Cognitive Design

In cognitive design we can frame business ethics as a behavior change challenge.  This means identifying target behaviors to stop, start and avoid starting and then designing changes to the environment that encourage or require the behaviors as well as one or more pathways to learn them from experience.

More specifically, some behaviors and decisions are ethical and others are not.  The challenge in many organizations is to have employees either stop or avoid starting unethical behaviors and start ethical ones.

Taking a cognitive design approach means we study actual business behaviors and the deeply felt psychological needs that drive them.   Only by understanding the underlying psychology can we hope to design an effective program to change unethical behavior or promote ethical ones.

This approach is gaining academic traction in the rapidly emerging field of behavioral business ethics.  According to a new book just edited by two leaders in the field:

“This book takes a look at how and why individuals display unethical behavior. It emphasizes the actual behavior of individuals rather than the specific business practices. It draws from work on psychology which is the scientific study of human behavior and thought processes. As Max Bazerman said, “efforts to improve ethical decision making are better aimed at understanding our psychological tendencies.”

For a shorter  introduction to what behavioral science can do for the practice of business ethics check out this inaugural address given at the Rotterdam School of Management.  Cognitive designers will be most interested in the discussion on the emergence of distrust.

The cognitive-behavioral approach promises to reframe our approach to business ethics in a way that leads to dramatic improvements.   We might make more progress treating ethics problems like we do eating or smoking problems.  After all, assuming people are greedy and corrupt leads nowhere. Perhaps the key is to understand why they cannot control their impulses in a particular environment and how deeply felt psychological needs can be met in a more ethical manner.

A well-known self control technique involves the use of reason to combat temptation.   For example, if you are trying to control your eating behaviors and someone offers you a piece of cake you can remind yourself that you don’t really need the cake, eating the cake will make you feel bad later or any number of ways of using reason to maintain control.  But does this work?

Recent research from Northwestern University suggests that using cognition to control behavior works best when you are not in the related visceral state.  Visceral states are biological drive states and include for example, hunger, thirst, sexual desire and fatigue.  In the cake example, using reason to avoid it will work best when I am not hungry.

Visceral states tend to trump psychological states. When we are in the grip of a craving  we are aroused and in a “hot” cognitive state. Our attempt to use reason can be corrupted into a rationalization for indulging. On the other hand, when satiated or satisfied we are in a “cool” cognitive state and reason helps to control behavior.

Bottom line for cognitive designers working on behavior change is that reason-based strategies are useful but not sufficient for maintaining self control.  You will need to design biology-based strategies to maintain control in the presence of hot cognitive states.

Improving employee productivity, reducing obesity, addressing global warming, getting customers to purchase your product and a host of other socially and economically pressing issues  all mean changing the behaviors of other people.  Our urgent need but frequent inability to achieve lasting behavior change is becoming a national past time.

In our rush to change behaviors (at all costs?) we need to be mindful of the ethics involved.   A recent blog post on the New Scientist,  Nudge Policies are Another Name for Coercion, makes this point well.   Nudges are small changes to our environment that trigger a built in cognitive bias to produce significant behavior change.  For example, the status quo bias will keep us enrolled in a 401k plan that we have to opt out of instead of opting into.  Or food placement, lighting and length of lines can strongly determine what children “decide” to have for lunch at school. The idea is to play off our automatic patterns of thought to nudge us towards a particular behavior or decision rather than forcing us along a single path.

Leaders, policy makers or innovators that deploy nudges do so under the assumption of paternalism. It is an ethically OK influence strategy because the change has the person’s best interests at heart. Everybody wants to save more and eat healthier, right? One alternative to a nudge or playing off my automatic tendencies is to sit me down, explain the facts and let me consciously make the decision.  Some worry that this so-called democratic approach to behavior change is nice in principle but does not work well in practice. The post challenges that by citing recent research at Cornell University:

“Mettler uses experiments to show how ordinary people can understand complicated policy questions and reach considered conclusions, as long as they get enough information. This suggests a far stronger role for democratic decision-making than libertarian paternalism allows.”

Positive influence and manipulation often pull on the same underlying techniques. What differentiates them is intent and what all parties have consciously consented to do.  Leaders, policy makers and innovators often don’t ask for permission to make change, they assume they know what is best for others and move forward.  That’s their job and it is one that is steeped in the ethics of behavior change.

Interested to hear from readers that have tried to distill or codify the ethics of behaviors change.   Under what conditions is it morally appropriate to influence behavior change?  Likewise, under what conditions are your morally compelled to try and influence behavior change (e.g. a doctor changing a patient’s health-related behaviors)?

