The art of balancing beliefs in behaviour design.

Credits: Created by Nikita Kozin from Noun Project

When you extract a set of beliefs (the subliminal, neuronal codes that drive a certain behaviour in a certain context/environment) from user research, after endlessly arguing with fellow strategists whether the belief articulated is ‘deep enough’ or not, the question that’s often asked is — ‘How do we now work to change this belief to change behaviour?’

This is not just improbable, it’s impossible.

It’s quite silly to even attempt to change a set of beliefs/behaviour codes/mental models/BE principles — some of which have been passed on to us from our ancestors, some of which depend on what our mums were eating when we were in the womb, some of which depend on the music our dads listened to when we were toddlers. The list of factors leading to this inertial code imprinting process is endless and, often, untraceable.

But what we do know is that for every belief that forms within us, there’s a counter, almost diametrically opposite belief right around the corner, waiting to tip the other one over.

Let’s take:

Loss aversion: Losing is twice as painful as winning is pleasurable.

vs.

Optimism bias: I can never lose. Nope. Not happening.

Omission bias: I’d rather do nothing than do something wrong.

vs.

Action bias: I must do something to feel in control.

Social norms (Dan Ariely): Our willingness to attach a disproportionate amount of effort to a cause or purpose.

vs.

Market norms: Putting in a measured amount of effort — only directly proportional to the money we’re paid.

And my favourite one,

Present bias: Picking a reward now over the promise of a future, more significant reward.

vs.

The human egoic plight: Putting in more (if not all) emphasis on the future and the past — i.e. on everything but the present moment :)

The role of behaviour design is to create an environment/context that prods one set of codes/beliefs/BE principles to tip another over — thereby increasing the propensity for the desired behaviour to occur in that context or environment.

No, behaviour design is not the belief-changing magic wand that we have always hoped it to be.