A study of interventions aimed at changing people’s behaviour suggests that those that fail have common features.
Identifying these features could help predict potential ways in which future interventions might fail and provide an opportunity to prevent this, says Magda Osman at Queen Mary University of London.
Osman and her colleagues analysed 65 articles published between 2008 and 2019 that identified failed behavioural interventions, including nudges – subtle suggestions aimed at influencing people’s behaviour.
They found that behavioural interventions that relied on social comparisons and social norming, for instance encouraging people to adopt a behaviour by indicating that it is a common or normal behaviour in society, accounted for the majority – 40 per cent – of the failed interventions studied.
Other strategies that appeared among the failed interventions included those that delivered messages via letters or texts (24 per cent) or through labelling on products (12 per cent), and those that relied on defaults, such as opt-in or opt-out strategies (15 per cent).
The researchers also categorised various ways in which interventions failed, such as by producing no effect at all or by backfiring and producing an unwanted side effect. Considering both the type of behavioural intervention as well as potential ways interventions may fail in advance could help with the design of more successful interventions, says Osman.
Osman and her team are developing models that could help predict how a given behavioural intervention might perform, based on their analysis of failed interventions. “You can simulate different outcomes before you start running a behavioural intervention that might fail”, which could save time and money, she says.
Journal reference: Trends in Cognitive Sciences, DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2020.09.009
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Source: Humans - newscientist.com
