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Learn how to change behavior.

The world's largest collection of resources and data on behavioral science.

Tactics that change behavior

Automation

TACTICS

Automation

Automation refers to having another person, group, or technology system perform part or all of the intended behavior. A prominent example is Thaler & Bernartzi's Save More Tomorrow intervention, which invested a portion of employees' earnings into retirement funds automatically and even increased the contribution level to scale with pay raises. Other examples include automatically scheduling medical appointments so the patient needn't do it themselves and mailing healthy recipe ingredients to the person's home to reduce the burden of shopping.‍

Covert Learning

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Covert Learning

Covert learning refers to imparting educational information into non-traditional methods of delivery. For example, a film where someone learns cognitive behavioral therapy techniques or receives training on body-weight fitness exercises may teach someone how to do these (or at least generally what they are). People may also learn the consequences of a behavior through watching someone else experience them, and this concept (viarious experience) is a key component of Bandura's social cognitive theory.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)

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Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)

ACT is a therapeutic approach originalled developed by Steven Hayes. It borrows from previous concepts like cognitive behavioral therapy and Morita therapy. The principles of ACT are fairly systematic and lend themselves well to program design, finding empirical support in adaptations like 2morrow's smoking cessation and pain management interventions.‍

Checklists

TACTICS

Checklists

Checklists are an age-old tactic for remembering to do certain tasks. Checklists are sometimes used to measure behaviors that should take place with a certain frequency, e.g. every day or X times per week, and other times, to ensure certain steps are followed every time a person does a complex behavior.For behavior designers, the challenges of checklists often entail choosing the right behaviors, breaking them down to the correct level of granularity for a given population, and serving them up in the proper context or sometimes with personalization. They are likely underutilized and consistently improve the performance of even experts, like pilots and surgeons.

Depression rating

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Depression rating

Depression rating simply refers to having someone rate their mood. Often, this may be an informal method like a smiley-face based Lickert scale or choosing a word from a list, rather than using a standardized instrument like the Beck Depression Inventory.‍

Behavioral Activation (BA)

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Behavioral Activation (BA)

Behavioral activation is a therapeutic approach that typically pairs activity scheduling with either monitoring tools or goal-setting. For example, someone might aim to balance activities they "should" do but underperform, like self-care behaviors, with activities they enjoy. Users of this technique may also track which activities cause certain cognitions or affective states, like those associated with depression.‍

Change Effort

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Change Effort

Changing effort refers to modifying the difficulty, or sometimes perceived difficulty, of a behavior in order to change its likelihood of occurrence. This often entails making a behavior easier by reducing its intensity or frequency. This is a tactic advocated by BJ Fogg’s model of behavior change.

Coaching or Counselling

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Coaching or Counselling

Coaching or counselling here refers to having a trained person provide guidance to someone attempting a behavior. Many mental health and lifestyle programs utilize coaching in various forms, including phone calls, video chat, text messaging, or in-person sessions. Some programs have replaced some or all of these traditionally human-delivered touchpoints with AI or rules-based interactions.