Behavioural Science for Broken Habits

“Step forward into your growth or step back into safety” is a quote I read in a book recommended by a friend a few months ago. Ripple, written by Jez Groom and April Vellacott. It talks about how massive effects can surge with small behaviour changes in the business world; however, its applicability as a practical toolkit ranges across all arenas of life.

The human brain is a ‘cognitive miser’, meaning that our brains are wired to be intrinsically lazy and prefer not to engage our energies in hefty tasks that require us to expend more fuel. When this happens, we naturally resort to mental shortcuts and opt for the path of least resistance to pick the most convenient option for ourselves while performing a behaviour or taking action.

Often, this occurs without evaluating the potential risks that can arise while performing specific duties and being humans, we are bound to display fallibility and consort to biases in decision-making while following the default option.

One way to tackle this is to focus on the outcome of performing a particular behaviour that limits the appraisal of one’s actions and behaviour in terms of the output it generates to measure the success of performing a specific behaviour, making it imperative to measure what is right than what is more accessible.

Here are some lessons I learned from the book about behaviour change that is relevant beyond the business context:

1. To enable effective decision-making, it is crucial to take a leap of faith and endorse ideas basis the context in which you make confident decisions. Identifying what drives you to opt for the path of least resistance and challenging your inner cognitive miser while ‘simplifying before you justify’ to avoid biased decision-making can enable objectivity to thrive, even in the face of demanding circumstances.

2. Employing choice architecture, i.e. a design of different ways in which confident choices can be presented to individuals making decisions. This can improvise decision-making from predefined options, i.e., defining the problem at hand, diagnosing the underlying causes, and devising a solution to enable behaviour change.

3. Understanding the influence of social norms that dictate outcomes for certain behaviours and result in conformity and harmony instead of asserting one's own capabilities and individualism within varied contexts.

4. As bizarre as it sounds, holding a scarcity orientation can be helpful for you to make effective decisions. The higher value you place on scarce things than those that are abundantly available makes us more susceptible to statements that bolster the ego, thus motivating those who don’t put themselves forward to enhance involvement in productive activities.

In today’s world, the strategic use of behaviour change through different mechanisms has become commonplace; still, several aspects of our personal and professional lives have yet to embrace the transformative potential of behavioural science.