How to motivate yourself to change your behavior | Tali Sharot | TEDxCambridge
TLDRThe transcript from a speech discusses the ineffectiveness of fear-based strategies in inducing behavior change and presents new research insights. The speaker explains that traditional methods, such as warnings and threats, often lead to resistance or avoidance rather than action. Instead, the speaker advocates for positive reinforcement strategies that leverage social incentives, immediate rewards, and progress monitoring. These methods are shown to be more effective in motivating behavior change, as demonstrated by a hospital's handwashing compliance increase to 90% after introducing an electronic board that tracked and displayed handwashing rates. The speech concludes by emphasizing the importance of aligning with the brain's natural tendencies towards seeking progress and control, rather than against them, to achieve lasting behavior change.
Takeaways
- 🚫 **Threats and warnings have limited impact**: People tend to resist warnings and threats, which often leads to inaction rather than behavior change.
- 🧠 **Human psychology and fear**: When scared, humans tend to shut down, rationalize, or avoid negative information, which can lead to a boomerang effect of warnings.
- 📉 **Market behavior example**: People are more likely to check their financial accounts when the market is high and avoid them when it's low, demonstrating avoidance of negative information.
- 🧐 **Selective information processing**: People across all ages prefer to listen to and believe positive information over negative, which affects how they learn from warnings.
- 📈 **Progress over decline**: Highlighting progress rather than decline is more effective in gaining attention and motivating behavior change.
- 🤝 **Social incentives**: Seeing what others are doing can be a powerful motivator for behavior change, as people want to conform and outperform their peers.
- 🎁 **Immediate rewards**: People value immediate rewards more than future ones, and providing these can help bridge the gap between current actions and future benefits.
- 📊 **Progress monitoring**: Focusing on and monitoring progress can lead to better behavior change as it aligns with how the brain efficiently codes positive future information.
- 👵 **Age and learning from bad news**: Children and the elderly are less likely to accurately learn from warnings, indicating a need for different strategies for these demographics.
- 🏥 **Hospital handwashing example**: An electronic board showing handwashing compliance significantly increased handwashing rates by leveraging social incentives and immediate rewards.
- 🌐 **Applying principles for behavior change**: Using social incentives, immediate rewards, and progress monitoring can effectively motivate positive behavior change in various contexts.
Q & A
What is the common strategy that people often use to change their behavior or that of others?
-The common strategy is to use warnings and threats, which is based on the belief that inducing fear will motivate people to act and change their behavior.
Why do warnings and threats often have a limited impact on behavior according to the research?
-Warnings and threats have a limited impact because they often lead to a shutdown response where people try to eliminate the negative feelings, using rationalizations or avoidance, rather than changing their behavior.
How does the human response to fear compare to that of animals?
-Similar to animals, when humans experience fear, the common responses are to freeze, flee, or in some cases, fight. This fear-induced response can lead to avoidance or rationalization rather than positive behavioral change.
What is the 'boomerang effect' in the context of warnings?
-The 'boomerang effect' refers to the situation where warnings or threats can backfire, leading people to become more resistant to change and even reinforcing their existing behavior.
How do people's reactions to the stock market relate to their response to warnings?
-People tend to check their stock market accounts more frequently when the market is high due to positive information seeking, but avoid checking when the market is low to evade negative information. This avoidance behavior is similar to how people respond to warnings about negative future outcomes.
What did the experiment involving 100 people and experts' opinions reveal about human behavior?
-The experiment showed that people tend to adjust their beliefs towards the more desirable opinion, meaning they are more likely to accept positive information about their future rather than negative information, even when it comes from experts.
How does the ability to learn from bad news change as people age?
-The ability to learn from bad news improves as people age from childhood to around 40 years old, after which it starts to deteriorate, making the elderly less likely to accurately learn from warnings.
What are the three principles that can drive human behavior and were demonstrated in the hospital handwashing example?
-The three principles are social incentives, immediate rewards, and progress monitoring. These principles are more effective than warnings or threats in motivating positive behavior change.
How does the electronic board in the hospital act as an intervention to improve handwashing compliance?
-The electronic board serves as a visual representation of the medical staff's handwashing performance, providing social incentives by showing others' compliance, immediate rewards through the act of updating numbers, and progress monitoring by displaying ongoing improvement.
