If you haven’t been following me on Instagram or Twitter, then you must have missed my many posts on psychology, touching often on behavioral economics, and how they present themselves in different facets of our life and work… It’s no secret then that I am a big fan of the behavioral economics discipline and in making use of its science to improve our quality of life or achieve desired results at work! Hence this post, inspired by over 12 hours of great insights from field experts and researchers from around the world, and their talks in Nudge Stock 2020, one of the biggest behavioral science events, that has happened for the first time LIVE and completely FREE (thanks Covid19!).

So if you’re looking to influence the behavior of your customers, employees, or even your own, here are 3 evidence-based tips with examples on how you can put them to work in your career or make them personal to apply in your own life:

Tip #1 Define the Outcome

First step of changing behaviors is to know what we want to achieve (the outcome) to determine what needs to be changed. It sounds obvious and easy until we realize that we don’t really know what we want! And even worse, we feel threatened when outsiders get to know us too well to tell us what we want because then we feel we can't present ourselves the way we want, says evolutionary psychologists, Diana S. Fleischman and Geoffrey Miller.

Another thing to keep in mind is that we often lie about what we think and what we want, known as preference falsification, as Cass Sunstein, Robert Walmsley University Professor and co-creator of Nudging, put its. He has found that even in the most democratic of societies, people are often silenced by social norms and a perception of what others think.

Bottom line is we don't necessarily always want what we think we want.

Evan Hanover suggests using the deprivation method is helpful in several cases to figure out what people value most.

Here is where behavioral science comes in, as Rory Sutherland, Vice Chairman of Ogilvy Group, states that “behavioral science doesn't only answer what people want. It answers under what circumstances would people want what they want.” One behavioral science tactic you can use is deprivation, advocated by Evan Hanover, Director of Research at Conifer Research, to learn what people value most. Using deprivation is especially helpful when you want to explore people’s preferences, and what alternatives they seek when something is taken away from them, as seen in the herein slide. This resonated as well with what Peter McGraw, Director of The @HumorResearch Lab, calls the “reverse it” method inspired from stand-up comedians, where he suggests thinking in reverse and going in the opposite way of what’s expected. So if you want to know what people want, think of taking away what they want (deprivation) or giving them what they don’t want (reverse thinking) and observe how their behaviors change. I found this particularly insightful in relation to what Rory said: “All marketers make the mistake of spending too much time emphasizing the positives and far too little time looking for negatives that we can removed.” So instead of always asking what do people want, and giving them more of it, it would be more helpful to think in reverse, and figure out what they don’t want and deprive them of it.

Put it to work:

To personalize your product (a good, service, content, etc.) based on what your (potential) customers want in order to influence their behavior (to buy, to consume, etc.), skip asking them what they want through surveys or focus groups, and try eliminating certain elements of your product and observing how people interact with it and change their behavior in the case of each element elimination. A/B testing would be a great tool to use here, and it doesn’t have to be limited to digital product testing such as website design or ad copies. Think of the budget airline industry, and how they deconstructed the main products and services down to their basic element (i.e. a seat on the plane from point A to point B), and offered each extra element separately (e.g. onboard meal, luggage space, entertainment, insurance, etc.). It is not necessarily to study or change their customers’ behavior, but it does provide great insight on what travelers value the most and which features they’re willing to pay to use or what alternatives they would seek. A good example is also The Light Phone by Brooklyn entrepeneurs, known also as “the dumb phone”, since, contrary to the moder smartphone, it is designed with minimum features for people who don’t want to be connected all the time. It is the “reverse” of what you’d expect in the phone market these days, where brands like Apple and Samsung keep trying to fit more apps and features onto their devices. The Light comes in a small size and could perform only one task: make and receive phone calls. While the phone had a 50,000-person waitlist and shipped 15,000 units, very few people ended up using it because it only worked on 2G networks and didn’t support texting. So by Light II, the entrepreneurs introduced more essential features such as 4G network, e-ink display, and messaging while still adhering to the same bare-bones aesthetics and philosophy as the original.

Make it personal:

To understand your own behavior and what gets you to change and adopt new habits, deprive yourself of certain things in your routine and notice what effects that have on you and what new habits you develop. For example, I noticed at some point that I waste a lot of time browsing Facebook or shopping apps to not much value. Simply by deleting the apps, I started investing my time on the phone more productively, by using learning apps or article reading apps more. Having more learning apps on my phone wasn’t enough, even though I did want to spend more productive time on my phone… It took depriving myself of certains apps to change my behavior. So what I really wanted (or needed) was less distractions, not necessarily more productivity. While you perhaps can’t change your habit of reaching to your phone whenever you are bored or have time to kill, you can eliminate certain elements of what makes your time on the phone a “bad habit” and turn it into a good one.

Tip # 2 Keep it simple

“Simplicity changes behavior” was a key theme in many of the experts’ talks in NudgeStock 2020. We often think that changing bad habits and achieving success has much to do with motivation. But as BJ Fogg, Stanford behavior scientist, demonstrates with his Fogg Behavior Model:

Behavior = motivation + ability + prompt

So changing behavior doesn’t depend merely on having the motivation to do it, but also on having the ability and the right prompts (triggers) to change… And of course, the easier and simpler something is, the more likely we’re able to do it.

Bri William's Behavior Change Model illustrates the 3 barriers we need to overcome: laziness, fear, and overwhelm.

