Nudge, nudge, think, think: experimenting with ways to change civic behaviour

Peter John‘s recent book investigates how to get the best out of nudge theories, considering positive behaviour changes in recycling, volunteering, voting, and petitioning, and provides some unexpected insights about some interventions, finds Sander van der Linden. Nudge, Nudge, Think, Think: Experimenting with Ways to Change Civic Behaviour. Peter John, Sarah Cotterill, Alice Moseley, Liz Richardson, Graham Smith, Gerry Stoker and Corinne Wales. Bloomsbury Academic Publishing. September 2011

The future of behavioral insights: on the importance of socially situated nudges

AbstractSocially minded nudges are the more sociable cousin of regular nudges: they reveal important information about other people's behavior, raise normative expectations about what is desirable, can be shared and transmitted online or offline and leverage social incentives and sanctions that regulate individual and group behavior. In this article, I argue that many of the most successful nudges – that is, nudges that have been well replicated, offer positive spill-over and whose effects last over time – have in fact been social nudges. Moreover, the efficacy of other nudges can be enhanced by considering the social dimension of the problem that they are trying to address. In asking where behavioral science should go next, I argue that although the Behavioural Insights Team has traditionally shied away from addressing more complex and sticky societal issues, socially situated nudges are particularly well suited to address many of the important challenges raised by Sanderset al.(2018).</jats:p

On the relationship between personal experience, affect and risk perception: The case of climate change.

Examining the conceptual relationship between personal experience, affect, and risk perception is crucial in improving our understanding of how emotional and cognitive process mechanisms shape public perceptions of climate change. This study is the first to investigate the interrelated nature of these variables by contrasting three prominent social-psychological theories. In the first model, affect is viewed as a fast and associative information processing heuristic that guides perceptions of risk. In the second model, affect is seen as flowing from cognitive appraisals (i.e., affect is thought of as a post-cognitive process). Lastly, a third, dual-process model is advanced that integrates aspects from both theoretical perspectives. Four structural equation models were tested on a national sample (N = 808) of British respondents. Results initially provide support for the "cognitive" model, where personal experience with extreme weather is best conceptualized as a predictor of climate change risk perception and, in turn, risk perception a predictor of affect. Yet, closer examination strongly indicates that at the same time, risk perception and affect reciprocally influence each other in a stable feedback system. It is therefore concluded that both theoretical claims are valid and that a dual-process perspective provides a superior fit to the data. Implications for theory and risk communication are discussed. © 2014 The Authors. European Journal of Social Psychology published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

Green but not altruistic warm-glow predicts conservation behavior

Environmental policies frequently assume that people only act to help the environment if such behavior is in their self-interest. A growing amount of literature, however, shows that people also derive positive emotional benefits or “warm-glow from acting green. Yet, it remains unclear to what extent this motivation is derived from classical accounts of altruistic concern. In the current study, we leveraged a prospective design of a unique sample (N1= 341, N2 = 251) of customers who subscribe to a local sustainable food store. We measured altruistic and green warm-glow at T1 and predicted to what extent such prospective warm-glow predicted a range of self-reported conservation behaviors four weeks later (T2). Results suggest that the anticipated warm-glow from helping other people did not significantly predict green intentions nor green behavior despite being highly correlated with green warm-glow. In fact, only green warm-glow significantly predicted conservation behavior over time. These findings are important because they elucidate a basic differential motivation between helping other people versus protecting the planet. This differentiation is critical to the design of effective conservation interventions

Communicating expert consensus increases personal support for COVID-19 mitigation policies.

Funder: Science Foundation IrelandThe Gateway Belief Model (GBM) places perception of a scientific consensus as a key "gateway cognition" with cascading effects on personal beliefs, concern, and ultimately support for public policies. However, few studies seeking to evaluate and extend the model have followed the specification and design of the GBM as originally outlined. We present a more complete test of the theoretical model in a novel domain: the COVID-19 pandemic. In a large multi-country correlational study (N = 7,206) we report that, as hypothesized by the model, perceptions of scientific consensus regarding the threat of COVID-19 predict personal attitudes toward threat and worry over the virus, which are in turn positively associated with support for mitigation policies. We also find causal support for the model in a large pre-registered survey experiment (N = 1,856): experimentally induced increases in perceived consensus have an indirect effect on changes in policy support mediated via changes in personal agreement with the consensus. Implications for the role of expert consensus in science communication are discussed

