Behaviour Change: The power of beliefs - Part 3/3

Credit: Esquire

Author's Note:

This series took me a while to write - end to end. I finally finished it in 2022 after 3 years of re-writes, structuring and more importantly - practical validation. I know that this is in no way complete and will be revised and edited based on more such practical encounters. While it is recommended that you read Part1 and Part 2 before diving into this article, I have recapped them briefly below.

Raison d’etre for this series

How much of what you see and believe to be true is real and which ones is your minds playing tricks on you?

Sometimes I find myself craving, wanting or doing something that I’m not completely sure is of my own volition. Times where I could have sworn I was full and yet, after watching a cooking video on YouTube, just about to fall off to sleep, got up to make a grilled cheese sandwich. Or thinking of a specific brand of ramen noodles when I want some comfort food. Or feeling absolute disgust when I pass by certain places, which are now quite pretty to look at — as if haunted by some phantom of experiences past.

And every time I catch myself doing this, I have always wanted to know more about why I am reacting this way. The reason is that I exist at a time where everyone of my decisions is ‘influenced’ for pretty much every penny coming out of my pocket. From a lip balm to a mortgage, most of our decisions are consciously or unconsciously being nudged to an outcome that favours one brand or the other. This series of posts (Part 1 & Part 2) has been an attempt to open the kimono, if you may, and understand how our brains make decisions in micro-seconds with the right triggers and timing — from the PoV of a marketer and a brand strategist.

It is, I believe, even more important now for us to be aware of some of the myriad tactics that people and institutions deploy to mobilize us. The State of Marketing report states that marketers in the Netherlands are projected to use 50% more data sources to power their programs in 2021 than the global average. And in the technology industry globally, marketers plan to use 60% more data this year than the overall industry average. All of this data means that marketing programmes are now omnichannel and hyper-personalized in real time. Personalization matters — about 80% of your customers will change their brands if they do not get a personalized purchase experience.

Both the incentive for marketers to win and retain us, and the availability of rich data about us, for marketers' use has never been as high as it is now.

Recap & Setup

Before we dive into some concepts for part 3, I think it makes sense to quickly recap what we saw in Parts 1 & 2.

Part 1 introduced some Lego-like frameworks of how collective behaviour change and influence works. We talked about Aristotle’s rhetoric. It states that the components of a good change agent are: Logos — logic & rationale deployed by the agent, Pathos — Emotions, inspiration and vivid language used by the agent and Ethos — Ethics, credibility and trustworthiness of the change agent. We also had a look at the conditions under which people are most open to behaviour change. While the ‘flow’ may seem linear, it is anything but — the order of occurrence and even the compartmentalization of them is not practical across contexts.

Part 2 dug deeper into comprehension — specifically the channels, timing and priming. We looked at the two routes of comprehension: Central and Peripheral. We then saw how the peripheral route has about 6 levers which in turn allow us various permutations and combinations of influence and behaviour change.

In part 3, we look at the microcosmic process of individual behaviour change in context of systems, and the cycle of behaviour maintenance + relapse.

Reasoned Action

How easy is it for individuals to change if their environment does not support it? A UNICEF report states that rural households where the household head had completed primary education were 16 percent less likely to be chronically poor — the inverse 84% have a pretty low chance of breaking the odds and getting out of the vicious cycle of poverty.

The Theory of Reasoned Action bares open this framework in a pretty interesting way. Firstly it draws a clear demarcation between behavioural intent vs behaviour. As we all know, wanting to wake up at 4AM is not the same as actually waking up at 4AM. However it is a good proxy for behaviour. Intent to change said behaviour is dependent on attitudes. Now these attitudes can be broken down into attitude to the behaviour and subjective norms.

Your attitude towards reading more books, for example, is a factor of the beliefs that you have about the outcome — reading more makes me smarter. Here you are trying to rationalize the outcome. And the other half of that equation becomes: Being smarter makes me a more fulfilled and happy person. That is the desirability of that outcome. How desirable is that life to you?

While this is a tussle that is happening for an individual, it is not the only thing shaping the behaviour intent. Subjective norms are shaped by your context and environment. What’s the normalised behaviour to reading books in your immediate environment? If you come from a family of voracious readers, you have a much higher chance of being one too — it is the normative belief about reading in your family. But this alone is not the complete answer — remember, you should also be motivated to comply with those behaviours.

So, if you believe that reading will make you smarter, but you don’t want to be smart - your behavioural intent will not change. Alternatively, if you are fully convinced that being smart is satisfying to you and that reading will make you smarter — your intent is high. Under the latter circumstances however, if you live in an environment where TV is everyone’s best friend, your probability of translating a desire to read into behaviour is not going to be high.

Stages of Change

Another way of looking at behaviour change is to look at it as a cycle. Absolute rigidity in behaviour and habits is both repetitive and unsustainable. While falling off the wagon is inevitable, staying off is a choice. The same things can be blown up when you are trying to change the behaviours of a large number of people. The trans-theoretical model of change lays out the key components of behaviour change for individuals within a collective context. We need this, because short of mind-control, there is no way for you to ensure 100% compliance. For example, you cannot 100% ensure that every household in a condo is following the exact specified rules for sorting their recycling and garbage.

The transtheoretical model for change talks about the various stages that an individual goes through before they opt-in for a mid-long term behaviour change and relapse.

• Pre-contemplation: Individual does not see themselves taking any action for the next three months at least (foreseeable future)

• Contemplation: See themselves making a change in the foreseeable future

• Preparation: Ready to act in the next month

• Action: Have made lifestyle changes in the last month

• Maintenance: Preventing relapse and upkeeping habit

• Relapse: Happens to everyone. Try again! It helps to have easy to get back / latch on anchors that allow an easy, stress free re-entry into the behaviour cycle.

Maintenance and relapse are actually the two phases which require the most amount of help and monitoring. Studies say that a smoker’s probability for a relapse is about 60–90% in the first two years. It drops off sharply after the first two years, but never really gone. Which is why there need to be real careful design and logistical considerations for not just starting a behaviour, but more importantly to make maintenance and upkeep easier.

Conclusion

To simplify — our brains play games with us that are not always easy to understand and to course correct in the heat of the moment. Subliminal messaging, peripheral visuals and subtle distractions impact our decisions every day and we don’t even know it. This post was as much a reminder to myself, as it is a documentation of my learnings that we must always ask ourselves — wait, but why?

Countless studies have shows that the way we make up our minds is optimized for efficiency and not necessarily the truth. Most popularized by Daniel Kahneman’s seminal book, our mind has the fast thinking System 1, and the calculating rational System 2 —no prizes for guessing which one overrides 9/10 times. Our decisions are almost always made in the following ways:

• We hear something

• We instantly believe it (unless you categorically know it to be untrue)

• If later we encounter a situation that pushes us to validate the veracity of the claim, we dig deeper and validate it

Want proof? Heard about humans using only 10% of our brains? Or that a goldfish’s memory lasts 3–7 seconds? Or that a dog’s life span is 1/7th a human’s? All wrong. I have been guilty of believing these for an embarrassingly long time.

We may not always be able to make the ‘right’ decision — but you can bet that you can learn how we function - and evolve it as time passes and we discover new things. This collection of frameworks is one of the most applicable ones I have found useful in my work as a campaigns practitioner.

I hope they serve you well too.