper dive into sludge.
You’re walking down the street. Consider two realities:
A: You unexpectedly find $10 in your pocket. You feel positively-surprised!
Or:
B: You left the house with $10 in your pocket. But you reach in and it’s gone. The pain you feel from its loss is greater than the good feeling of finding it.
Prospect Theory explains that our perceptions of value differ based on how something is framed, and losing things feels worse than getting them feels good.
As one of the grand concepts that underpinned a lot of the early ideas within behavioral science, Prospect Theory is a beast with many aspects to it, such as Loss Aversion, Framing, Certainty, and Risk.
You’re walking down the street. Consider two realities:
A: You unexpectedly find $10 in your pocket. You feel positively-surprised!
Or:
B: You left the house with $10 in your pocket. But you reach in and it’s gone. The pain you feel from its loss is greater than the good feeling of finding it.
Prospect Theory explains that our perceptions of value differ based on how something is framed, and losing things feels worse than getting them feels good.
As one of the grand concepts that underpinned a lot of the early ideas within behavioral science, Prospect Theory is a beast with many aspects to it, such as Loss Aversion, Framing, Certainty, and Risk.
Prospect theory is explained with a graph. Negative losses and positive gains recorded on the horizontal are set against a vertical intensity of feeling for those losses or gains.
As we gain more, we feel less for each gain. In contrast, even a small pain (shown in red) feels a lot more negative than an equal-sized gain feels good.
Package pain. Consumers will feel less overall pain from any costs incurred when you package and deliver them all together rather than when they're felt as separate, smaller pains.
Spread out rewards.
Instead of offering larger, chunkier benefits to consumers, break these down into smaller pieces, spreading them out across time.
$10 given 4 times feels more valuable overall than $40 given once.
Offer mixed product bundles.
We feel less good with each thing we consume. Therefore, the first can of soda tastes better than the fourth.
This means we'd get more complimentary value from a bag of chips instead.
Look for ways to offer relevant, mixed product bundles to offset diminishing consumer sensitivity.
• In the 1950s, Danny was drafted into the Israel Defence Forces in the psychology branch, creating methods to assess recruitment suitability.
• From the late 60s, he worked with fellow academic and best friend Amos Tversky. 1971-81 were the peak years of research output for the ‘dynamic duo’, including on the Availability and Anchoring shortcuts.
• In ’74, they published the important Judgement Under Uncertainty paper on biases and shortcuts, which started the wave of rational thinking as something unrealistic, impacting psychology, economics and philosophy.
“Thinking, Fast and Slow is an interesting capstone to his career, but his accomplishments were solidified well in advance of writing it. They’d be just as significant without it.”
- Steven Pinker on Daniel
• In ’79, Danny and Amos created Prospect Theory - with its “meaningless yet distinctive name” and initial discovery of Loss Aversion.
• In ’81, they created Framing suggesting that choices are merely mental representations open to intepretation and not set in stone.
• DefinedPeak End Rule with the famous colonoscopy study.
• In 2002, won the Nobel Prize for Economics for work with Tversky and later winner Richard Thaler that combined psychology with economics.
• He also furthered and then popularized Dual System Theory (Fast and Slow Thinking) in his best-selling book, Thinking, Fast and Slow in 2011.
• In the 1950s, Danny was drafted into the Israel Defence Forces in the psychology branch, creating methods to assess recruitment suitability.
• From the late 60s, he worked with fellow academic and best friend Amos Tversky. 1971-81 were the peak years of research output for the ‘dynamic duo’, including on the Availability and Anchoring shortcuts.
• In ’74, they published the important Judgement Under Uncertainty paper on biases and shortcuts, which started the wave of rational thinking as something unrealistic, impacting psychology, economics and philosophy.
“Thinking, Fast and Slow is an interesting capstone to his career, but his accomplishments were solidified well in advance of writing it. They’d be just as significant without it.”
- Steven Pinker on Daniel
• In ’79, Danny and Amos created Prospect Theory - with its “meaningless yet distinctive name” and initial discovery of Loss Aversion.
• In ’81, they created Framing suggesting that choices are merely mental representations open to intepretation and not set in stone.
• DefinedPeak End Rule with the famous colonoscopy study.
• In 2002, won the Nobel Prize for Economics for work with Tversky and later winner Richard Thaler that combined psychology with economics.
• He also furthered and then popularized Dual System Theory (Fast and Slow Thinking) in his best-selling book, Thinking, Fast and Slow in 2011.
• Morals are driven by 5 factors (2008) Though ever-evolving over time and different according to culture, Pinker states that what is seen as morally-acceptable is governed by our needs for fair Reciprocity, Community belonging, adherence to some form of Authority, Aversion to Risk and avoidance of harm to others.
