On Adopting A Behavioural Lens
People come to me every day wanting to know how to nudge. The allure of behaviour change by virtue of indirect suggestion is so appealing, I totally get it. HOWEVER, it’s not always easy to download the whole field of Behavioural Economics in a short conversation, through referring people to a few easy-reading websites, or even a client meeting.
So, I’ve been thinking about a good way to summarize what I think is the essence of applying Behavioural Economics in a practical sense, what I shall call BLAH: Behavioural Lens Adoption Hypothesis
Behavioural Economics
Let’s start from the beginning. Behavioural Economics is awesome because it helps us understand why people behave and make certain decisions. People are interested in shifting behaviour for various reasons including for policy, health and wellbeing, and financial wellbeing. Traditionally, these were questions tackled by Economics. Adopting a behavioural perspective fills in gaps that classical economics fails to explain and predict, providing a spectrum of tools to government, companies, and individuals.
And doing some pretty cool things…
How about reducing wasteful energy consumption? Psychologist Wesley Schultz of California State University, San Marcos set up an experiment that leveraged our social norms – that is, the benchmarking of our own behaviour against everyone else – to see if informing high energy consumers’ about their usage relative to the norm had any impact. Through receiving letters with this consumption information, high users face strong negative emotions that triggered behavioural change and reduction of energy consumption by 10%. Um… that’s so awesome! Just thanks to a letter!
Adopting a behavioural lens means looking at the situation with the behaviour as the level of analysis (e.g. not total city or neighbourhood energy consumption, but what a particular household is actually doing, in the case of the San Marcos example).
What is a Behaviour, Exactly?
Everyone knows what a behaviour is, right? WRONG. It turns out that even the academics have a hard time precisely defining a behaviour. For example, Levitis, Lidicker, and Freund, researchers of Biological Behaviour from the University of California, Berkeley, found a lack of consensus and even disagreement in what scholars in their field consider ‘behaviour’, even though it’s a key concept of their field. Although they were vague on their respective definitions of behaviour, their peers were confident that they knew what a behaviour was, with one of their colleagues apparently stating, “I know it when I see it, hear it, smell it, feel it or electrically sense it.” Cool. Cool cool.
Anyway, Levitis and crew propose a definition based on their surveying of the literature and their peers. “Behaviour is: the internally coordinated responses (actions or inactions) of whole living organisms (individuals or groups) to internal and/or external stimuli, excluding responses more easily understood as developmental changes.”
Level of Analysis: Behaviours
Here’s my checklist. A behaviour:
Is an action, activity, process or decision;
Can be observed and measured;
Has a stimuli (internal or external) and an outcome.
Interestingly, a behavioural lens does not need to include the individual’s attitude. Knowing a person’s attitude has been found to be a very poor predictor or behaviour. Although, some theorists, such as Fishbein and Ajzen have linked behaviour and attitude.
What’s does the H in BLAH stand for? Hypothesis.
My hypothesis is as follows: Adopting a behavioural lens – that is, where the unit of analysis is the behaviour itself – helps to understand human interaction with others and their environment, and subsequently enhances application of behaviour principles on desired outcomes.
Behavioural Lens Applied
By now you’re probably wondering how to put this behavioural lens into practice. I would wager you’re asking yourself how you can move from a behavioural lens to behavioural change. What can guide you as you build your nudge or behavioural intervention? I have created another fun acronym to help! Apply a behavioural lens with MURE!
In the process of your design, ask yourself if the prospective intervention is:
Measurable? Can I measure the change somehow?
Useful? Will it be beneficial to the target individual to change their behaviour?
Realistic? Is there a likely change this change will be able to happen? (i.e., you can’t turn a human into a tomato); Is the intervention too costly?
Ethical? Would it be socially ethical to get someone to make this change? (i.e., you probably shouldn’t ask people to stop breathing…)
Great! So now you’re all ready to grab your BLAH and apply it with MURE! BLAHMURE almost sounds like… glamour?
Introducing: Behavioural Sassonomics!
Bigger, better, sassier. Welcome to my new site: drdarciedixon.com!
What can you expect from this new site?
Putting behavioural economics, psych, and consumer behaviour into practice
Looking at real life questions, like the impact of lying on your health, being authentic, and how to make work suck less
Giving some real companies some very practical – and sassy – advice. Um, I’m looking at you, Air Canada!
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Prepared to be tickled pink!
Love,
