Fighting for front of mind by Crawford Hollingworth

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Crawford Hollingworth, founder, The Behavioural Architects, explores the power of feedback loops to make or break habits:

Most of the time we humans are effectively on cognitive autopilot and therefore much of our ingrained behaviours take place with little conscious thought – we just do them. So it is not surprising that in order to change an existing behaviour or create a new one we are receptive to mechanisms which bring something into our front of mind consciousness.

One way to achieve this awareness and motivate behaviour change – in what is termed a reflexive way – is to give real-time feedback which gives someone greater control over their behaviour. As Thaler and Sunstein say “Learning is much more likely if you get immediate, clear feedback after each try.” [Thaler, R. Sunstein, C. ‘Nudge’, p82] A simple example is the much loved/much hated spell checker on our computer.

Giving immediate, accurate and easily comprehensible feedback is often dependent on technology and the good news is, there have been some really innovative, technological developments in the last few years to enable this. For example, there are now many different types of sensors – GPS (tracking location), accelerometers (which measure motion), inductance (which measure electric current).

With studies finding that around half of people do not take their medication as prescribed, a US company is developing GlowCaps – a motion sensor lid for a medicine bottle. The device has the exact prescription programmed in and glows progressively more intensely as soon as you miss the deadline for taking your medication, if you still fail to act it then plays a melody, finally sending a text reminder or recorded message to your phone. Not only are these great behaviour prompts, but over the long term could actually help to instil the habit of taking regular medication. There is also no room for ‘inventing the truth’ to your doctor as the GlowCap sends an automatic print out of your medication consumption to your doctor each month.

Some car manufacturers have added a miles per gallon feedback to supplement the miles per hour data drivers currently receive on the dashboard. In some cases mpg is now the default display. Such feedback has led to many people being more conscious of fuel efficiency as opposed to speed and journey times and is beginning to change the social norm – rather than brag about how quickly you got from A to B by driving fast, people now drive in ways to reduce their fuel consumption and tell everyone how little fuel they used to make their journey. At the extreme, it has created the ‘hypermiler’ – the driver obsessed with fuel efficiency who avoids hills, or coasts in neutral, not to mention a few cases of hypermilers running red lights as they are so anxious not to brake!

Another type of feedback is the GPS tracking device which, sports brands have discovered, can help to get people off the couch and out running – fighting the tendency to discount the future. There are many — Garmin Connect, Suunto’s Movescount, Nike+ as well as apps for your iPhone. They all record your distance, speed, hours/minutes exercising and heart rate whilst running (or doing other exercise) providing you with live feedback which you can also download so as to build up a record of your activity over a period. Not only can you see immediately if you speed up or slow down, but you will be able to note improvements over time as you get fitter. People like progress. Just like the GlowCaps these devices may also help instil new habits in us. Nike noticed that it takes as little as five runs with Nike+ before people get hooked and form a habit. “If someone uploads only a couple of runs to the site, they might be just trying it out. But once they hit five runs, they’re massively more likely to keep running and uploading data. At five runs they’ve gotten hooked on what their data tells them about themselves.” [Wired, 22/06/09]

Part of the reason why this technology is effective is also due to The Hawthorne Effect. The simple knowledge that our activity is being recorded and measured spurs us to improve our behaviour for the better. When the mileage evidence is up there online for all to see, it motivates – or perhaps shames us – into putting our trainers on and getting out the door.

The fact that through online communities via the Nike+ or Movescount websites, others can see what we’ve been up to also acts as an additional motivator. We can tap into our commitment bias encouraging us to commit to goals on line that others can see. Social norms develop – how often do others run? How far and how fast?! We can even challenge others – say for a new 5k personal best.

We’ve talked before about Smiley SID – the speed sensor that rewards drivers with a smiley face if they obey the speed limit. Yet taking this innovation one step further and providing the driver with a display of their current speed has also been found to be effective in reducing speed. On average drivers reduce speeds by 10% for a number of miles down the road – considerable when you remember that could be the difference between a minor and a fatal injury on the road. These give us real-time feedback where our attention is directed – on the road, not on the dashboard. And like the online running communities above, another reason why these are effective is due to social pressure. Anyone around at the time you pass the speed sensor will see if you are driving above the speed limit. In general, people do not want to be seen breaking the law and are more likely to conform. When people feel watched, they are more likely to behave. I also wonder if there is a degree of gamification involved. We love the feeling of competition and control in being rewarded by getting the sensor to turn off or not go on in the first place!

Finally, a research methodology to collect accurate feedback and analyse actual behaviour; Unilever have been putting a lot of energy into measuring consumer behaviour and recently created the smart toothbrush: installing accelerometers into toothbrushes in order to monitor frequency of use to see if their ‘Brush Day and Night’ campaign was effective, realising that this was more reliable than self-reporting. This is a great example of analysing actual behaviour – unobtrusively – in research as opposed to documenting attitudes which, as we know, do not always translate to actual behaviour.

Spend a little time considering what behavioural feedback loops we could create to help someone achieve a goal or aim, or to provide research feedback loops which can leverage a whole range of BE concepts from commitment bias, to social norms, to gamification, to the simple Hawthorne effect. Just keep remembering our default position is the cognitive miser and we need a little steering or nudging to challenge this position.

Crawford Hollingworth, founder, The Behavioural Architects.

Read more from Crawford here.