Goal Setting

BEHAVIOR CHANGE TACTIC

Goal Setting

Goal setting simply refers to a person choosing a specific result to aim at achieving. This might include an outcome (e.g. a goal weight) or a behavior (e.g. exercise 90 minutes 3 times a week).

Studies involving Goal Setting

PAPERS

Small Cues Change Savings Choices

AUTHORS

Emily Haisley, Jennifer Kurkowski, Cade Massey, James Choi

BEHAVIOR

Savings

TACTICS

Goal Setting, Framing Effects

PAPERS

Account Opening Process to Increase Intentional Savings

AUTHORS

Alexandra Fiorillo, Louis Potok, Josh Wright

BEHAVIOR

Savings

TACTICS

Implementation Intentions, Goal Setting, Reminders, Cues, & Triggers, Reduce Cognitive Load

PAPERS

Female Empowerment: Impact of a Commitment Savings Product in the Philippines

AUTHORS

Nina Ashraf, Wesley Yin, Dean Karlan

BEHAVIOR

Savings

TACTICS

Goal Setting, Commitment Devices

PAPERS

Earmarking and Partitioning: Increasing Saving by Low-Income Households

AUTHORS

Amar Cheema, Dilip Soman

BEHAVIOR

Savings

TACTICS

Goal Setting, Commitment Devices, Reminders, Cues, & Triggers

PAPERS

Diabetes prevention and weight loss with a fully automated behavioral intervention by email, web, and mobile phone: a randomized controlled trial among persons with prediabetes.

BEHAVIOR

Physical Activity, Diet & Nutrition

TACTICS

Goal Setting, Gamification, Social Support, Feedback, Coaching or Counselling

PAPERS

Goals and Social Comparisons Promote Walking Behavior

AUTHORS

Elliot Coups, Kimberly Convery, Helen Colby, Gretchen Chapman

BEHAVIOR

Physical Activity

TACTICS

Goal Setting, Social Benchmarking, Feedback

PAPERS

Using a behaviour change techniques taxonomy to identify active ingredients within trials of implementation interventions for diabetes care.

BEHAVIOR

Self-Management

TACTICS

Environmental Restructuring, Social Support, Goal Setting, Feedback

PAPERS

Use of the Chatbot "Vivibot" to Deliver Positive Psychology Skills and Promote Well-Being Among Young People After Cancer Treatment: Randomized Controlled Feasibility Trial.

PRODUCT

Vivibot

BEHAVIOR

Mental Health & Self-Care

TACTICS

Education or Information, Reminders, Cues, & Triggers, Implementation Intentions, Goal Setting, AI or Chatbot, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

PAPERS

Randomized Controlled Trial of SuperBetter, a Smartphone-Based/Internet-Based Self-Help Tool to Reduce Depressive Symptoms.

PRODUCT

SuperBetter

BEHAVIOR

Mental Health & Self-Care

TACTICS

Education or Information, Reminders, Cues, & Triggers, Self-Monitoring or Tracking, Implementation Intentions, Gamification, Goal Setting, Identity Priming

Related behavior change tactics

AI or Chatbot

TACTICS

AI or Chatbot

Using a chatbot or simulated conversational interaction.‍

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)

TACTICS

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)

ACT is a therapeutic approach originalled developed by Steven Hayes. It borrows from previous concepts like cognitive behavioral therapy and Morita therapy. The principles of ACT are fairly systematic and lend themselves well to program design, finding empirical support in adaptations like 2morrow's smoking cessation and pain management interventions.‍

Active Choice

TACTICS

Active Choice

Active choice, sometimes referred to as enhanced active choice or forced choice, refers to removing default options and often increasing the salience of potential decisions through emphasizing the consequences of one or more of the options. Coined by Punam Anand Keller and colleagues in 2011, it was originally intended to address concerns around paternalistic nudging for use in situations where forcing the default option may be considered unethical. In one of the original studies, CVS customers were given the choice to enroll in automatic refills of medications via delivery. The choices they were presented were ""Enroll in refills at home"" vs “I Prefer to Order my Own Refills.”‍

Automation

TACTICS

Automation

Automation refers to having another person, group, or technology system perform part or all of the intended behavior. A prominent example is Thaler & Bernartzi's Save More Tomorrow intervention, which invested a portion of employees' earnings into retirement funds automatically and even increased the contribution level to scale with pay raises. Other examples include automatically scheduling medical appointments so the patient needn't do it themselves and mailing healthy recipe ingredients to the person's home to reduce the burden of shopping.‍

Behavior Substitution

TACTICS

Behavior Substitution

Behavior substitution refers to attempting to eliminate a problematic behavior by replacing it with another one. Often, the substituted behaviors are intended to have similar sensory qualities (e.g. drink flavored sparkling water instead of soda). The goal is typically to disassociate the original behavior from its cue, enabling the more positive behavior to be triggered automatically.‍

Behavioral Activation (BA)

TACTICS

Behavioral Activation (BA)

Behavioral activation is a therapeutic approach that typically pairs activity scheduling with either monitoring tools or goal-setting. For example, someone might aim to balance activities they "should" do but underperform, like self-care behaviors, with activities they enjoy. Users of this technique may also track which activities cause certain cognitions or affective states, like those associated with depression.‍