That’s why Bri Williams, The Behaviour Explainer, as she calls herself, advises to make it easy to do the right thing OR make it hard to do the wrong thing as we are inherently lazy. So overcoming laziness (or apathy) is the first barrier to changing behavior until we feel that the reward we experience from doing an action is larger than the effort it takes to do it. In a similar approach, we need to also reduce overwhelm, another barrier to behavior change, by making the preferred option clearer and limiting choices. When we’re presented with so many choices, the act of thinking, researching and determing what we prefer because so overwhelmingly exhausting that we have not much effort left to make the right choice. This connects back to the deprivation method in the first tip, as when we are deprived of having many options, it becomes easier to “default” to the choice we (should) prefer.

Put it to work:

You may think that providing your customers with plenty of options makes you look like a rockstar, but all it does is confuse them and waste their time. Focus your messaging or your product on limited options - the magic number is often 3 - with the option you want them to choose to be highlighted as the default, whether by displaying it first or making it more visually prominent. This is why on most subscription services, you often find 3 price tiers with one of the options (often the middle, or the one that is most profitable for the company) being highlighted as the popular option. This is also why in cookie consent banners, especially those that are GDPR compliant, a user may be presented with “accept selection only”, “reject all”, and “accept all” buttons, and the last button is often the one highlighted by default to influence users to click it. An interesting example of businesses simplifying their products/services to influence people’s choices are virtual restaurants, booming in the GCC, India and Singapore, by creating brands and menus, usually centred on offering a variety of one dish, like salads, or poke bowls or falafel wraps, that are only available through online orders for delivery. Limiting your offerings to just a few products/services is not only a good strategy for directing your customers’ attention and selection but also to improve your specialization and quality.

Make it personal:

Whether you want to eat healthier, work out more, or read more, figure out the shortest quickest simplest way to get started with the smallest steps possible. The easier you can make the process, the better. Want to eat more veggies? Buy pre-cut pre-washed veggies and place them right at the center of your table like a decoration (while you hide your chocolates and chips) and you’ll notice that you’re more likely to grab a vegetable than to look for an unhealthy snack. Want to start exercising? Reduce friction by choosing a workout that you can do anywhere anytime, rather than go to the gym for or that is dependent on the weather or your schedule. Some even suggest sleeping in your workout clothes and putting your workout shoes rght next to your bed so you’re more likely to exercise as soon as you wake up as you’ve reduced the steps necessary to do so. I’ve personally not tried sleeping in my workout clothes to start exercising, but in order to drink more water, a habit I am in dire need of, I keep a bottle of water with me at all times everywhere, even around the house. I found that I am more likely to reach for my bottle and drink every time I feel a little dehydrated than I am to pause whatever I am doing and walk to the kitchen for a glass of water.

Tip # 3 Make it sticky

Now that we’ve figured out what we want to change, and how to make change simple, it’s time to get it to stick and become a habit! The first trick to making something sticky is to make it enjoyable, even if it’s not necessarily the best way to do it to achieve results, says Luca Dellana, Operational Culture consultant & complex systems researcher. As Sam Tatam, Head of Behavioural Science Practice at @ogilvyconsultUK, also put it: behaviors stick when they are embraced, not imposed. If we feel that we are forced to take action and make changes, we may be inclined to make some effort in the short-term, but soon enough we will revert back to what feels easier, more natural, and more pleasurable (again because we are inherently lazy, so we are happier/more relaxed when we exert less effort). Luca then advises that we make the rewards ‘visible, immediate, and inevitable’ so the action we take is connected to positive emotions, not just the result we’re aiming for. We are creatures who live in the present. We want to enjoy our time NOW, not wait for next month, or next year, to reap the benefits and feel better.

Now that we’ve made the action enjoyable, it’s time to get obsessive about it! Luca believes that being obsessively consistent about a behavior is even more important to making it stick than just using positive reinforcement.

Put it to work:

This is where consistent messaging comes into play. You can’t force people to want the things you want them to want, but you can influence the pleasure they get out of your brand, product, service, etc. by making them more familiar with it through obsessive consistency. This is also referred to as the “mere exposure effect”. The more people are subjected to your brand (in a neutral or positive way hopefully), the more familiar they will be with it, and the more they’d like it and derive pleasure out of it (we like the things we know and fear the things we don’t). If you don’t have a high budget to spend on advertising and promoting your brand consistently, then focus on designing enjoyable experiences for your customers where they can get some rewards or benefits out of your product/brand in the short term, even if your product/service is designed for future outcomes. For example, a gym can focus on promoting its group workouts for reaping social rewards or its on-spot training and consultation services or fitness seminars that customers can benefit from long before they start losing weight or gaining muscles as the main desired outcome they’re seeking.

Make it personal:

If you really want to change a behavior of yours, and adopt a new one, then you need to get obsessive about it, consistently! Start by making it fun to begin with, even if you’re sacrificing efficiency in the short term. For example, if you want to jog more habitually, focus on making the experience fun, rather than on the health benefits you may reap as a future outcome.

Think of Phoebe from Friends running! Forget about embarassment, forget about technique, just get moving until it sticks! I personally was never able to get my workouts to stick, mostly because I don’t find them enjoyable. However, play some music, and I won’t stop moving! So the way I get myself to move is to put on my headphones, play my favorite music while out walking, and dance my way everywhere (pre-covid times). I didn’t care about what people would think of me, because as Phoebe puts it “you don't care if people are staring, it's just for a second cause then you're gone!”, and more than often, some actually come up to me and tell me how I’ve brightened their day by being so joyful, which further positively reinforces my behavior and makes it more consistent!

Of course, this is just a start. There is a lot more to learn from the exciting world of behavioral science, and how it can help you at work and at home. If you’re looking to know more, you can simply start by watching the #NudgeStock2020 event videos on Youtube.

Now that you know how to get started, what behaviors do you aim to change?! And how can I help! Let’s discuss it in the comments.

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