This surprising, everyday tool might hold the key to changing human behavior

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Annabelle Timsit at Quartz: “To be a person in the modern world is to worry about your relationship with your phone. According to critics, smartphones are making us ill-mannered and sore-necked, dragging parents’ attention away from their kids, and destroying an entire generation.

But phones don’t have to be bad. With 4.68 billion people forecast to become mobile phone users by 2019, nonprofits and social science researchers are exploring new ways to turn our love of screens into a force for good. One increasingly popular option: Using texting to help change human behavior.

Texting: A unique tool

The short message service (SMS) was invented in the late 1980s, and the first text message was sent in 1992. (Engineer Neil Papworth sent “merry Christmas” to then-Vodafone director Richard Jarvis.) In the decades since, texting has emerged as the preferred communication method for many, and in particular younger generations. While that kind of habit-forming can be problematic—47% of US smartphone users say they “couldn’t live without” the device—our attachment to our phones also makes text-based programs a good way to encourage people to make better choices.

“Texting, because it’s anchored in mobile phones, has the ability to be with you all the time, and that gives us an enormous flexibility on precision,” says Todd Rose, director of the Mind, Brain, & Education Program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. “When people lead busy lives, they need timely, targeted, actionable information.”

And who is busier than a parent? Text-based programs can help current or would-be moms and dads with everything from medication pickup to childhood development. Text4Baby, for example, messages pregnant women and young moms with health information and reminders about upcoming doctor visits. Vroom, an app for building babies’ brains, sends parents research-based prompts to help them build positive relationships with their children (for example, by suggesting they ask toddlers to describe how they’re feeling based on the weather). Muse, an AI-powered app, uses machine learning and big data to try and help parents raise creative, motivated, emotionally intelligent kids. As Jenny Anderson writes in Quartz: “There is ample evidence that we can modify parents’ behavior through technological nudges.”

Research suggests text-based programs may also be helpful in supporting young children’s academic and cognitive development. …Texts aren’t just being used to help out parents. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have also used them to encourage civic participation in kids and young adults. Open Progress, for example, has an all-volunteer community called “text troop” that messages young adults across the US, reminding them to register to vote and helping them find their polling location.

Text-based programs are also useful in the field of nutrition, where private companies and public-health organizations have embraced them as a way to give advice on healthy eating and weight loss. The National Cancer Institute runs a text-based program called SmokefreeTXT that sends US adults between three and five messages per day for up to eight weeks, to help them quit smoking.

Texting programs can be a good way to nudge people toward improving their mental health, too. Crisis Text Line, for example, was the first national 24/7 crisis-intervention hotline to conduct counseling conversations entirely over text…(More).

Forty years of wicked problems literature: forging closer links to policy studies

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Brian W. Head at Policy and Society: “Rittel and Webber boldly challenged the conventional assumption that ‘scientific’ approaches to social policy and planning provide the most reliable guidance for practitioners and researchers who are addressing complex, and contested, social problems.

This provocative claim, that scientific-technical approaches would not ‘work’ for complex social issues, has engaged policy analysts, academic researchers and planning practitioners since the 1970s. Grappling with the implications of complexity and uncertainty in policy debates, the first generation of ‘wicked problem’ scholars generally agreed that wicked issues require correspondingly complex and iterative approaches. This tended to quarantine complex ‘wicked’ problems as a special category that required special collaborative processes.

Most often they recommended the inclusion of multiple stakeholders in exploring the relevant issues, interests, value differences and policy responses. More than four decades later, however, there are strong arguments for developing a second-generation approach which would ‘mainstream’ the analysis of wicked problems in public policy. While continuing to recognize the centrality of complexity and uncertainty, and the need for creative thinking, a broader approach would make better use of recent public policy literatures on such topics as problem framing, policy design, policy capacity and the contexts of policy implementation….(More)”.

Virtualization of government‐to‐citizen engagement process: Enablers and constraints

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Paper by Joshua Ofoeda et al: “The purpose of this study is to investigate the factors that constrain or enable process virtualization in a government‐to‐citizen engagement process. Past research has established that most e‐government projects, especially in developing countries, are regarded as total failure or partial failure.

Citizens’ unwillingness to use government electronic services and lack of awareness are among some of the reasons why these electronic services fail.

Using the process virtualization theory (PVT) as theoretical lens, the authors investigated the various activities within the driver license acquisition process at the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority.

The PVT helped in identifying factors which enable or inhibit the virtualization of the driver license acquisition process in Ghana. Based on a survey data of 317 participants, we report that process characteristics in the form of relationship requirements affect citizens’ willingness toward the use of government virtualized processes. Situating the PVT within a developing country context, our findings reveal that some cultural and behavioral attributes such as socialization hinder the virtualization of some activities within the driver licensing process….(More)”.

Motivating Bureaucrats through Social Recognition

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Evidence from Simultaneous Field Experiments by Varun Gauri,Julian C. Jamison, Nina Mazar, Owen Ozier, Shomikho Raha and Karima Saleh: “Bureaucratic performance is a crucial determinant of economic growth. Little is known about how to improve it in resource-constrained settings.

