Cognitive Design

Green Bank offers a CARES (Committed Action to Reduce and End Smoking) savings account.  Smokers qualify and they make regular deposits for six months after which time they take a urine test. The test proves if they have smoked or not. Smokers loose their deposits (to a charity of their choice) and those that did not smoke keep the money.

As the recent study, Put Your Money Where Your Butt Is, shows this approach is surprisingly effective even at sustaining the behavior change well after the initial six months.   

There is some good cognitive design going on here.  The over confidence bias and the impulse to bet/gamble will get me into the program. Initial deposits are small so I can easily overcome my aversion to loss. However, towards the end of the six months I have significant account value (approx 20% of a month’s salary) and so loss aversion now works in favor of making the behavior change.  The urine test creates a strong sense of accountability so there is little room for rationalizing or invoking beliefs that self-justify smoking behaviors. Last but not least, participants receive encouragement and feedback when they make deposits.

This is especially clever as it meets two hard behavioral challenges at once – savings and smoking.

A new brain imaging technique called diffusion spectrum imaging (DSI) tracks how water molecules move through the nerve fibers of your brain to expose for the first time large-scale pictures of axons (nerve wires).

Check out this video of the neural wiring of the human brain.