1. How does influence work?

2. The forces that shape behaviour

You will understand why people do the things they do and what prevents them from changing their behaviour.

The SUE | Influence Framework© has three parts, with a total of seven elements. We will delve into these three parts below.

1. Part 1: Current and Desired Behaviour 
2. Part 2: The Job-to-be-Done
3. Part 3: Pains, Gains, Comforts and Anxieties

3. Current and Desired Behaviour 

The best way to think of behavioural change is that you need to have someone (or yourself) switch from a current to desired behaviour. This sounds obvious but is actually quite challenging. Because people need to stop doing the things they do and start doing something new. Stopping is hard because your current behaviour is full of comforts. You don’t need to think about it, and your behaviour is more than often driven by habits that are difficult to control. 

Furthermore, there are several difficulties associated with new behaviour too: Am I able to do this? Do I want it? Do I trust it? Do I get it? Can I afford it? What will others think of me? 

You immediately sense that, if you want to get someone from A to B, you will have to deal with several forces at work that lock us in our current behaviour and prevent us from switching to the desired behaviour. The SUE | Influence Framework© is nothing more or less than a tool to uncover these forces.  

4. The Job-to-be-Done

If you want to understand why people do the things they do, then the Job-to-be-done framework by Clayton Christensen is essential. In a famous Harvard Business Review paper, Christensen argues that people “hire products and services” for a job that arises in their life. Understanding the “job” or “task” is the key to understanding what motivate people to do the things they do. If you want to know how to get more people to buy milkshakes in a fast-food restaurant, you need to understand the job-to-be-done for which people would come in and “hire” a milkshake. In the famous lecture below, Christensen argues that most people who buy milkshakes at a fast-food restaurant buy them because they have a long and tedious drive to work. They want something to fill their stomach while keeping the commute interesting. The milkshake does this job better than any other product. It keeps you busy for at least 10 minutes, it doesn’t crumble all over you, and you can easily keep it in your hand while steering the car. 

Job-to-be-Done thinking unlocks a deeper understanding of the human behind the customer.

A while ago, we discovered in a Behavioural Design Sprint we did for a health tech company that the real Job-to-be-done for people with diabetes is to live everyday life. They want to be reminded as little as possible by their disease. People with diabetes look at every product and service through the prism of this Job-to-be-done. The unconscious question they ask themselves is: Does this product help me to approach my Job-to-be-Done to live a care-free life in which I am bothered as little as possible by my disease? This insight was crucial because, until that point, our client always communicated to people as patients.

Case: Zoku Amsterdam

The founders of Zoku Amsterdam had given themselves more than two years to figure out how they could design the ultimate hospitality experience for people who needed to stay longer in a city because of their job.

The Job-to-be-done that Zoku took as the critical opportunity for their prototyping is that people want to feel at home. They want to feel part of the community of the city. And this experience is precisely what most hotels don’t offer you. Every hotel reminds you in everything of the fact that you’re just a passenger. Zoku designed the room with this Job-to-be-done in mind. The centrepiece of the room is a dining/working table, not the bed. Lunch and dinner at Zoku are to be consumed at a long communal table. You can invite your customers for meetings, and they have daily activities in which you can participate. More about Job-to-be-Done:

• Clayton Christensen: The Milkshake example
• Clayton Christensen HBR paper on the Job-to-be-done Framework
• Zoku gave a brilliant talk at our Behavioural Design Fest 2018 event (Video in Dutch)

5. The forces diagram

We already argued above that the biggest challenge with designing for behavioural change is that people need to stop doing things. Furthermore, they have all kinds of insecurities and discomfort about the new behaviour we want them to perform. We have also argued that the best way to motivate them to embrace new behaviour is to connect with their deeper goals in their life (called Jobs-to-be-done). 

The third and final component of the SUE | Influence Framework© is four dynamic forces that push people towards or pull people away from the desired behaviour. The Influence Framework works with these four forces: 

1. Pains of the current behaviour
2. Gains of the desired behaviour
3. Anxieties, doubts, and other barriers to the desired behaviour 
4. Comforts of the current behaviour
   

Force 1: Pains

Pains are what people experience as shortcomings and frustrations related to their current behaviour.