This study describes a field trial of a social recognition intervention to improve record keeping in clinics in two Nigerian states, replicating the intervention—implemented by a single organization—on bureaucrats performing identical tasks in both states.

Social recognition improved performance in one state but had no effect in the other, highlighting both the potential and the limitations of behavioral interventions. Differences in observables did not explain cross-state differences in impacts, however, illustrating the limitations of observable-based approaches to external validity….(More)”.

The Role of Behavioral Economics in Evidence-Based Policymaking

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William J. Congdon and Maya Shankar in Special Issue of The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science on Evidence Based Policy Making: “Behavioral economics has come to play an important role in evidence-based policymaking. In September 2015, President Obama signed an executive order directing federal agencies to incorporate insights from behavioral science into federal policies and programs. The order also charged the White House Social and Behavioral Sciences Team (SBST) with supporting this directive. In this article, we briefly trace the history of behavioral economics in public policy. We then turn to a discussion of what the SBST was, how it was built, and the lessons we draw from its experience and achievements. We conclude with a discussion of prospects for the future, arguing that even as SBST is currently lying fallow, behavioral economics continues to gain currency and show promise as an essential element of evidence-based policy….(More)”.

Livestreaming Pollution: A New Form of Public Disclosure and a Catalyst for Citizen Engagement?

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NBER Working Paper by Emiliano Huet-Vaughn, Nicholas Muller, and Yen-Chia Hsu: “Most environmental policy assumes the form of standards and enforcement. Scarce public budgets motivate the use of disclosure laws. This study explores a new form of pollution disclosure: real-time visual evidence of emissions provided on a free, public website. The paper tests whether the disclosure of visual evidence of emissions affects the nature and frequency of phone calls to the local air quality regulator. First, we test whether the presence of the camera affects the frequency of calls to the local air quality regulator about the facility monitored by the camera. Second, we test the relationship between the camera being active and the number of complaints about facilities other than the plant recorded by the camera. Our empirical results suggest that the camera did not affect the frequency of calls to the regulator about the monitored facility. However, the count of complaints pertaining to another prominent industrial polluter in the area, steel manufacturing plants, is positively associated with the camera being active. We propose two behavioral reasons for this finding: the prior knowledge hypothesis and affect heuristics. This study argues that visual evidence is a feasible approach to environmental oversight even during periods with diminished regulatory capacity….(More)”.

The Structure of Bias

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Paper by  Gabbrielle M Johnson: “What is a bias? Standard philosophical views of both implicit and explicit bias focus this question on the representations one harbors, e.g., stereotypes or implicit attitudes, rather than the ways in which those representations (or other mental states) are manipulated. I call such views representationalism.

In this paper, I argue that representationalism about bias is a mistake because it conceptualizes social bias in ways that do not fully capture the phenomenon. Crucially, such views fail to capture a heretofore neglected possibility of bias: one that influences an individual’s beliefs about and actions toward other people, but is, nevertheless, nowhere represented in that individual’s cognitive repertoire.

In place of representationalism, I develop a functional account of bias that treats it as a mental entity that takes propositional mental states as inputs and returns propositional mental states as outputs in a way that instantiates, or at the very least mimics, inferences on the basis of an individual’s social group membership. This functional characterization leaves open which mental states and processes bridge the gap between the inputs and outputs, ultimately highlighting the diversity of candidates that can serve this role….(More)”.

Playing Games While Building Savings

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Corporate Insights: “Nearly half of all Americans play video games, yet only a third have more than a thousand dollars saved for an emergency. A new fintech startup called Blast hopes to combine the increasingly popular pastime with saving for the future. Unlike other attempts to gamify savings that create entirely new experiences, Blast works alongside existing games with three ways for users to increase their balances when they play: automated micro-deposits, mission rewards and weekly prizes. By linking to games that people already enjoy, Blast avoids the difficult task of creating a hit game to reach a wide audience.

Much like Acorns—co-founded by Blast’s creator, Walter Cruttenden—and other micro-savings apps that make small automatic deposits to users’ savings, Blast automatically moves small amounts into savings whenever users accomplish in-game tasks. These “triggers” are user-controlled and available for popular online games like League of Legends and Counter Strike: Global Offensive. For example, users can choose to deposit $1.00 every time they win a match or $0.10 every time they defeat an enemy player. The linked savings account provided by Wells Fargo earns 1.00% APY, and Blast can withdraw funds from a linked checking or PayPal account.

Blast partners with game publishers to reward users for playing their games, doling out set amounts to users who engage (or re-engage) with games made by its partners…(More)”. 

5 Tips for Launching (and Sustaining) a City Behavioral Design Team

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Playbook by ideas42: “…To pave the way for other municipalities to start a Behavioral Design Team, we distilled years of rigorously tested results and real-world best practices into an open-source playbook for public servants at all levels of government. The playbook introduces readers to core concepts of behavioral design, indicates why and where a BDT can be effective, lays out the fundamental competencies and structures governments will need to set up a BDT, and provides guidance on how to successfully run one. It also includes several applicable examples from our New York and Chicago teams to illustrate the tangible impact behavioral science can have on citizens and outcomes.

