The Behavioural Insights Team have spent the last 10 years developing solutions that are informed by behavioural science. These insights do not emerge overnight. Instead, they are grounded by a firm understanding of the systems in which we operate. Reading academic (or policy) papers is an important step to developing evidence based interventions, but it will only get you so far if you want to understand the context in which you want to implement an intervention. Instead, we argue that you need to leave the office and try to experience the context as closely as you can, either by directly experiencing it, or by directly speaking to the people that do.

To try to convince you that you should step away from our desk, we’ve created a podcast which we think will give you a much better sense of why you can’t read your way out of a complex policy problem. In this podcast, Alex Gyani and Rory Gallagher from BIT’s Sydney office speak to Zoe Powell, Saul Wodak, Allison Wong, Edwina Crawford and Sophie Munroe about their experiences of going out into the field and some of the insights they took from that process. We’ll describe projects that have tackled domestic violence, unemployment and the health and safety of gig economy workers. If you want to know more about those specific projects, just follow the links posted in this description.

Note: that this podcast describes the court processes involved in domestic violence cases. While no acts of violence are described in the podcast, if you are affected by domestic violence or abuse, there are a number of services you can reach out to.

Australia: Call 000 if you are in immediate danger. To access 24/7 counselling and support call 1800RESPECT on 1800 737 732.

New Zealand: Call 111 if you are in immediate danger. Call 0800 456 450 free from any phone, 9am to 11pm every day.

UK: Call 000 if you are in immediate danger. For free and confidential advice, anytime call 0808 2000 247.

US: Call 911 if you are in immediate danger. For free and confidential advice, anytime call 1800 799 7233.

Musical credits

Intro: Next to you by Jessie Villa

Outro: Cassette Deck by Basketcase

Additional music by Enrize Studio

A decade ago, BIT’s EAST® framework made applying behavioural science Easy, Attractive, Social, and Timely. Now, just like the field itself, it’s evolved.

Join Michael Hallsworth, BIT’s Chief Behavioural Scientist and one of the authors of the original framework, as he explores how behavioural science has developed over the last 10 years, including the wins, the setbacks, and the future of the field.

In this episode Michael sits down with:

• Laura Litvine (Director, BIT France)

• Elspeth Kirkman (Chief Programmes Officer, Nesta & EAST® coauthor)

• Alex Gyani (Managing Director, BIT APAC & EAST® coauthor)

• Jared Peterson (Co-founder, Nuance Behavior & researcher at ShadowBox)

Tune in for a deep dive into the past, present, and future of one of behavioural science’s most influential frameworks.

The BIT podcast

Discover the fascinating and surprising world of behavioural insights by listening to the BIT podcast, brought to you by the Behavioural Insights Team. Find out how understanding the ways people really think and behave through behavioural science can help deliver a fairer society for us all.

Links

To learn more about BIT’s work visit our website: www.bi.team

To read the updated EAST® framework visit: https://www.bi.team/publications/east-four-simple-ways-to-apply-behavioural-insights/

Behavioural science has made a major impact on important issues over the past decade, such as antimicrobial resistance, educational attainment, and sustainability. But it’s also clear that applied behavioural science needs to evolve to fulfil its true potential.

BIT has just published A Manifesto for Applying Behavioral Science - a landmark guide to the future of applied behavioral science. This Manifesto takes a clear-eyed look at challenges facing the field and offers 10 proposals to address them:

Use behavioral science as a lens that can help us see all issues better, rather than as a tool for limited challenges.

Build behavioral science into the design of organizations’ standard processes, to give it scale and sustainability.

Step back, understand the system, and use behavioral science to make targeted changes that lead to wider results.

Improve randomized controlled trials to better deal with the complexity of the real world.

Approaches successful in one context can fail in another – find out why, and how we can adapt them better.

Don’t just think about biases in behavior – aim for practical theories that offer reliable ways of solving real-world problems.

Predict what people will do, confront when you were wrong, and change your views accordingly.

Be humble about what you know, more curious about why people do things, and help others use behavioral science to improve their own lives.

Use data science to identify, understand and reduce inequities. Be realistic – recognize that behavioral scientists always bring their own values to whatever they do, and help the field to broaden its range of perspectives.

In this episode the Manifesto's author and Managing Director of BIT in the Americas, Michael Hallsworth, takes to the streets of New York City to explain more about what point 3, the importance of 'understanding the system' means in the context of behavioural science. The journey will take him from Times Square to Governors Island, discussing oysters, pedestrian crossings, plastic bags and much more.

The full Manifesto for Applying Behavioural Science is available now for free on our website at https://www.bi.team/

Credits

This episode was recorded in and around New York City by Sabeena Singhani. Our thanks to Pete Malinowski of the Billion Oyster Project and Rebecca Taylor of the University of Sydney for kindly agreeing to be interviewed.

New research in BIT's 'How to build a Net Zero society' report finds that most people find it hard to make more sustainable choices in their own lives, despite 9 in 10 wanting to do so. They want to see strong leadership from government and business to make green choices easier.

These high levels of public support aren't just in the abstract - there are big majorities in favour of a whole host of specific policy recommendations, including many often deemed more controversial.

Listen to the team discuss this new research and what it means for how behavioural science can help reach Net Zero. The 'How to build a Net Zero society' report can be downloaded here: https://www.bi.team/publications/how-to-build-a-net-zero-society/

This episode looks at recent work from the team in the areas of road safety, online fraud, conflict resolution and synthetic data.