Pains are often the problems to which a behavioural designer designs a solution. Pain and frustration trigger a propensity or willingness for change. The better you can connect with people’s pain, the higher the eagerness to change their behaviour.

In our behavioural design sprints, we often discover that they reward you with their trust if you can articulate people’s pain quite well. They appreciate that you understand their world. Every populist in the world knows that people are not interested in what you want to do. They want to feel instead that you get their pain. It’s a meme in every sales training that the best salesmen sell pain.

Force 2: Gains 

Gains are the positive consequences that people will experience when they perform the new desired behaviour.

Whenever I stay at Zoku, I can at least work in my room if I want. I can eat healthy without having to go out. I can enjoy hanging around in the big co-working living room with my laptop. I can impress my clients with the view, etcetera. These are all gains you will experience if you book at Zoku. 

However, these gains only make sense relative to the Job-to-be-Done. You appreciate the Gain of the design of your room, the shared breakfast table, the healthy food kitchen and the co-working living room because they all contribute to the Job-to-be-done of feeling at home in the city you have to stay in for work. 

Important to remember: Always connect the Pains and Gains with the Job -to-be-done

Case: Pains and Gains and travelling by train 

I often need to travel between Amsterdam and Belgium. I have stopped taking the car, and I only go by train these days. My Job-to-be-done is to spend my time as purposeful as possible. The Pain of driving my car is obvious: I can’t answer e-mails, write blogs, or finish reports. I’m utterly exhausted after a six-hour drive, of which I regularly spend two hours in traffic jams (Belgium is a traffic jam inferno). The Gain of travelling by train is also apparent: Travel time equals working time. I can read, write, or answer e-mails. For travellers like me, a power socket and a little table for my laptop are worth a lot.

Force 3: Comforts

Comforts are the routines and habits that get people to stick to their current undesired behaviour.

It’s not that I wouldn’t like to work out more often. And if I’m honest with myself, I do have the time to go to the gym in the morning. My only problem is that I have too many bad habits that stand in the way: I want to wake up slowly. I need to have breakfast. I need to bring my toddler to school (and she adores not cooperating). By the time I dropped her at school, my window of opportunity to go to the gym is closed. It’s already late, my stomach is full, and my mind is already at work. 

You could argue that everything is in place for me to start working out. I desire to have more energy and lose a couple of kilos (my JTBD). I feel the pain of not being fit. I know how much I enjoy the feeling of being healthy (gain), and I only have to walk 200 meters to my gym, so I can’t blame it on an inability to get there. As the co-founder of SUE, I’m pretty free to decide how I run my schedule (no anxieties). I can’t break through my comforts/ habits. What works for me is that my gym organises a 10-minute abs workout every hour. If I can make it in time to join this 10-minute class, I will probably stay a bit longer.

Force 4: Anxieties 

Anxieties are fears, doubts, prejudices and other barriers to the desired behaviour.

Anxieties could be all the things that prevent you from changing behaviour Anxieties could be related to: 

• The desired behaviour: Too complicated, too hard, too socially uncomfortable, etc. 
• The supplier: can I trust this supplier? 
• My own capability: I’m not sure if I can do this or if it matches with my self-image. 
• My environment: I don’t know what my significant others will think of this behaviour

Taking away Anxieties are often underestimated in a strategy for behavioural change. However, they form a crucial piece of the puzzle. Sometimes taking away anxiety is the last puzzle piece needed to turn an intervention into a success. Like in the Flixbus example I wrote about earlier: taking away my fears and prejudices towards coach travel and address the most critical force between me and the desired behaviour. 

Case: De Porsche Pitch

In The Perfect Pitch, a book by advertising legend Jon Steel about the art of pitching, the author shares the story of a pitch his agency won for the Porsche account. The killer insight that got them to win the agency competition was that advertising doesn’t need to persuade Porsche drivers. It needs te to convince non-drivers that Porsche drivers are not cars for men with a middle-crisis. They called it the “asshole factor” of a Porsche driver. Taking away these anxieties and prejudices towards the Porsche driver became the most genius advertising strategy ever for the brand.