Thinking about starting a BDT? Here are five tips for launching (and sustaining) a city behavioral design team. For more insights, read the full playbook.

Compose your team with care

While there is no exact formula, a well-staffed BDT needs expertise in three key areas: behavioral science, research and evaluation, and public policies and programs. You’ll rarely find all three in one person—hence the need to gather a team of people with complementary skills. Some key things to look for as you assemble your team: background in behavioral economics or social psychology, formal training in impact evaluation and statistics, and experience working in government positions or nonprofits that implement government programs.

Choose an anchor agency

To more quickly build momentum, consider identifying an “anchor” agency. A high profile partner can help you establish credibility and can facilitate interactions with different departments across your government. Having an anchor agency legitimizes the BDT and helps reduce any apprehension among other agencies. The initial projects with the anchor agency will help others understand both what it means to work with the BDT and what kinds of outcomes to expect.

Establish your criteria for selecting projects

Once you get people bought-in and excited about innovating with behavioral science, the possible problems to tackle can seem limitless. Before selecting projects, set up clear criteria for prioritizing which problems need attention the most and which ones are best suited to behavioral solutions. While it is natural for the exact criteria to vary from place to place, in the playbook we share the criteria the New York and Chicago BDTs use to prioritize and determine the viability of potential undertakings that other teams can use as a starting place.

Build buy-in with a mix of project types

If you run only RCTs, which require implementation and data collection, it may be challenging to generate the buy-in and enthusiasm a BDT needs to thrive in its early days. That’s why incorporating some shorter engagements, including projects that are design-only, or pre-post evaluations can help sustain momentum by quickly generating evidence—and demonstrate that your BDT gets results.

Keep learning and growing

Applying behavioral design within government programs is still relatively novel. This open-source playbook provides guidance for starting a BDT, but constant learning and iterating should be expected! As BDTs mature and evolve, they must also become more ambitious in their scope, particularly when the low-hanging-fruit or other more obvious problems that can be helpful for building buy-in and establishing proof-of-concept have been addressed. The long-term goal of any successful BDT is to tackle the most challenging and impactful problems in government programs and policies head-on and use the solutions to help the people who need it most…(More)”

Friends with Academic Benefits

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst
Paper by Janice McCabe at Contexts: “Sometimes it’s a good thing to be like your friends, and sometimes it isn’t. . . . If they’re getting all As, of course I want to be like them,” said Valerie, an 18-year-old college student during her first year at “MU,” a large, public, four-year university in the Midwestern United States. Like Valerie, many college students use their friends as academic motivation, finding support among a close-knit group surrounding them. Other students view only certain groups of friends as academically helpful. Betsy explained that the friends on her dorm floor constantly help each other with schoolwork, but her friends from home do not. Still others desired more support and encouragement than they received from friends. Steve told me, “I’m doing it myself… I want [help], but at the same time I don’t really need it.” All three students graduated from MU within four years, yet reflect some of the wide array of experiences students have with their friend networks.

The new or interesting story isn’t just that Valerie, Betsy, and Steve’s friends had different social and academic impacts, but that they had various types of friendship networks. My research points to the importance of network structure—that is, the relationships among their friends—for college students’ success. Different network structures result from students’ experiences—such as race- and class-based marginalization on this predominantly White campus—and shape students’ experiences by helping or hindering them academically and socially.

I used social network techniques to analyze the friendship networks of 67 MU students and found they clumped into three distinctive types—tight-knitters, compartmentalizers, and samplers. Tight-knitters have one densely woven friendship group in which nearly all their friends are friends with one another. Compartmentalizers’ friends form two to four clusters, where friends know each other within clusters but rarely across them. And samplers make a friend or two from a variety of places, but the friends remain unconnected to each other. As shown in the figures, tight-knitters’ networks resemble a ball of yarn, compartmentalizers’ a bow-tie, and samplers’ a daisy. In these network maps, the person I interviewed is at the center and every other dot represents a friend, with lines representing connections among friends (that is, whether the person I interviewed believed that the two people knew each other). During the interviews, participants defined what friendship meant to them and listed as many friends as they liked (ranging from three to 45).

The students’ friendship network types influenced how friends matter for their academic and social successes and failures. Like Valerie, most Black and Latina/o students were tight-knitters. Their dense friendship networks provided a sense of home as a minority on a predominantly White campus. Tight-knit networks could provide academic support and motivation (as they did for Valerie) or pull students down academically if their friends lacked academic skills and motivation. Most White students were compartmentalizers like Betsy, and they succeeded with moderate levels of social support from friends and with social support and academic support from different clusters. Samplers came from a range of class and race backgrounds. Like Steve, samplers typically succeeded academically without relying on their friends. Friends were fun people who neither help nor hurt them academically. Socially, however, samplers reported feeling lonely and lacking social support….(More)”.