The psychology of behavioural change and engaging people
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It is often the case that we build programmes and then try to work out how to fit people into them, but we need to do it the other way around. Firstly, understanding what drives human engagement, then how to get them to join you on the journey.
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The psychology of behavioural change and engaging people
Editor's Notes
- Some of the best designed programmes fall over and the most common reason why is that they are not designed for peopleRather, they are designed or often adopted from overseas, and then the people aspect is added later, if at allFundamentally though, we need to ask ourselves the question, if we’re designing programmes, what are we seeking to achieve, isn’t it a change in peoples behaviour?If that’ true, which I believe it is, then we need to seek to understand people first and then design programmes specifically for them, whether large or smallSo, what I’d like to do for you today is take you through some basic human psychology that I feel is most relevant to behavioural changeTo start us off, let’s have a look at the range of human engagement...
- So, the standard bell-curveAt one end we have the actively engaged (2% strongly so, 14% slightly less so) – these are the Luke Skywalkers of the world – high energy – used for good – very likely to try and influence others to their point of view and very hard to influence, as they have strongly held beliefs – the eco warrior and green police we just saw generally sit in this groupat the other we have the actively disengaged (again, 2% strongly so and 14% slightly less so) - the Darth Vaders – very similar to the actively engaged, high energy, very likely to try and influence others to their point of view and very hard to influence, as they too have strongly held beliefs – they just tend towards the darkside of the forceAnd in the middle we have everyone else (the remaining 68%) – the Han Solo’s – kinda middle of the road folk, can be good, can be bad, depends on the day, unlikely to try and influence others, as they don’t feel strongly one way or the other and therefore the easiest to influence for the same reason...Unfortunately we do tend to cater to either end of the scaleSticking to working with those that already agree with us (it’s safe) or desperately trying to convince people who will never agree with us (a waste of effort)It’s important to recognise that the audience that offers the best bang for our buck is everyone in the middle, as I mentioned, they have the least strongly held beliefs and are by far the easiest to sway, plus there’s a whole lot more of themThe difficulty of course is in getting the neutral groups opinion – they are unlikely to choose to participate in a survey or workshop if they have a choiceUltimately, the best and easiest way to get to them is go where they are already – workplaces can be good if the business is willing to make participation compulsory or you need to try and access their existing groups – business forum groups, areas where they will be involved because there’s something in it for themUnderstanding how people make decisions is also extremely important, so a very quick look at how the human brain actually works...
- This is possibly the most important aspect of human engagementPsychological research shows us that the best way to engage people is to speak to the emotional part of their brain (which is the right hand side) and not their logical part (which is the left hand side)The ‘why’ is so much more important than the ‘how’ or the ‘what’Not the nicest slide ever is it, let’s try something a little less gross before we carry on...
- There you go, much nicer, the Star Trek philosophy of logic versus emotion (yes, I’ve managed to get both Star Wars and Star Trek into the presentation)In very simple terms, psychological research (Damasio, Grabowski, Frank, Galaburda, & Damasio, 1994) shows that people make decisions and engage with the right hand side of their brain, the emotional part, and then use the left hand side, the logical part, to justify the decision they’ve already made – I do that after almost every impulse purchase – “I definitely needed that Darth Vadar USB port with the breathing sounds – it’ll be really useful for, umm.....!This was demonstrated by Damasio in studying people who had received brain injuries. He found that those that had received injuries to the right hand side of their brain (the emotional part) found it virtually impossible to make decisions, but those that had received injuries to the left hand side (the logic) had no significant difference in decision making abilityIt’s also the physical response to emotional engagement that makes a difference. When emotions are engaged, the brain floods the body with dopamine, which makes us feel good and energised.Also, as a side note, as you can see, I use images on my slides, rather than words. This is because they engage the emotional part of your brain, you’re able to process them 60,000 times faster than words and you’re 6 times more likely to be able to recall what I was saying if there is an image associated with itSo....
- Emotions really do ruleIf you never gain emotional engagement, you’ll never achieve any engagementPeople only engage using their emotions and do not engage using logicUnfortunately behavioural change programmes tend to focus on the facts and figures, possibly because the person designing them feels they need to supply evidence or proof that it’s importantIn fact, the emotional side of opur brain is so dominant that it can even change the way we perceive reality...
- Now, I apologise for those that might have heard this before, I just can’t think of a better example.Working as the sustainability manager at a previous company, I emailed on a Friday to let the staff know we were changing the standard coffee over the weekend to Fair Trade coffee.I had a meeting first thing Monday morning, so didn’t get back to my desk until around 11:30, enough time for the staff to have their initial ‘just got to work’ coffee and their morning break coffee.I fired up my computer to find 137 emails waiting for me, not one of which was particularly flattering of the new coffee, the least offensive being...
- “it tastes like dirt”I had to send out an email, apologising profusely..........that the Fair Trade coffee hadn’t been delivered in time, so we didn’t get it changed over the weekend!You can imagine how many complaints I got when we actually did change it over – none, but I’m not suggesting this is a great way to go about doing it!The important point here, is that people responded with emotion to something they felt had been done to them (a mistake in and of itself and a lesson for me on making sure I was inclusive with programmes), so strongly that how the logical part of their brain processed the taste of the coffee was changed.Now, on the topic of change...