From time to time the Psychology Press makes key papers available for free. This week they have opened up some papers on cognitive neuroscience.  Cognitive designers will find, On The Functional Anatomy of the Urge-for-Action, of special interest.

The discussion paper provides a review of what we know about everyday urges for action such as yawning and swallowing as well as mental health challenges such as obsessiveness compulsive disorder. They find a common neural architecture for all such urges that is distinct from the brain regions that drive intentional behaviors. The article provides important background for designers and innovators working on behavior change challenges.

Changing behaviors takes considerable time and mental energy. Often we need help. Someone to guide or advise us through the process of learning the new behaviors from experience in a way that makes them stick. A guide provides motivation, helps us break through rationalizations and faulty beliefs, suggests new techniques when the ones we are using fail and provides perspective on progress and goals.  Guides take many forms – a formal sponsor in a change program, friend, family member, therapist, community pharmacist, teacher, mentor at work, life coach or just someone else who has made it through the change and wants to help.

Without guides most of us (approximately 70%) will not be able to achieve lasting changes to our health, financial, relationship and other essential personal an professional behaviors. Technology can be a guide too.  Indeed, technology is amplifying and redesigning how human behavior-change guides do their work. Smart phones, social networks, special purpose web sites, virtual humans, video games and simulations all promise to revolutionize how we change behaviors.

Technology-enabled behavior change has grown explosively over the last 10 years and is emerging as a new academic discipline. Conferences, journals, rigorously research books and interdisciplinary centers are sprouting up.  For example,  I received two emails just today on the topic. One announced a new book from Psychology Press, The Social Cure, that argues ” A growing body of evidence shows that social networks and identities have a profound impact on mental and physical health.”   The second announced a new interdisciplinary research and education center being launched at Northwestern University dedicated to becoming a world leader in behavioral intervention technology (BIT).

They are looking at how a range of technologies from the web to the smart phone and virtual humans can enable preventative medicine, cognitive behavioral therapy, psychotherapy and other science-based behavior change interventions.  Of special interest is purple, a platform the Center developed for building BIT applications. Purple is a tool for building new BIT applications faster, better and cheaper.

Clearly technology-enabled behavior change is hot.

To be successful such technology efforts will have to maintain a laser-like focus on what they are trying to enable, namely the social cognitive psychology of how humans make lasting behavior change.

Now, how does that work again?

Many types of behavior change programs end up relying on communication or messaging to do a lot of the work.  The right type of messaging can make all the difference.  In cognitive design we have long advocated change messaging that is short, just-in-time, emotionally positive and behavior-specific (tell me exactly what to do).  Knowledge cards, a small-step behavior change program, are designed to follow precisely that prescription.

Interesting new research from the University of Michigan supports and extends this idea. The study focused on the impact of text messages sent to mobile phones to help Teens manage their weight.  Not surprising they found that specific instructions from peers and sincere positive encouragement were preferred. They also found:

“Other negative response came from the mention of unhealthy food and behavior, even with references to healthier options; Teens began to crave unhealthy foods after being asked about them. Reflective questions, like “What does being healthy mean for you? How does screen time fit in with your goals? How could cutting back on it help improve your health? were also ineffective.”

It is not clear if the preferred messages will actually cause behavior change.  It is clear those that are not preferred or even disliked will not.  This is an important finding because we sometimes design communications in change programs to invoke comparative and reflective thinking. While that is critical for some applications it will clearly backfire for others.

To effectively change behaviors we need to identify the behaviors we want to stop, start and avoid.  For example, if you are trying to lose weight you might need to START weighing yourself daily, STOP serving large portions at breakfast and AVOID starting to snack after 7pm. Determining which behaviors to change and how to reshape them in a way that is pleasurable enough to sustain can take consider learning from experience.

That is why I am always on the lookout for new methods or devices that help us become aware of the simple mechanical actions we take everyday. For example, researchers at Clemson have developed a simple device for automatically counting the number of bites of food or sips of drink you take during the day. You need to press a button to turn it on before eating and off when you are done but otherwise it is 90% accurate at counting your bites and sips.  It doubles as a watch, weights less than an ounce, can store information on up to 320 meals or snacks and costs $799.

“At the societal level, current weight-loss and maintenance programs are failing to make a significant impact. Studies have shown that people tend to underestimate what they eat by large margins, mostly because traditional methods rely upon self–observation and reporting,” said Muth. “Our preliminary data suggest that bite count can be used as a proxy for caloric count.”

