The Science of Behaviour Change

Behavioural science has found that we don’t always act rationally or in our best interest, and simply being told what we need to be doing doesn’t work.

Many problems that our society faces – climate change, poor health, depleted natural resources – require us to change the way we do things. To combat climate change we need to use less fossil fuel. To reduce obesity we need to eat less and move more. To reduce lung cancer we need to stop smoking. The list goes on.

So if we know what to do, why aren’t these problems solved?Understanding how people make decisions can help us design interventions that encourage people to change behaviour in beneficial ways. However, there is an important balance to be struck between personal freedom and helping people lead better lives.

Nick Chater has over 200 publications, has won four national awards for psychological research, and has served as Associate Editor for the journals Cognitive Science, Psychological Review, and Psychological Science.

Toby Park leads the energy and sustainability work at BIT (Behavioural Insights Team), covering topics as diverse as domestic energy use, sustainable transport and wider pro-environmental behaviours including recycling, food consumption, air quality and water conservation.
The books that Toby suggested at the end of his talk are:

The event is chaired by Stavroula Kousta, Chief Editor of Nature Human Behaviour

This talk and Q&A was filmed in the Ri on 17 July 2019.

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[nickh]

The behaviour change wheel - I think this is great but I wonder if it’s biased. For example the ‘reflective’ and ‘automatic’ components of behaviour are being shown as equal. But we know from scads of experimental studies (esp Bargh, Neal etc) that MOST of our behaviours are automatic. Joseph LeDoux tells is to think of all behaviours being nonconscious by default. So that part of the wheel should represent the automatic slice as 95% and the reflective as 5% or less

[TraneFrancks]

Some picture-in-picture would go a long way to enabling the speaker's slide to remain on screen while showing the speaker.

[mow]

RI! We know you have several cameras, camera operators and at least one video editor. Congratulations. But can you show us the speaker’s slides for more than five effing seconds at a time?? What is the point exactly of showing the speaker speaking from 17, 000 angles and failing to let them get their message across?

[ianlonergan]

Good times produce weak people, weak people produce hard times, hard times produce good people, and good people produce good times.

All civilisations that have failed historically is basically due to the corruption that exists within ALL people, broadly speaking on a planetary scale we have neglected the significance of philosophy, supplanted to religion, to provide or rather inspire an individual towards a purpose greater than themselves, where a meaningful life is in the pursuit of reason is enough rather providing its own purpose. Rather than to live unfulfilled and seek distractions or indulgences to fill that inner void or avoid the confrontation of the tragic awareness of life, we are creatures of chance and suffering and most of humanities achievements is to ameliorate this world is the way it is because it represents our failure to develop a grand narrative that explains life and death, our impermanence, and the nature of ones self within a larger social structure.

We have lost our way in our narcissistic material world that on the most fundamental level we evolved to be as hunter gathers living in a small tightly bound community dependent upon each other for survival. As a species we are ill equipped to live a healthy existence within such a densely populated and competitive world. Once nature gave us a reason to be but like god we have almost killed nature as well, the God we killed was essentially masculine, the hierarchy of our capitalistic economy is essentially masculine by nature, predatory risk taking behaviours for a short term goal, a small group having killed an elephant could exist of that flesh and bones for a long time, all reduced to chasing bubbles preparing to profit off its lifecycle to a burst while preparing investments in take over industries that arise to fill the vacuum.

To survive we need to reinvent not god but the GODDESS who would nurture life and bring forth life, or philosophically ask is this what I am doing affirming life and will my actions affirm the future? The difference between a goddess and philosophy is of course a matter of debate, what do our words mean to better ask what is the nature of things? We need a purpose in life greater than ourselves. Either that or extinction.

[CreativeContention]

Susan Michie. Wow. Your work is amazing and awe inspiring at what we are capable of. Thank you.

[wingbull]

Being relatively pessimistic after several uni courses on sustainability, I can't help but think 0% GHG emissions in the UK pretty much means a UK-sized increase in GHG emissions in Asia.

[TheAdwatson]

An important part of behaviour is the use of physical gestures, which is very noticeable with the the first speaker. As someone originally from UK, I am used to to gestures while talking, with Italians being famous for it. My Cook Island wife gets very annoyed if I use any kind of gesture while talking and tells me to "Stop acting!". Having watched the gestures used by the first speaker, (I haven't finished watching the whole video yet), I am now struggling to understand what each gesture actually means. Could the speaker analyse her own actions and explain the gestures? I suspect not.

[hashkafe]

when she lists the 4 Bad Health Habits, and you check every single one of them -_-

[stephaniewilson]

One behaviour that has been ignored is that people need to stop using individual vehicles and depend much more on mass transport. You should not drive a private car in a city. You should be taking an electric-powered bus and that electricity needs to be generated by wind, water and solar.

[renzob]

The first speaker does not stop to mention that 'evidence based' guidelines are sometimes based on spurious, distorted, meaningless or manufactured "evidence", e.g. antidepressants (and so many more).

[LynxSouth]

This is about manipulating people to achieve social policy ends, not personal change.

[danlhendl]

My thoughts on the science of behavior change always run to “you first” 😅

[galbeeri]

if you want to learn about behavior just read B.F Skinner

[ihavenokeyboardandimustqua]

I challenge you to take a shot everytime they say behavior

[IyagoRoaDBoXeR]

Wrong Q&A linked, please correct the same.

[tonyb]

The role of IIA has allways been for th3 last thousands of years maintaining stability by reseaarching the past.
It is perplexing how basic mission turned up side down.
After all, as a knowlegable scientists that the experts are tje most volenerable against cognitive and other biases. The wise men will know what it means.
Agent of stability van reflect society. But it requier a deep intelectuall distancing and no foriegn interesys just to attempt this hard task.
Take care be humble aspire high.

[charles_wipman]

"Social media" it's a very effective way of change people behaviour; most of the people that i know changed their habits by exposing themselves (too much IMO) to so called "social media", like a 85% of the girls that i know that go to the gym do it for look hotter, like the other girls that they see, not for be healthyer. Like a 90% of the guys that i know that go to the gym do it for be stronger than the other dudes that they see and also to beat 'em up on a fight that they look for when they go out or are are on the street; also, the "social media" it's pushing the behaviour towards more conservative thinking in economic and political terms, but mainly in economic terms because everything else will come from there.

[seanjoseph]

We are in the age of 1984 style social engineering.

[glutinousmaximus]

Well, I was not very convinced by all of this. You have to ask: ~ "How scientific is it?" ~ to start with it has to be quantifiable in terms of data, repeatable and make testable predictions. The data offered seemed awfully woolly to me. Perhaps if there is a good Q&A follow-up session, it might become a little clearer and the sources easily accessed.

[gasaxe]

I was looking for a solution and discovered the problem of 2021.