bj fogg behavior model

How to design behaviour: Moments that Matter

How to design behaviour: SWAC

The objective of most intervention strategies is not only to change behaviour but to change this new behaviour into a routine behaviour (a habit), so the new behaviour will stick.

Remember, your desired behaviour is new behaviour for people and that’s why it is important to spark behaviour AGAIN and again. Only then the behaviour will take place, as illustrated above as the BEHAVIOURAL CHANGE THRESHOLD. When your objective is to design repeat behaviour, it almost goes without saying that you have to make sure the desired behaviour is performed repeatedly. If you can make someone perform new behaviour over and over AGAIN, it can become automatic.

The result being that someone doesn’t have to think about the new behaviour anymore, he or she simply does it. This way it can become habitual. Illustrated above model as the HABIT THRESHOLD. As Aristotle already stated:

We are what we repeatedly do.

He added ‘Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit’. To sum it up: The more often you do something, the easier it gets. So, there you have it: the four elements you need to change behaviour.

Aristotle quote, ancient Greek philosopher, scientist and physician, 384 BC-322 BC, no original source known.

How to design behaviour: Capability

Before we start working with the tool, let’s go back one little bit.  As Behavioural Designers our outset is to design for someone’s system 1.

Our job is to help people make better decisions without them having to think.

This is the foundation of this model. When you look at willingness (WANT) and capability (CAN) there is something very interesting and important going on. We are all so used (and trained) to have the best arguments, deals, offers, rewards or promises to convince someone (or ourselves). Historically, we are all shaped around motivation (WANT). If we need to sell something, we are hardwired to try to create willingness to buy. If a personal resolution fails, our first (conditioned) conclusion is that we must not have wanted it badly enough to keep up the self-discipline.

What if I tell you that making sure someone wants something often isn’t the most powerful starting point to change behaviour? Making someone WANTs to perform the desired behaviour is just one side of the medal in getting things done. In fact, it even isn’t the shiniest side of the medal. Here’s why. There is something particular going on with people’s willingness to change; It goes up and down. When relating this to our fundamental know-how on human decision-making this makes perfect sense, as:

Willingness to change requires cognitive action.

It is a system 2 activity like self-control and focus. You cognitively decide you want something. You decide this consciously. I want to lose weight, I want to save money, I want to recycle, I want to spend more time with my kids. We have learned that our system 2 has only limited bandwidth. Therefore, your willingness to change falters, it goes up and down in waves. This is the reason why most new year’s resolutions fail. On January 1^st you WANT to lose weight, or you WANT to stop drinking or you WANT to go to the gym. And then comes along your best friend’s birthday. Or you’ve pulled a whole-nighter because that precious offspring of yours refused to sleep. And now you don’t WANT to exercise and not drink anymore. You want to vegetate on the couch (sleep deprivation isn’t a walk in the park) or have a blast (hey your friend only turns 40 once). You feel so deserving (your system 2 post-rationalisation working full speed for you) and so you will start next month. You simply CANnot do it today. Your willingness to change behaviour has dropped like a mic on an empty stage. This is perfectly human, but something we have to take into account when designing for behaviour change. Chaos Monkey Galore!

Luckily, as Behavioural Designer, you have an ace up your sleeve by making behaviour very simple. Our brain LOVES simple. Bonus is that when things are simple, we are able to do things without needing that much willingness. That’s why we always start with thinking about possible CAN interventions. This is designing for system 1. The best behavioural change ideas are in their core capability ideas.

Making something very easy to do is something that requires little or no cognitive action from someone.

Let me illustrate how this can work with a real-life example. Most people WANT to save money, but many of find it hard to do (CAN). You could design saving behaviour without having to really stress the willingness to save too much but by focusing on making saving behaviour easier instead. This is exactly what Bank of America did. Their human insight was that people wanted to save money, but never did especially making regular contributions was very hard. They have introduced a program called ‘Keep the Change’. What it boils down to is that every time a client pays with his or her debit card for daily purchases like buying coffee, going to the dry cleaners and so on, they round up their purchase to the nearest dollar amount and transfer the change from someone’s checking account to their savings account — or to their child’s savings account.