6. Working with the SUE | Influence Framework©

 The Influence Framework helps you to build empathy for your target audience. Our Behavioural Design Sprints always kick off with five or six interviews. If you interview five or six people from the target audience, you will be able to fill in your Influence Framework©. For a proper Behavioural Design interview, there’s only one simple rule of thumb:   

Past behaviour never lies

When we conduct interviews, we always try to map human journeys. What we’re looking for is how real humans think, feel and behave. How does a successful journey look like? What about a failed journey? Why did people fail? What made them feel uncertain or uncomfortable? Why didn’t they do the things they wanted to do?  

In 5 or 6 interviews, you’ll get a clear idea about the Jobs-to-be-Done, the Pains and Comforts of their current behaviour and the Gains en Anxieties of the desired behaviour. It can also be gratifying to interview extreme users. Experienced people can tell you a lot about Jobs-to-be-Dones and gains. People who are struggling can teach you a lot about pains, comforts and anxieties. When you have mapped out these forces, you can spot opportunities for behavioural change by asking yourself these five questions: 

• How might we help people to achieve their goals? (Jobs-to-be-Done)
• Can we come up with solutions that solve pains or frustrations that people experience (Pain) 
• Can we break into an existing habit? Or do we need to change a problematic habit? (Comfort)
• Which anxieties, doubts, prejudices, and other barriers do we need to take away? (Anxiety)
• What could be the psychological value that we can create for people (Gain)

More about this topic: 

• Blog about extreme users in research
• Blog on psychological value 

7. Examples

• The best way to think about the success of Uber and Lyft – aside from a nearly unlimited supply of cheap investor capital – is that they successfully eliminated all the pain from the taxi experience. Not knowing when your car is going to arrive, not being confident about whether the cabbie will rip you off or having to negotiate about the price. They brilliantly help you to achieve your job-to-be-done to experience the city. An Uber-Gain is that you never have to worry when you go out: You order an Uber when you leave the club, and within 5 minutes, you’re back on your way home.
• Airbnb is a much more gratifying way to experience new places. This is the ultimate traveller Job-to-be-done. The pain that is associated with hotels is that they’re anonymous. They make you feel like an outsider-tourist. The Gain of AirBnB on an emotional level is that you can feel at home abroad. This feeling gets even strengthened on a functional level: Since you do your cooking and supermarket shopping, you can feel what it is to live like a local. There are some anxieties Airbnb needs to take away, like whether the place is as good as advertised (that’s why they always demand professional pictures). A relatively new anxiety is the worry that the neighbourhood might be sick and tired of Airbnb tourists.

7. The ethics of Behavioural Design

We have argued above that a successful behavioural design strategy consists of three ingredients:

1. A deeper understanding of human decision-making.
   
2. Understanding the forces that shape behaviour.
   
3. Using principles from the science of influence to come up with ideas and interventions for positive behavioural change.

The SUE | Influence Framework© is a powerful mental model for understanding why people do what they do and what prevents them from changing their behaviour. It is also the best guarantee that a strategy for behavioural change will be human-centered.

Behavioural Designers always ask themselves what they can do to help people become more successful at what they do or help them overcome their anxieties or help them break bad habits.

Suppose you take your time to build empathy with your target audience, and you use the Influence Framework to analyse their behaviour. In that case, you will always spot opportunities to design positive choices. 

PS: The mission of SUE is to unlock the potential of behavioural science to help people make better decisions in work, life and play. We use this mission as our guiding principle for everything we do. We’re very conscious that behavioural design can be a ‘dark wisdom’ and that those who master it are often the ones with the worst intentions. We don’t want to be naive that people will abuse this knowledge to manipulate people. Still, we firmly believe that the world would be much better off if we can inspire more people with a better understanding of how influence works and do positive things with this knowledge. Please check out our Behavioural Design Ethics Toolkit here.

How to design behaviour: Moments that Matter

How to design behaviour: SWAC

The objective of most intervention strategies is not only to change behaviour but to change this new behaviour into a routine behaviour (a habit), so the new behaviour will stick.