The social-psychological determinants of climate change risk perceptions, intentions and behaviours: a national study

Although human-caused climate change is one of the greatest societal challenges of the 21st century, insights from social and environmental psychology remain underrepresented in the mitigation debate. This is surprising given that the collective potential for reducing national carbon emissions through changes in individual lifestyles and behaviours has clearly been demonstrated. Accordingly, this PhD thesis aims to provide a more systematic and detailed understanding of individual mitigation behaviour. It does so specifically by examining the social-psychological determinants of climate change risk perceptions, intentions and behaviours using a longitudinal UK national survey (N = 808, wave 1) and (N = 501, wave 2). In total, three separate analyses were conducted using the national survey data. In the first analysis (chapter 4), a social-psychological model of climate change risk perceptions is advanced. The model proposes that public risk perceptions of climate change are influenced by three key psychological dimensions, namely; (i) cognitive, (ii) experiential and (iii) socio-cultural factors. Results confirm the model’s validity and show that nearly 70% of the variance in risk perception can be explained by the model’s components. Main findings also provide empirical support for a distinction between personal and societal risk judgements and highlight important differences in their psychological antecedents. The second analysis(chapter 5) specifically investigates the interrelation between personal experience with extreme weather, affect and risk perception and situates their conceptual relationship within the cognition-emotion debate. Results provide strong support for a dual-process model, where risk perception and affect mutually influence each other in a stable feedback system. In the third analysis (chapter 6), a domain-context-behaviour (DCB) model is advanced. The purpose of the model is to causally conceptualize and systematically organize the social-psychological determinants of climate change mitigation behaviours. A key aspect of the DCB model is the notion that environmental values (i.e. the “domain”) and climate change cognitions, norms and emotions (i.e. the “context”) do not influence specific mitigation intentions and behaviours (e.g. energy conservation) directly. Rather, they influence a broad and general orienting intention to help reduce climate change. This general intention in turn activates and predicts specific mitigation intentions directly as well as indirectly via behaviour-specific determinants. Important differences emerge between high-impact and low-impact behavioural changes. Overall, results from this thesis have important implications for public policy, risk communication and behavioural change interventions

Inoculating Against Fake News About COVID-19.

The outbreak of the SARS-CoV-2 novel coronavirus (COVID-19) has been accompanied by a large amount of misleading and false information about the virus, especially on social media. In this article, we explore the coronavirus "infodemic" and how behavioral scientists may seek to address this problem. We detail the scope of the problem and discuss the negative influence that COVID-19 misinformation can have on the widespread adoption of health protective behaviors in the population. In response, we explore how insights from the behavioral sciences can be leveraged to manage an effective societal response to curb the spread of misinformation about the virus. In particular, we discuss the theory of psychological inoculation (or prebunking) as an efficient vehicle for conferring large-scale psychological resistance against fake news

Good News about Bad News: Gamified Inoculation Boosts Confidence and Cognitive Immunity Against Fake News.

Recent research has explored the possibility of building attitudinal resistance against online misinformation through psychological inoculation. The inoculation metaphor relies on a medical analogy: by pre-emptively exposing people to weakened doses of misinformation cognitive immunity can be conferred. A recent example is the Bad News game, an online fake news game in which players learn about six common misinformation techniques. We present a replication and extension into the effectiveness of Bad News as an anti-misinformation intervention. We address three shortcomings identified in the original study: the lack of a control group, the relatively low number of test items, and the absence of attitudinal certainty measurements. Using a 2 (treatment vs. control) × 2 (pre vs. post) mixed design (N = 196) we measure participants' ability to spot misinformation techniques in 18 fake headlines before and after playing Bad News. We find that playing Bad News significantly improves people's ability to spot misinformation techniques compared to a gamified control group, and crucially, also increases people's level of confidence in their own judgments. Importantly, this confidence boost only occurred for those who updated their reliability assessments in the correct direction. This study offers further evidence for the effectiveness of psychological inoculation against not only specific instances of fake news, but the very strategies used in its production. Implications are discussed for inoculation theory and cognitive science research on fake news

Motivating actions to mitigate plastic pollution

Designing effective policy interventions to motivate mitigation actions requires more realistic assumptions about human decision-making based on empirical evidence from the behavioural sciences. We therefore need to consider behavioural rather than only economic costs and benefits in policy intervention designs