Square Peg Insight

17/05/2021

There's a lot to agree with this great piece: the narrative of the silver bullet like nudge and the power of non-conscious influences is still very strong in applied BeSci which often overshadows a conversation about the limits of its effectiveness - even if it might have been a necessary (unconscious) marketing strategy when the profession was just emerging.

"The problem the behavioural science industry has is that if Nudge constantly takes centre stage in conversations then, not unreasonably, there will be an expectation that practitioners can deliver sparkling results. --- We need a more sensible conversation about nudge that helps the wider audience for behavioural science understand that it is one, of many tools in the practitioner toolkit."

As behavioural scientists we have many skills but mind-reading automatic mental processes is surely not one of them: provocative thinking on how to sensibly apply heuristics and nudges

04/05/2021

When it comes to behaviour change, there are few silver bullets – a good understanding of the science will go a long way, but the secret to success often lies in the small details. It’s tempting to use intuitive examples from the scientific literature and take them as “truth”.

In reality, working logically from deep understanding of the problem and considering the pieces of the behavioural puzzle as a whole will yield better solutions - otherwise you might end up spending millions developing a feature that does little to change the customer experience.

When it comes to behaviour change, there are few silver bullets – a good understanding of the science will go a long way, but the secret to success often lies in the small details. It’s tempting to use intuitive examples from the scientific literature and take them as “truth”. In reality, wo...

08/03/2021

I've been working as a behavioural science practitioner for a decade now and I often come across misunderstandings about the difference between behavioural economics, behaviour change and behavioural science in general. After the most recent discussion with a client, I wanted to write about this to help people understand some of the differences and talk about what it means for my professional practice 👇

I've been working as a behavioural science practitioner for a decade now and I often come across misunderstandings about the difference between behavioural economics, behaviour change and behavioural science in general. After the most recent discussion with a client, I wanted to write about this to....

17/02/2021

A great starting point for any behaviour change project is to understand the factors that are influencing behaviour. The problem is that some projects can turn into an analytical swamp after the first stage mapping barriers with a model like COM-B. One way to solve that and add focus is to think about the target behaviour as a process and layer the barriers step by step. Here's how you can do it 👇

https://www.squarepeginsight.com/post/how-to-layer-behavioural-drivers-and-barriers

29/01/2021

When an attempt to cancel a subscription turned into a sludge extravaganza, we wanted to share the experience and showcase the opposite of how behavioural insights should be used. Using behavioural insights ethically is good business sense if you have ambitions beyond being just some fly-by-night shady street corner hawker and want to be perceived as customer-centric, honest and transparent!

28/01/2021

The key idea of behavioural economics and nudging is that our choices are strongly influenced by context - yet there has been little systematic exploration of the broader environment in which decisions are made.

Stepping back from the immediate choice context can help understand how the environment can make or break behaviour change interventions. The original piece is written from a policy perspective, but with some adaptations the process also works for private sector behaviour change!

The key idea of nudging is that our choices are influenced by context yet there has been little exploration of the choice environment.

26/01/2021

Behaviour change is hard so the second issue of Squared Away is focused on learning from failures in nudging, understanding the impact of the context and assessing the effectiveness of behavioural interventions.

Read more and sign up so you don't miss them! 👇

Behaviour change is hard. This second issue of Squared Away is all about learning from failures in nudging, understanding the impact of the context and assessing the effectiveness of behavioural interventions. Quite fittingly, you may have noticed that my own public commitment nudge did not quite wo...

26/01/2021

If you're interested in learning which nudge/intervention types are common in different areas, this article summarises 2 recent evidence reviews! TL;DR - it's complicated and it depends 😅

In this article we'll take a look at two evidence reviews that give us snapshots across domains and nudge types.

25/01/2021

Failed interventions are more common than most people think yet the behaviour change movement has largely focused on successes - understandably, because talking about failures might undermine the credibility of our field and profession. Yet failing forward is essential if we want to make progress, so this article takes a look at the 8 ways in which behaviour change can fail. 👇

The behaviour change movement has focused on successes for the sake of credibility - yet we need to examine our failures to make progress.

14/01/2021

A nice read on how omission, availability, optimism, confirmation and natural risk biases influence vaccination behaviour!
https://www.behive-consulting.com/post/5-cognitive-biases-contributing-to-covid-19-vaccine-hesitancy

13/01/2021

Learn about how to use temptation bundling, piggybacking and the WOOP framework to change your behaviour this year 👇

If you want your resolutions to stick this year, try bundling a new activity with a habit you already enjoy. Science offers many other tricks to help a successful behavior change.

11/01/2021

Even though nudges have been around for a decade, there is still debate around
how they work and where they might be used most effectively. In this post, I review a proposed matrix classifying nudges based on their proposed mechanisms and in which circumstances they are likely to work best.

https://buff.ly/2XkbXVj

Can we categorise nudges based on their proposed mechanisms & the circumstances work best in?