#59 What the Largest Study Says about Changing Human Behavior
What the Largest Study Says about Changing Human Behavior
Have you ever designed programs or activities with the goal of changing behavior? Did you wonder what really works?
New research led by Professor Dolores Albarracín from the University of Pennsylvania answers that question, and it’s not what people usually think. Albarracín’s team reviewed 147 meta-analyses focused on health or environmental behaviors and determined which interventions generally have negligible, small, medium or large effects.
As Albarracín explains in this article (just a 9-minute read), “Interventions targeting knowledge, general attitudes, beliefs, administrative and legal sanctions, and trustworthiness — these factors researchers and policymakers put so much weight on — are actually quite ineffective. They have negligible effects."
So . . . what does usually work (as portrayed in Figure A. below)?
Interventions focused on access, such as providing transportation to vaccination centers or changing the default, had large effects.
Interventions focused on habits and social support both had medium-sized effects.