Remember, your desired behaviour is new behaviour for people and that’s why it is important to spark behaviour AGAIN and again. Only then the behaviour will take place, as illustrated above as the BEHAVIOURAL CHANGE THRESHOLD. When your objective is to design repeat behaviour, it almost goes without saying that you have to make sure the desired behaviour is performed repeatedly. If you can make someone perform new behaviour over and over AGAIN, it can become automatic.

The result being that someone doesn’t have to think about the new behaviour anymore, he or she simply does it. This way it can become habitual. Illustrated above model as the HABIT THRESHOLD. As Aristotle already stated:

We are what we repeatedly do.

He added ‘Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit’. To sum it up: The more often you do something, the easier it gets. So, there you have it: the four elements you need to change behaviour.

Aristotle quote, ancient Greek philosopher, scientist and physician, 384 BC-322 BC, no original source known.

How to design behaviour: Capability

Before we start working with the tool, let’s go back one little bit.  As Behavioural Designers our outset is to design for someone’s system 1.

Our job is to help people make better decisions without them having to think.

This is the foundation of this model. When you look at willingness (WANT) and capability (CAN) there is something very interesting and important going on. We are all so used (and trained) to have the best arguments, deals, offers, rewards or promises to convince someone (or ourselves). Historically, we are all shaped around motivation (WANT). If we need to sell something, we are hardwired to try to create willingness to buy. If a personal resolution fails, our first (conditioned) conclusion is that we must not have wanted it badly enough to keep up the self-discipline.

What if I tell you that making sure someone wants something often isn’t the most powerful starting point to change behaviour? Making someone WANTs to perform the desired behaviour is just one side of the medal in getting things done. In fact, it even isn’t the shiniest side of the medal. Here’s why. There is something particular going on with people’s willingness to change; It goes up and down. When relating this to our fundamental know-how on human decision-making this makes perfect sense, as:

Willingness to change requires cognitive action.

It is a system 2 activity like self-control and focus. You cognitively decide you want something. You decide this consciously. I want to lose weight, I want to save money, I want to recycle, I want to spend more time with my kids. We have learned that our system 2 has only limited bandwidth. Therefore, your willingness to change falters, it goes up and down in waves. This is the reason why most new year’s resolutions fail. On January 1^st you WANT to lose weight, or you WANT to stop drinking or you WANT to go to the gym. And then comes along your best friend’s birthday. Or you’ve pulled a whole-nighter because that precious offspring of yours refused to sleep. And now you don’t WANT to exercise and not drink anymore. You want to vegetate on the couch (sleep deprivation isn’t a walk in the park) or have a blast (hey your friend only turns 40 once). You feel so deserving (your system 2 post-rationalisation working full speed for you) and so you will start next month. You simply CANnot do it today. Your willingness to change behaviour has dropped like a mic on an empty stage. This is perfectly human, but something we have to take into account when designing for behaviour change. Chaos Monkey Galore!

Luckily, as Behavioural Designer, you have an ace up your sleeve by making behaviour very simple. Our brain LOVES simple. Bonus is that when things are simple, we are able to do things without needing that much willingness. That’s why we always start with thinking about possible CAN interventions. This is designing for system 1. The best behavioural change ideas are in their core capability ideas.

Making something very easy to do is something that requires little or no cognitive action from someone.

Let me illustrate how this can work with a real-life example. Most people WANT to save money, but many of find it hard to do (CAN). You could design saving behaviour without having to really stress the willingness to save too much but by focusing on making saving behaviour easier instead. This is exactly what Bank of America did. Their human insight was that people wanted to save money, but never did especially making regular contributions was very hard. They have introduced a program called ‘Keep the Change’. What it boils down to is that every time a client pays with his or her debit card for daily purchases like buying coffee, going to the dry cleaners and so on, they round up their purchase to the nearest dollar amount and transfer the change from someone’s checking account to their savings account — or to their child’s savings account.

From a JTBD point of view, I find the last brilliant by the way: a lot of parents want to save money to for their children to have a little money in the bank once they go to college or need some extra funds otherwise. So, let’s say you have to pay something of $ 4,60 then $ 0,40 is automatically transferred. You don’t have to think about it, it just has been made very simple for you. The result of this behavioural design intervention has been very impactful. Ever since the program launched in September of 2005, more than 12.3 million customers have enrolled, saving a total of more than 2 billion dollars. Of all new customers, 60% enrol in the program and Bank of America reported that 99% of the people who signed-up with the program have stayed with it.