- Do you believe that people do not like change – a show of hands?Well you are both right and wrong, depending on how it is achievedThe truth is that people don’t like change that happens to them (as I managed to achieve by ‘telling’ them what I was doing and not ‘asking’ them or including them in any of the process to make the decision)On the other hand, people generally respond very positively to change that they are a part of, which is worth remembering when you communicate with themQuite often people assume that everyone will do the right thing because it’s the right thing to do, especially those that are actively engaged, as they think that way. Whether it is or not is irrelevant, most people will still respond negatively if they aren’t involved in the changeIt’s also worth remembering that we’re a social species, which can be very powerful when designing any type of programme...
- Avoid ‘guilt’ based messaging at all costsOur beliefs and our behaviours must be in balance and match, as if they aren’t and we become aware of it, it can trigger Cognitive DissonanceThis causes stress and either the belief or the behaviour must changeBasically a person experiencing cognitive dissonance has a number of choicesThey can change their behaviour to more closely match their beliefThey can modify their belief to more closely match their behaviourThey can delete the belief altogetherWe’ve historically assumed that if we point out that a person is not behaving inline with their belief that they will change their behaviour, but people tend to take the easiest routeIt’s far easier to change your mind than to change your behaviour, so they either adjust their belief or delete itEffectively that means we are negatively changing their belief, not positively changing their behaviourSo we must ensure we are focussing solely on behaviours and not appealing to what we perceive are peoples positive beliefsBut there is a way to achieve strong and lasting positive behavioural change...
- Humans are a social species and as such, most of us are driven strongly by a desire to conform to social norms – we’re also very good at justifying our negative behaviour as being ‘normal’The trick is to communicate the behaviour you’d like to see, as if it were already the norm, which people will automatically seek to conform toAs an example – a large amount of research has gone into working out how to get people to pay their taxes on time in the US. The research showed that people automatically justify their existing behaviours as being normal – this applies to all sorts of negative behaviours of course, not just the paying of tax, it’s the old “everyone does it, so why shouldn’t I”, so sending a tax reminder isn’t particularly effective, since they’ve already justified their behaviour as normalIf, on the other hand, you send a tax reminder that also states that 89% of people pay their taxes on time, this removes the automatic justification and points out to people that their behaviour is not normal – the social norm is to pay taxes on timeThe research showed that the vast majority of people who received the updated tax notices made moves to pay their taxes straight away, but not just that, they also made moves to ensure they paid their taxes on time from then on, as they were naturally inclined to conform to their perception of social norms, in this case, paying their tax on timeIf you think about littering, for example, people don’t litter anymore, not because most believe it is wrong to do so, but because society has decided it is unacceptable – it;’s the fear of beinmg seen to not conformIt’s also important to understand what people respond strongly to, so we can word our communications better, so we’ll cover off loss aversion bias...
- So, Loss aversion bias - Humans respond far more strongly to the threat of loss than the opportunity to gain – three times more strongly in fact (a left over survival instinct)It is far more important to keep what you have than to gain more things – think about hunter gatherers – if they lose the food they have, they may starve, so getting more food is a secondary concernAnyone purchased a car before? What’s the first thing the saleman gets you to do when he sees you looking at it in the car yard? They get you to sit in itThat’s not so you can feel the seats and hold the wheel, it’s so your brain perceives it as belonging to you, which means if you don’t buy it, they make you get out (take it away). This increases the chance of you buying it by three times!This is particularly important when we’re deciding how to formulate our messages and tell our storiesResearch shows us that the same message can have very different outcomes depending on whether we focus on someone gaining or losing from their action or inactionThe same applies to how we structure messaging. Unfortunately most messages in programmes are positive, focussed on what we gain from an action. A much better response can be achieved by focussing on what we lose if we do not take an actionIt’s the old, ‘If we take action then this species can be saved’ (an opportunity to gain) versus ‘if we don’t take action then we will lose this species (the fear of loss)I know it sounds pedantic, but it increases the hit rate by three timesIt is worth covering one more topic now, before I finish up, as you’ve heard the word ‘personal’ a couple of times now with no elaboration...
- It’s worth remembering that it’s virtually impossible to make it personal if we try and communicate en-mass, as I’ve seen many times with behavioural change programmesCritical for people to be able to easily identify the loss and that the loss is to them personally – the ‘greater good’ message doesn’t work with anyone but actively engaged (2 - 6%)It’s also critical to ensure that any messages are tailored to the specific audience receiving itWhen I worked on a project with Waitakere City Council aimed at changing the negative behaviours of the cement industry in order to protect streams – needed to do lot’s of research into the type of people that worked in it.Needed to identify who they were influenced by, what they valued and where they got their information fromFound that most were into fishing, so focussed on what they would lose if they continued with their existing behaviour – then supplied an easy solution for them (made it about loss and also made it personal)I would agree, if I’d had an audience full of actively engaged people, I could have just told them the negative environmental impacts and most would have changed their behaviour because it was the right thing to do – but it would be very rare to come acrossI also ran the same project for the paint industry, but had to start the research all over again and tailor the programme specifically for them or it wouldn’t hav3e worked (one size definitely does not fit all)In fact, if you run a single programme and don’t specifically tailor it to your audience, it is far more likely to disengage people than engage themSo, the basic golden rules are – don’t try appealing to the greater good, don’t use guilt or appeal to their beliefs and don’t communicate en-massinstead focus on their behaviour, help them view the required behaviour as socially normal, identify the personal loss to them and then tailor the messaging and the wording to that particular groupAnd once you’ve finished with that group, start all over again for the next oneThank you very much for your time and attention, I hope you’ve found this useful – I’d be very happy to answer any questions you may have...