Even if bite count cannot be correlated to calories, this device offers a new and automated way of observing our eating behaviors.   Focusing on bites and sips may afford new ways of modifying eating behaviors.

Achieving lasting behavior change when it comes to the way we eat, get physical activity, use drugs (prescribed or not), manage stress and deal with the chronic health conditions we may have is a major social and economic priority in the US.   As traditional approaches have failed, innovative behavior change services are emerging. Many are based on good cognitive design.

Take for example, Keas. They have built an employee wellness program around a social game that uses direct incentives, positive reinforcement, team competition and friendly but real peer pressure to drive health behavior change.  Importantly, they avoid lecturing and negative reinforcement. Check out this short two minute video on the psychology behind Keas.

Clearly it is designed for how our hearts-and-minds really work. No super science and no special diet.  Keas demonstrates that we already have the understanding we need to make behavior change.  What is lacking are the designs and innovations that translate that understanding into outcome producing practices, products and services.

Interested to hear from readers about other service innovations that reflect good cognitive design and deliver behavior changes. One reader suggested this post on 11 wellness platforms from the Mobile Health News Blog.

Many things can keep us from reaching our goals including ourselves. Indeed, our ability to regulate our thoughts, feelings and reactions to the challenges we encounter when working towards goals strongly determines success.   My ability to self regulate shapes for example, how I deal with frustration or the impulse to do something more enjoyable; if I take risks to learn new things; and ultimately whether I give up or keep going.

Cognitive designers focused on creating programs to help people achieve lasting behavior change or reach other goals must pay special attention to the psychology of self regulation.

That is why I am always on the lookout for studies that take a scientific look at how well the various tactics for self regulation work. For example, consider the study just published on the Self-Regulation of Priming Effects on Behavior.  In this study researchers completed three experiments to see if implementation intentions or the formulation of if-then plans improved self regulation. They found that they worked!

An if-then plan involves imagining potential defeaters to your intent on  reaching a goal and then making a plan to avoid or counteract its effects, if the defeater happens to surface. For instances, if my goal is to lose weight and I know I have trouble resisting cookies, I might make a plan that says “if I encounter a cookie then I will chew a piece of gum”.   Although simplistic, it is our ability to learn which types of if-then plans work that determines how well we learn new behaviors from experience.

The number one entrepreneurial opportunity in advanced countries around the world today is developing new services and experiences that produce lasting behavior change!

With rampant obesity, chronic illness, drug use, over spending, pollution, ethical lapses, wasteful energy use, poor educational outcomes and so on there is an unparalleled demand for solutions that produce positive and lasting behavior change for individuals and groups. The economic and social value associated with behavior change innovations easily swamps all the technology, life science and other sector innovation opportunities combined.

Behavior change innovations won’t come from computer programming, electrical engineering, physics or other atom-based sciences that have so successfully driven garage-based entrepreneurs. If they come from science it will be the neuron-based sciences such as cognitive psychology, behavioral science and neuroscience.  But we likely don’t need any new science, or perhaps no science at all, to develop the innovations necessary to make the lasting behavior changes we want.

Many ordinary people have successfully regained their behavioral balance – lost weight, learned to control their spending, take medications as prescribed, save energy and so on.  Not only can they positively influence behavior change in themselves but they guide similar changes in their family, friends, team members and sometimes communities.  They do this without making any grand scale changes to the healthcare system, environmental law or other institutions.  They work hard, learn from trial-and-error experience and persist until they find practical solutions for stopping, changing and avoiding behaviors.  Sometimes these solutions scale into new businesses that help millions of other people. The Weight Watchers and 12-step programs started this way.

Behavior change innovations are not born of technical or scientific work and built into businesses by entrepreneurs working in a garage. They come from folk psychological insights and learning from experience and are built into business by entrepreneurs working in their living room.

It is likely that ordinary people have already cracked the code on many of our toughest behavior change challenges.  They have reaped the rewards that millions of others need. It is tempting to think about doing  a study to figure out what makes them successful and design programs to replicate their practices. This has been done many times with limited success. It fails to work (as many best practice transfer programs do) because it leaves behind the mental models, tacit knowledge and hard won passion and pride that is so essential to producing the change. What we need to do is enable such folks to become living room entrepreneurs so that they can infect others with the energy and tacit learning that holds the key to lasting behavior change.

How can we foster living-room entrepreneurship to drive the behavior change service innovation we so urgently need?