• Imagery is incredibly powerful for cognition (1986) In Steven’s words “We are visual creatures. Visual things stay put, whereas sounds fade.” His award-winning research into visual cognition teaches us how it works and points towards the power of the Picture Superiority Effect.
“All of the violence that doesn’t occur doesn’t get reported on the news.”
- Pinker (2018) Enlightenment Now
• We believe things are much worse than evidence suggests (2018) In his 2018 book, Enlightenment Now, he targets common misconceptions about violence and inequality in modern society, showing that these false beliefs are a result of the Availability Bias. Quantitative evidence shows how wealth has increased around the globe, while poverty and violence have both decreased.
• We're different, and that's okay... (2012) In The Blank Slate, he argues that some human characteristics are pre-defined by our genes. For instance, he states that there are visible differences between the brains of men and women, citing research that men are less Risk Averse and are better at conceptualizing 3D objects. Similarly, women are much better at spelling and reading body language and facial expressions.
• Morals are driven by 5 factors (2008) Though ever-evolving over time and different according to culture, Pinker states that what is seen as morally-acceptable is governed by our needs for fair Reciprocity, Community belonging, adherence to some form of Authority, Aversion to Risk and avoidance of harm to others.
• Imagery is incredibly powerful for cognition (1986) In Steven’s words “We are visual creatures. Visual things stay put, whereas sounds fade.” His award-winning research into visual cognition teaches us how it works and points towards the power of the Picture Superiority Effect.
“All of the violence that doesn’t occur doesn’t get reported on the news.”
- Pinker (2018) Enlightenment Now
• We believe things are much worse than evidence suggests (2018) In his 2018 book, Enlightenment Now, he targets common misconceptions about violence and inequality in modern society, showing that these false beliefs are a result of the Availability Bias. Quantitative evidence shows how wealth has increased around the globe, while poverty and violence have both decreased.
• We're different, and that's okay... (2012) In The Blank Slate, he argues that some human characteristics are pre-defined by our genes. For instance, he states that there are visible differences between the brains of men and women, citing research that men are less Risk Averse and are better at conceptualizing 3D objects. Similarly, women are much better at spelling and reading body language and facial expressions.
• We overvalue things that are free (2007) His famous chocolate experiment revealed that, due to our Zero Price Bias, we place far greater value on things that are free over something very cheap.
• We value things more that we’ve helped make (2012) Dan discovered the famous IKEA Effect, which tells us that when we’ve invested energy into helping make something, we feel a stronger attachment to it and will therefore pay more for it over something very similar that we didn’t make.
• We can design for more ethical behavior (2016) As Chief Behavioral Officer at Lemonade, an insurance firm, Dan combined our Commitment Bias with his findings on dishonesty, using moral reminders and honesty pledges to increase the number of genuine insurance claims.
“People are willing to work free, and they are willing to work for a reasonable wage; but offer them just a small payment and they will walk away.”
• Even the lazy can reach life goals (2015) Dan helped to develop Qapital, an app that lets you connect your bank account to reach your financial goals. Make a purchase for $5.70, Qapital charges you $6 and saves the difference for you. A brilliant use of Defaults to avoid the Loss Aversion of intentionally putting money away in a savings pot.
• Tiny commitments can have a big effect (2018) Found that having people make a pledge to repay a loan within a smaller window of time led them to be more likely to pay off their debt. These results suggest that designing Time-scarce commitments like this are a scalable, cost-effective intervention to help improve people’s lives.
• We overvalue things that are free (2007) His famous chocolate experiment revealed that, due to our Zero Price Bias, we place far greater value on things that are free over something very cheap.
• We value things more that we’ve helped make (2012) Dan discovered the famous IKEA Effect, which tells us that when we’ve invested energy into helping make something, we feel a stronger attachment to it and will therefore pay more for it over something very similar that we didn’t make.
• We can design for more ethical behavior (2016) As Chief Behavioral Officer at Lemonade, an insurance firm, Dan combined our Commitment Bias with his findings on dishonesty, using moral reminders and honesty pledges to increase the number of genuine insurance claims.
“People are willing to work free, and they are willing to work for a reasonable wage; but offer them just a small payment and they will walk away.”
• Even the lazy can reach life goals (2015) Dan helped to develop Qapital, an app that lets you connect your bank account to reach your financial goals. Make a purchase for $5.70, Qapital charges you $6 and saves the difference for you. A brilliant use of Defaults to avoid the Loss Aversion of intentionally putting money away in a savings pot.
• Tiny commitments can have a big effect (2018) Found that having people make a pledge to repay a loan within a smaller window of time led them to be more likely to pay off their debt. These results suggest that designing Time-scarce commitments like this are a scalable, cost-effective intervention to help improve people’s lives.
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