What is the significance of highlighting progress rather than decline when trying to motivate change?
-Highlighting progress focuses on the positive outcomes of a behavior, which can be more motivating than focusing on the negative consequences of not changing. It leverages the brain's efficient coding of positive information about the future.
How does the speaker suggest we should rethink our approach to motivating change in ourselves and others?
-The speaker suggests that instead of using fear and threats, which can induce inaction, we should use positive strategies that capitalize on the human tendency to seek progress, such as social incentives, immediate rewards, and progress monitoring.
Outlines
😀 Understanding Human Behavior Change
The first paragraph introduces the common desire to change our own or others' behaviors and discusses the ineffectiveness of using fear as a motivator. It explains that warnings and threats, such as graphic images on cigarette packets, have a limited impact on behavior. The speaker suggests that humans tend to shut down or rationalize when scared, leading to a boomerang effect where warnings can backfire. The paragraph also explores how people avoid negative information, as demonstrated by the behavior of stock market investors.
🧐 Beliefs and the Influence of Positive Information
The second paragraph delves into an experiment where people's beliefs about the likelihood of future negative events are influenced by expert opinions. It is shown that individuals tend to favor positive information, aligning their beliefs with more desirable outcomes. This bias is consistent across all age groups tested, from 10 to 80 years old. However, the ability to learn from bad news improves with age until midlife, after which it declines. The speaker emphasizes that everyone is more receptive to information they want to hear, and suggests that understanding this can lead to more effective strategies for behavior change.
📈 Social Incentives and Immediate Rewards
The third paragraph discusses the power of social incentives and immediate rewards in motivating behavior change. It highlights a study where medical staff's handwashing compliance increased dramatically with the introduction of an electronic board displaying their handwashing rates. The speaker explains that social incentives, such as seeing others' behavior, and immediate rewards, like seeing a positive impact of one's actions, are strong motivators. The paragraph also touches on the principle of progress monitoring and how it can help individuals focus on improving their performance.
🌟 Positive Strategies for Behavior Change
The final paragraph summarizes the key points, emphasizing the importance of using positive strategies over threats to motivate behavior change. It recounts a personal anecdote about an electricity bill that used social incentives, immediate rewards, and progress monitoring to encourage more efficient energy use. The speaker concludes by stressing that while risks need to be communicated, focusing on the potential for positive gain rather than the fear of loss is a more effective approach to inspire action and change.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Behavior Change
💡Warnings and Threats
💡Resistance to Warnings
💡Rationalizations
💡Social Incentives
💡Immediate Rewards
💡Progress Monitoring
💡Positive Image Maintenance
💡Information Avoidance
💡Control and Agency
💡Habit Formation
Highlights
The common strategy of using warnings and threats to induce fear has limited impact on changing behavior.
Graphic images on cigarette packets do not deter smokers, and can even lower the priority of quitting.
When scared, humans tend to shut down, rationalize, or avoid negative information.
People are more likely to seek out and remember positive information over negative information.
The ability to learn from bad news improves with age until around 40, then declines in older adults.
Using positive strategies like social incentives, immediate rewards, and progress monitoring can be more effective in motivating behavior change.
In a hospital study, displaying handwashing rates led to a 90% compliance rate, driven by social incentives and progress monitoring.
People value immediate rewards more than uncertain future rewards, even though they care about their future.
Providing immediate rewards for behaviors that have future benefits can help form lasting habits.
Highlighting progress rather than decline can better capture attention and motivate action.
Giving people a sense of control is a powerful motivator for behavior change.
Fear and threats can induce inaction, while the excitement of gaining something can drive action.
Instead of trying to distort people's positive self-image, work with it to motivate change.
The British government increased tax compliance by 15% by highlighting that most people pay on time.
Positive reinforcement strategies can capitalize on the human tendency to seek progress and improvement.
An energy bill used social incentives, immediate rewards, and progress monitoring to motivate more efficient electricity use.
The brain is more efficient at processing positive information about the future, while struggling with negative information.
Children and the elderly are the least likely to accurately learn from warnings due to differences in cognitive development.
Transcripts
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