Four Behavioral Science Rules that Drive Organizational Goals

Four Behavioral Science Rules that Drive Organizational Goals

Everyone wants to grow their business. Behavioral science insights take scientifically-backed research on how people process information, think about their social worlds, and make decisions, and apply this wisdom to traditional organizational and business problems. For example, an organization may want to increase donations, create stronger client bonds, or help patients stick to their intervention commitments.

Often times, researchers will experiment with different methods and strategies to accomplish their tasks. However, they may also improve their services by harnessing insights from the social-behavioral sciences. In other words, insights derived from experiments and data that have already been conducted by social and behavioral researchers.

That’s the power of behavioral insights. In this article, we’ll review some of the best principles for adapting behavioral science to drive results.

Rule 1: Use the Power of Social Influence

Almost nothing influences how we think and behave more than those around us. By crafting messages that guide people to what is normal, expected, or popular, organizations can gently nudge individuals to consider how their future behaviors will jive with important others. By showing people what others are doing, you create a social “guideline” for what’s best for them as well.

For example, in 2006, the Petrified Forest National Park attempted to get visitors to stop stealing pieces of the petrified wood they found on the trails. They tried two signs and compared the results. Sign 1 indicated that others before them had stolen from the park, and urged people to be a part of the solution. In Sign 2, they presented the information in a slightly different way – by stating (truthfully) that the majority of past visitors have not stolen petrified wood. The results:

Why does one sign result in so much less theft?

Because of social influence. People want to do what others do—even when told that everyone is doing something bad. After all, if everyone is doing it, maybe it’s not such a bad thing anyway? As a result, it makes them secretly want to partake in the mischief. In the case of the Petrified Forest, telling people that others have stolen makes them feel like it’s okay.

To summarize, people are powerfully influenced by those around them. We’re social learners. We look to others in order to understand if we’re making the right decision and to make sure we don’t miss out. Whether you’d like people to participate in a follow-up survey, donate a little money, or keep their appointments, reminding them what others have done before the will guide their behavior in ways that are strikingly powerful.

Rule 2: Make the Desired Outcome the Default

To make the conscious decision to “select” an option requires you to think about something we’re motivated not to do. Namely, to spend precious mental resources on something that might not matter so much. There’s simply too much information in the world around us to think deeply about all of it. In turn, we almost always prefer to take the mentally easy route, especially for routine, common decisions.

Consider a recent study about the rates of organ donation by country:

Notice a difference here?

It’s because some countries use an “opt-out” system, which means by default participants are enrolled in the program and they must explicitly indicate they want to opt-out. Other countries use an “opt-in” system, which means people are out by default and must indicate that they want to participate in the program. The result? Nobody really knows what to do, and so they simply leave it blank because it’s the mental path of least resistance.

Shaping future behavior is often as easy as making the desired option the default. The effect of this simple change can be enormous. When folks don’t think much about the task at hand this may even be a necessity.

Rule 3: Eliminate “Choice Traps”

A “choice trap” occurs when it takes too much mental energy to make a decision—and as a result, no decision gets made.

In the United States, we seem to put choice and freedom above all else. It’s the American way – and a lot of research concurs. Companies and non-profits offer people choices everyday: from health care, to college majors, insurance, and the list goes on. At face value, it seems like having more of these choices – more cellphone options, more insurance plans, more food on the menu – is obviously a good thing.

But not so.

Giving people too many choices can result in a choice trap. For example, in a classic study on home-made jam sales, psychologists Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper, found that consumers were 10 times more likely to purchase jam on display when the number of jams available was reduced from 24 to six.

Less choices –> more decisions get made –> more sales.

The irony is that “choice traps” occur because people care too much about the choices they make. When people are asked to decide between many items, they often overthink and become bogged down in the details. It’s hard to imagine the difference between option 18, 19, 20, etc.

This can be a very anxiety-inducing experience; reading over a menu or a list of services that has too many options can be debilitating. Giving people a manageable list of options they can choose from is key to making the decision-making process easier.

Rule 4: To Promote Behavior, Help People Solidify Their Plans

When our paths forward are clear, we’re much more likely to keep taking steps. Having a solidified, specific course eases thoughts of uncertainty and hesitation, and puts people on a path for how to act next. By contrast, when people are uncertain or unclear about what to do in the future, they procrastinate, tune out, and sign off.

For example, during the 2008 US presidential election, Democratic nominee Barack Obama knew that trying to persuade undecided voters would be challenging. Instead of trying to convince undecided voters that he was the better candidate, he focused his efforts in a more fruitful direction: on people who saw him favorably, but were at risk of not making it out to vote at all. After all, only about 60% of the country votes during general presidential elections. Obama shrewdly knew that if he could tap into the 40% of registered voters that would otherwise stay home, he would have great chance at winning. A much better chance than simply trying to persuade a slim margin of undecided voters.

But how do you motivate people to get out and vote? Aided by a dream-team of social psychologists from Stanford, Yale, and Princeton, Obama’s team pinpointed the problem. It wasn’t that people didn’t want to vote. It was that they didn’t have a definite plan of when, were, and how they would vote. As a result, many voters end up staying at home, get bogged down in work, or they simply forget.

Thus, Obama’s team members created a call script that would help Democrats come up with the concrete plan needed to get out and vote.

With each step, Obama’s calling script tackled the biggest reason registered voters stay home—because they lacked a specific plan. By the end of the call, each person was gently guided into creating a plan of exactly where, when, and how they would vote in the election. The rest is history.

But voting isn’t the only example. In another famous study, people were asked to make a concrete, solidified plan of when and where they would plan to get a vaccine. This increased the percent of people following up on plans to receive their vaccines—from 3% to 28% (Leventhal, Singer, & Jones, 1968)!

In short, people are much, much more likely to carry out behaviors when they have a specific and concrete plan, whether it’s going out and voting, going to the doctor, or staying committed to an intervention.

Conclusions

Organizations need to learn in order to survive. While many insights are generated through experiments and data analysis, many organizations can super-charge their services and outreach with research-backed behavioral science. So far we’ve talked about:

1. Using the power of social influence
2. Making the desired outcome the default
3. Eliminating “choice traps”
4. Helping people solidify their plans

But these are just the beginning. Whether it be to improve outreach, craft more effective messages, or help “nudge” people to make the right decision, behavioral science can help. In many cases, those that fail to use behavioral science will be left in the dust.

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