Mastering behavior change. It’s the Holy Grail of every government PSA that wants you to quit smoking, every corporate adman who wants you to switch brands, and every NGO that wants you to recycle more. “Why?” you ask. “Surely asking people nicely to change one little thing for their own good is easy?” Maybe. But if I asked you nicely to get off the couch and go for a jog right now, would you do it?
Senior Strategist, Harriet Riley, gives three steps explaining why behavior change campaigns are so hard, and what you can do to make them easier.
1. Get them to do it: Contrary to popular belief, values follow behavior, and not the other way around. When hardcore climate deniers were asked to install a certain kind of lightbulb because they could save money, they did it. When they were later told that these lightbulbs also saved energy, and therefore the planet, they started to believe in climate change. Thanks to cognitive dissonance, it is easier to rationalize an existing behavior by changing your values than it is to live your values by changing your behavior. As such, the best way to get a person to believe in an issue, and take more action on it, is getting them to take an initial “gateway” action. But how do you do that?
2. Make it easy: It’s not that we’re lazy. It’s just that we’re busy, forgetful and stuck in our ways. The fastest way to change a behavior is to make the right thing the first thing (or only thing) people have the option to do. Some of the best examples include countries who have made organ donation an opt-out system; businesses who make the product they most want you to buy the first product you see in the store; and city councils who have taken away trashcans and replaced them with recycling bins. You made no choice, but you performed the ‘good’ behavior because it was handed to you on a plate, and that’s the first step to forming a habit…
3. Get them to do it again: Habits free up brain power to focus on new and complex tasks. It is an energy-saving adaption, so we’ve evolved to form them, especially in early childhood when the brain is highly pliable and building new neural pathways every day. Childhood habits are the hardest to shake, largely due to the power of repetition. The jury is out on how many times you have to do something before it becomes a habit, but experts agree that the more often it is, the more likely a habit will form. This means making sure your supporters have more than one point of contact with your campaign, so that they perform the behavior you want them to more than once, ideally in a short period of time.
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