BEHAVIOR CHANGE TACTIC
Reduce Cognitive Load
Reducing cognitive load refers to simply making it easier to do something, or lowering the amount of thinking required to do it. People are cognitive misers, and seemingly trivial amounts of thinking may provide disproportionate amounts of deterrence to performing a behavior (even when someone intends to do it).Checklists and mnemonic devices are both forms of reducing cognitive load. Similarly, automating parts of a person's behavior (e.g. rules-based savings plans) limit the cognitive resources required to reach a goal. Other examples include showing health risk data visually via infographic rather than in verbal descriptions, or limiting the set of options a person has in choosing a retirement plan (e.g. by parameters like "aggressive," "medium," or "conservative" rather than describing the asset class mixture).
Studies involving Reduce Cognitive Load
PAPERS
Using no-cost mobile phone reminders to improve attendance for HIV test results: A pilot study in rural Swaziland.
TACTICS
Social Support, Reminders, Cues, & Triggers
PAPERS
Feedback on household electricity consumption.
BEHAVIOR
Conservation Behaviors
TACTICS
Feedback, Reduce Cognitive Load
PAPERS
Reducing the Complexity Costs of 401(K) Participation Through Quick Enrollment.
AUTHORS
James Choi
BEHAVIOR
Savings
TACTICS
Reduce Friction or Barriers, Reduce Cognitive Load
PAPERS
Web-Based Access to Positive Airway Pressure Usage with or without an Initial Financial Incentive Improves Treatment Use in Patients with Obstructive Sleep Apnea.
AUTHORS
ST Kuna
BEHAVIOR
Adherence (Medication or Treatment), Sleep
TACTICS
Reminders, Cues, & Triggers, Feedback
PAPERS
Simulation-Based Trial of Surgical-Crisis Checklists.
AUTHORS
Arriaga, Atul Gawande
BEHAVIOR
Healthcare Delivery
TACTICS
Checklists, Reduce Cognitive Load
PAPERS
A Surgical Safety Checklist to Reduce Morbidity and Mortality in a Global Population’.
BEHAVIOR
Healthcare Delivery
TACTICS
Reduce Cognitive Load, Checklists
PAPERS
The Role of Simplification and Information in College Decisions.
BEHAVIOR
Financial Behaviors
TACTICS
Reduce Friction or Barriers, Reduce Cognitive Load
PAPERS
Why are Benefits Left on the Table? Assessing the Role of Information Complexity
BEHAVIOR
Financial Behaviors
TACTICS
Education or Information, Increase Salience, Reduce Cognitive Load
PAPERS
Financial Literacy, Information, and Demand Elasticity.
BEHAVIOR
Savings
TACTICS
Education or Information, Reduce Friction or Barriers, Reduce Cognitive Load
Products leveraging Reduce Cognitive Load
Related behavior change tactics
TACTICS
AI or Chatbot
Using a chatbot or simulated conversational interaction.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.