In the last post we took a deep dive into Semantic Prosody and mindless choosing. We’ve looked at how particular words, with the same meanings, can negatively or positively balance the tone of a sentence. And in reviewing the photocopier study, we’ve identified the importance of using reasons when trying to guide behaviour. Each study has demonstrated the powerful effects of our dual process system of thought, as well as provided some useful tips that you can enact within your organisation. Better still, you can start putting these principles into practice within your decision-making processes or personal life, right now!

Bryan, Walton, Rogers and Dweck examined the effects of ‘invoking the self’ to positively impact voter registration and voter turnout within two state-wide elections in the USA[2]. In three randomised, controlled experiments, the researchers showed that using limited and subtle linguistic cues the day prior to the event, they were able to produce a significant increase in voter turnout (11%)!

That’s an enormous increase in turnout, but how did the experimenters cause it? In Bryan et al’s study, all it took was a simple change to the grammatical structure of a pre-election survey the day before voting took place! The intervention condition of Bryan et al’s study was to frame survey items around nouns i.e. “How important is it to you to be a voter in tomorrow’s election?” Whereas in the control condition, survey items were framed using verbs i.e. “How important is it to you to vote?”

The predicted psychological process in action, was that using nouns would cause positive framing effects – noun wording would present an opportunity to become a valued kind of person, as opposed to verb wording which presents an ‘errand to be accomplished’. The results were significant, and turnout was substantially increased.

The study about improving maths grades was based on the theory that the growth mindset supports academic improvement. A growth mindset being the belief that one is able to improve one's own abilities through hard work. The second study was based on a well proven social theory known as ‘broken window theory’, which suggests that social cohesion and crime rates are lower in areas which do not present as disordered. Each of the studies Walton et al highlights in their article are based on well-developed psychological theory, and when designing your own nudges this is particularly important to keep in mind. Develop an evidence based, working hypothesis, and design your solutions accordingly.

You can also draw from existing social-psychological theory. We’ve already discussed semantic prosody, cognitive load, the photocopier study and several other psychological theories, each supporting potential nudges you can enact within your organisation. We take a mixture of these approaches, drawing on our learnings from successful journeys we have delivered, as well as cutting edge psychological theory.

Clearly, developing your nudges will require some precision, but you’ve already got most of the tools to start! Psychological precision means beginning with a well-established and specific theory – you could start with dual process theory, and to be specific - that using reasons alongside small favours should improve compliance rates via type 1 bias. This is a strong theory with a simple, easy to test relationship.

At ContactEngine, we’re constantly chasing improvement, not only as an artificial intelligence business, but also in terms of our linguistic expertise and journey design capabilities. To accomplish this, we try to follow these rigorous requirements: we meticulously design a/b tests according to sound psychological principles, and carefully measure the effectiveness of our solutions, before incorporating this knowledge into our staple journey design methodology. Each solution is backed by a proven and growing body of not only academic theory, but practical evidence and experience gathered through real life user testing at scale. Doing so helps us achieve agile and iterative improvements across the entirety of our solution designs.

We’ve briefly mentioned reporting considerations, but these must become an integral part of the design when implementing nudges. How will you measure success? What factors could this nudge affect and are you set up to report on these results accurately, in a timely fashion? There is a difference between the level of scientific rigour necessary in the academic and the business worlds, but a nudge must be set up to be measured precisely prior to going live.

If a nudge is to effect long term change, it’s important that the intervention targets recursive processes. Walton has demonstrated that wise interventions may have effects which persist for years, but this is only when the targeted psychological processes are of the kind that will compound over time – such as the study mentioned earlier based on the growth mindset.

Outside of academia and public policy, the benefits of customers undergoing long term change may seem sparse. But in the case of longer-term customer journeys, such as those within utilities and telecoms, or journeys aimed at existing business relationships, partnerships or customer retention, employing effective nudges focused on long term influence and change, may have huge business benefits. 

Congratulations! If you made it this far and you’ve read our other articles, then you’ve finished our crash course in nudging and behavioural science. The goal here was to equip you with the principles behind setting up effective nudging solutions, and some of the more important business focussed elements to that. But we’ve covered a lot more across the series.

At this point we have covered an awful lot of ground! You should be comfortable with the dual process theory of mind, system 1 and system 2 thinking and error, understand designing choice structures with cognitive load in mind, and have an awareness of your own susceptibility to confirmation bias and poor mental accounting.