Over the past decade, car crash death rates in the US for pedestrians rose by 36%, even as death rates fell for drivers and passengers. Over a third of San Francisco’s traffic deaths are caused when drivers make left turns and don't see the person in the crosswalk. BIT’s Lis Costa is joined by Maximillian Kroner from our US office to discuss a pilot study conducted by BIT on the roads of San Francisco that reduced average speeds of cars approaching potentially dangerous turns by 17%.

If you’re not familiar with the concept of synthetic data you are not alone but its potential in the fields of behavioural science and policy research is considerable. BIT’s Head of Data Science and Technology Dr Paul Calcraft spoke to BIT’s Aisling Colclough to explain more.

Boko Haram in Nigeria has been conducting a violent campaign against the authorities for many years but increasingly members are turning away from the militant group, expressing remorse and asking to rejoin the society they were previously terrorising. BIT’s Dr Antonio Silva talks about the work the team have been doing to help with this reconciliation and reintegration challenge.

Finally this episode features a project from BIT France looking at how to help protect people from the ever present risk of online fraud. This project was run with and financed by the DITP - France’s Département for Public Transformation. Tom McMinigal from BIT France speaks to BIT’s Andrew Schein about his experience pretending to sell coffee machines through a fake online scam to help teach people how to avoid the actual ones.

More information can be found on our website https://www.bi.team/.

Road safety: https://www.bi.team/blogs/dangerous-left-turns-slow-by-17-in-traffic-study-leveraging-behavioral-science/

Synthetic data: https://www.bi.team/blogs/accelerating-public-policy-research-with-easier-safer-synthetic-data/

Peacebuilding: https://www.bi.team/blogs/can-mass-media-reduce-violent-conflict/

Online fraud: https://www.modernisation.gouv.fr/publications/comment-mieux-proteger-le-consommateur-des-fraudes-lachat-en-ligne-la-ditp-mobilise

In the second of a two-part climate change special, BIT’s Head of Energy & Sustainability, Toby Park, sits down with Cambridge University’s Professor Theresa Marteau, Moira Nicolson from the Cabinet Office and Valentine Quinio from the Centre for Cities to unpick three of the biggest areas we need to decarbonise to reach Net Zero by 2050: Food, Transport and Energy.

We know we cannot achieve Net Zero without behaviour change - the question is, how we can make it happen and devise effective solutions to decarbonise the way we produce and eat food, the way we travel and the way we heat and power our homes.

Our guests discuss the barriers that prevent us from eating more sustainably, uptaking public transport and electric vehicles and switching to green energy suppliers; and the potential levers we can use to change the behaviours of individuals, corporations and governments.

In the first of a two-part climate change special, BIT’s Lis Costa sits down with Nobel Prize Winner Professor Richard Thaler, Cambridge University’s Lucia A. Reisch and, BIT's former CEO and now President Emeritus, Professor David Halpern to answer one big question ahead of the COP26 UN Climate Change Conference: Can we Nudge to Net Zero?

According to the Paris Agreement’s: Sixth Carbon Budget, in order to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050, a 63% reduction in future emissions is required over the next decade or so. This is no mean feat! Such reductions will require substantial changes to our behaviour including the adoption of new technologies such as eco-friendly heating systems, and the reduction of our reliance on high carbon-footprint transportation systems such as flights and diesel cars.

Our guests discuss how this behaviour change can be achieved; the psychological biases and barriers that stand in our way; and the role that corporations and government must play to make climate-friendly behaviours tenable.

So, can we Nudge to Net Zero? Listen to find out!

On Christmas Eve December 2020, the World Health Organisation named Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) and health inequities as 2 of the 10 global health threats to track in 2021. In 2019, we worked with the Health Quality and Safety Commission (HQSC) and PHARMAC to see how we can tackle both in Aotearoa New Zealand. The results of this work have just been published in the New Zealand Medical Journal, so we wanted to dedicate this episode to it.

Peer-reviewed articles allow us to present the rigorous work that goes into running a Behavioural Insights (BI) project. However, journal articles often remove the work from its broader context and leave little space for describing the tribulations that go into running BI trials. In this episode, we cover the story of how the trial developed, and how it built on our earlier work in the UK and the work done by the Behavioural Economics Research Team in the Australian Department of Health (BERT) and the Behavioural Economics Team of the Australian government (BETA).

We discuss how health inequities in Aotearoa New Zealand meant that we couldn’t just copy the letters used in the UK and Australia, and take a quick detour into the replication crisis. You’ll hear from Michael Hallsworth, who led the work in the UK, Janice Wilson, the CEO of the HQSC, Rawiri Jansen, a GP and member of the project's working group, and Nathan Chapell, who developed the letters we used in the project.

Further reading

If you would like to read more about health inequities in New Zealand, you can read the paper mentioned by Rawiri Jansen here, as well as its follow up here. You can also read about the follow up to the UK study here, and the follow up to the Australian study here.

If you are interested in learning more about the replication crisis, we would recommend this article. And if you would like to learn more about issues related to generalising studies from one area to another, we recommend you read this. Chapter 5 of Behavioral Insights, which was co authored by Michael Hallsworth (along with Elspeth Kirkman) also gives an overview of the issues discussed.

Credits

Thanks to the large team of people who were involved in the project, especially Janice Wilson, Catherine Gerard, Richard Hamblin, Carl Shuker, Janet Mackay, Rawiri McKree Jansen, Richard Medlicott, Aniva Lawrence, Sally Roberts, Jan White and Leanne Te Karu.