From a JTBD point of view, I find the last brilliant by the way: a lot of parents want to save money to for their children to have a little money in the bank once they go to college or need some extra funds otherwise. So, let’s say you have to pay something of $ 4,60 then $ 0,40 is automatically transferred. You don’t have to think about it, it just has been made very simple for you. The result of this behavioural design intervention has been very impactful. Ever since the program launched in September of 2005, more than 12.3 million customers have enrolled, saving a total of more than 2 billion dollars. Of all new customers, 60% enrol in the program and Bank of America reported that 99% of the people who signed-up with the program have stayed with it.

Designing behaviour: Willingness

Astrid Groenewegen

Experiential bonuses

Think back to when you last rewarded an employee. It probably was with a raise or bonus. Did you know this is not the best way to boos motivation. Monetary gives a short surge in motivation, but is doesn’t last long. Ofcourse, baseline rewards are good because your employees deserve to be compensated for their hard work. But for motivation there is a better way to achieve this.

You should start focussing on experiential bonuses: free lunches, gifts, dinners with their partner, a trip to Disney with their family. These can be standard gifts at Christmas or unexpected gifts tailored to their situation (but not money).

It will boost pride, loyalty and work satisfaction over a longer period of time. Just so you know, if you ask them what they would rather have (money or a gift) they will choose the money. But know that the satisfaction with the cash will run out soon. Gifts will build good will. Next time you have to gift, think beyond the money. It boost appreciation.

Tip: Humans love appreciation not bonusus. Appreciation boosts the social relationship between employer and employee which last longer and has a far greater positive effect.

Using public praise

Did you know that an effective tool to make other people succeed in their tasks is public praise. Humans have the desire to seek pride for what they do and avoid shame as a result of their actions. Getting public praise helps to achieve this.

Public praise keeps up the social image and helps us signal our identity and norms to others. During social interactions we want to be seen in a specific way to fit in with the crowd. We want to seem hardworking, effective or maybe funny. When other people praise us for certain behaviour it will establish our image towards others. It will help us fulfill the need for recognition an beloning.

There are different ways you can praise someone. You might have a employee of the month in companies. Non-profit organizations may use a wristband or button to make it explicitly visible to others that this person donated. Research showed that in primary schools public praise can also boost performance. Children who received congratulation cards after finishing a school taks showed a 12% increase in performance.

Here is our tip: by giving people public praise you can boost motivation an performance. So, don’t be afraid to give someone some praise for what they are doing!

Meaningful numbers

Do you find it difficult to understand big numbers? You are not the only one. This is because processing numbers requires too much thinking. But sometimes, it is important that you do understand what the numbers are trying to tell you. For example, if it is about statistics about your health or welfare.

One important sector that uses a lot of numbers is the media and the news. Headlines guide your opinions and decisions. But we find it difficult to understand them sometimes. If a headline is talking about ‘33.000 gallons of drinking water’, do you know how much that is?

In an experiment, they tried adding anchors to numbers: adding a perspective that helps people interpret information much better. For example, 33.000 gallons of drinking water is about 2 average swimming pools.

What can you learn from this experiment? If you have to communicate a number, you should put it into perspective by finding an anchor. By using an anchor, you can make information much more meaningful for someone as it puts meaning to a value or statistic.

Make the desirable behaviour easy

Have you ever had good resolutions? Exercise more, eat healthy, or work harder. Yet you quickly fall back into your old behaviour. Why does this happen anyway?

Relying on self-discipline to achieve the desired behaviour is overrated. In fact, only top athletes usually succeed. This is because self-discipline requires cognitive action. But the part of the brain you need for this has only a limited capacity.

If you start with the best intentions at the beginning of your day, you will still fail at the end of the day because your cognitive capacities will be depleted by then. As a result, you start snacking or slacking off. So this is not a weakness but human nature. Your automatic brain takes over, and you fall back into your old behaviour.

Behaviour that is familiar and doesn’t require too much attention.
But you can change your behaviour. The solution is to make the behaviour very easy to perform. This will allow your automatic brain to execute the new behaviour. For example, slice some cucumber in the afternoon and put it in a bowl on your desk. It is then much easier to eat than a bag of chips still in the cupboard.

Our tip: To stick with new behaviour, focus on making the behaviour easy to perform rather than relying on self-discipline.

Improving fundraising 

How do you get a lot by asking a little? That’s what they did in an experiment to raise money for charities. That sounds very contradictory. You fear you will also get less money when you ask for a small amount. Yet this works slightly differently.

The size of the donation should be taken into account, as well as how many people give to a charity. At the American Cancer Society, they did an experiment. In this, they went door to door with two alternating questions.

1. I raise money for the American Cancer Society. Would you like to help by giving a donation?
2. I raise money for the American Cancer Society. Would you like to help by giving a donation? Even a penny would help.

It had a significant effect to highlight that even a small donation can help. The number of people who donated something went from 20% to 50%. In addition, adding this sentence did not affect the donation size. So more people donated, and they did not give a lower amount than before.

This is also known as the legitimising effect: making it okay to give only a small amount. So don’t be afraid to ask for something small. It can work out great.

Our tip: By making it okay to give a little, people are more likely to give something. Often even more than you had asked for.

Show the impact of actions.

Many companies set goals or missions that often don’t work. They expect that when managers set a new goal, it will automatically stimulate employees’ willingness to change or contribute to the company. What they often forget is to inject actual behaviour into these goals.

What is crucial to increase willingness to cooperate is giving employees the opportunity and time to see the impact of their actions. It is very nice to see how your services or products help people. For doctors, this is very easy; people were sick and are now getting better. But even when you sell products, employees need to see the positive impact of their work. For example, how a savings app made them save money which made them have less stress or can do fun things.

Here’s our tip: translate your goals into real behaviours to boost motivation. Being able to see how your projects or products have helped other people is great.

Loss aversion

You can significantly improve your sales figures by using a powerful principle from Behavioural Design: Loss aversion.

Losing something hits us 1,5 times harder compared to winning something of the exact same value.

We hate to lose something. We can put this tendency not to lose anything to good use in sales. After all, you can present your offer in a certain way. Take selling solar panels, for example. You can do this in 2 ways:

• Buy new solar panels now and save €250 every year.
• If you don’t install solar panels now, you lose €250 every year.

Research shows that the second offer turns out to be much more efficient. This is because we find it worse to lose €250 than to gain.

You can also use this in your daily life. Incorporate loss aversion into your sales pitches. What you have to keep in mind is that you have to present something in a loss frame rather than a gain frame to stimulate the willingness to perform behaviour.

Simplicity is key

Perhaps the solution seems very simple. But the language we use is one of the strongest factors influencing behaviour. That is why it is important to think about communication when developing behavioural interventions.

Humans process a lot of information in a day. Our brain often suffers from cognitive overload. That is why we like simplicity: easy signals we can quickly grasp. It is our survival mechanism to take the easy route.

We can use this trick the brain does to our advantage. By using easy language in your communication, you will come across as much more convincing. Use language that a fourth grader understands. This does not only apply to low-educated people. Simple language also works very well with a highly educated target group. This is also how elections are won!

So to encourage the desired behaviour, we need to use easy language. We process this faster, which makes you look more persuasive and attractive. This is how you get people to do what you want them to do.

Comparison isn’t the thief of joy

If you want to influence other people’s behaviour, comparison can be a powerful technique. We are constantly trying to compare ourselves to other people. Consciously but also unconsciously. This is because people like to belong to a group. By paying attention to other people, you will quickly adapt your behaviour to that of the group norms. This happens especially often with people who are close to us or with people whose behavior or opinion is important to us.

Did you know that people waste less water at home if they can see the water consumption of their neighbors? This is a good example of how you can use social comparison to positively influence behaviour.

An experiment showed that this also works for doctors. When they were informed about how often colleagues prescribed drugs, the number of unnecessary drugs prescribed by these doctors was also reduced.

How can you apply this yourself? Maybe you have the idea to go for a walk during your lunch break. Often this plan fails. Even if you count your daily steps online, it often won’t motivate you enough to go outside. This is because this is about individual feedback. In an experiment it was investigated if feedback from other people that you can use to compare your own actions to would solve this problem. There were two groups. Group 1 only received individual feedback on the number of steps they took in a day. Group 2 also received feedback on the number of steps colleagues had taken. The result was clear. Through social comparison, group 2 took 1020 more steps per day than group 1.

Comparison can therefore put us humans into action. Especially if we recognize ourselves in the behaviour of others.