Designing behaviour: Willingness

Astrid Groenewegen

Happy 1,5 Minutes on Influence!

Here is an overview of our weekly 1,5 Minutes on Influence newsletter. Every Thursday, we share 1,5 minutes of insights to explore compelling questions and uncover strategies to positively impact decision-making by applying Behavioural Design.

Astrid

1,5 Minutes on Influence:Negotiation and Happiness

1,5 Minutes on Influence:Motivation and Live to a 100

1.5 Minutes on Influence: Curiosity and Coffee

1,5 Minutes on Influence: Kahneman and Achieving Your Goals

1,5 Minutes on Influence: Negotiation and Getting What You Want

1,5 Minutes on Influence: Forget Benefits and Knowing Which Books to Read

1.5 Minutes on Influence: Fighting Unproductive Meetings and the Kahneman Spiral Effect

1,5 Minutes on Influence: Boosting Your Professional Impact and Getting Kids to Eat Veggies

1,5 Minutes on Influence: The Effect of Heat on Behaviour and Why Skills Are Sometimes Overrated

1,5 Minutes on Influence: How to Design Sticky Behaviour and Rethinking Value

Further learning:

More about identifying and removing obstacles to change in my book ‘The Art of Designing Behaviour’ or ‘De Kunst van Gedrag Ontwerpen‘.

Are you interested in mastering the skill of pinpointing psychological barriers to change and selecting the right interventions to effectively overcome them? Join our two-day Behavioural Design Fundamentals Course and we will teach you (Dutch and English editions).

Thanks for reading. You can get more actionable ideas in our popular email newsletter ‘1,5 Minutes on Influence’. Every Thursday, we share 1,5 minutes of insights to explore compelling questions and uncover strategies to positively impact decision-making by applying Behavioural Design. Enter your email and join over 15.000 other forward-thinking professionals.

Happy 1,5 Minutes on Influence!

Here is your weekly dose of applying the psychology of influence
to positively impact choices and behaviours.

Looking forward to sharing insights with you!

Warm regards,

Astrid

1 MINUTE:
INSIGHT OF THE WEEK

I don’t know about you, but now that the summer holidays are around the corner, I become very aware of my physique. That’s why this week, I want to introduce you to the so-called Swimmer’s Body Illusion. And it might surprise you: it’s not just about looking lean and fit when you parade down the beach. It has everything to do with shaping choice and influencing behaviour.

The Swimmer’s Body Illusion is a nugget of wisdom from Nassim Taleb, author of The Black Swan. Once, he decided to shed the extra weight he had gained. He had always admired the physiques of swimmers, with their well-built and streamlined bodies. So, he thought it was simple: he would take up swimming.

However, he soon realized he had fallen for a misconception. Professional swimmers don’t have perfect physiques because they train extensively; rather, they are good swimmers because of their physiques. The appealing look of their bodies is a selection factor, not a result of their training.

So, how is this relevant when you are trying to influence choice and behaviour?

Well, as professionals, we often focus on results. Can we get clients to join us? Can we get people to act more sustainably? Can we get someone to take preventive care of their health? And so on. The challenge with many desired outcomes is that they lie in the distant future. As a result, we often try to influence future-oriented decisions. However, we frequently overlook the selection factors that influence these decisions.

Present bias is one of these factors—it’s the tendency to prioritise short-term gains over long-term success. But it’s not the only one. Other examples of factors are social norms, perceived risk, emotional triggers, ease of access, personal values and beliefs, or perceived control.

People tend to make choices based on immediate influences. That’s why our efforts in trying to convince people to do something for their future benefit often fail.

So, what can you do?

Instead of trying to convince someone of something that will benefit them in the future, focus on the underlying selection factors. Or, as we Behavioural Designers put it:

Create a context that naturally aligns with long-term benefits and helps people make better choices effortlessly right here and now.

For example, by designing default options that favour long-term well-being, leveraging social proof, ensuring convenient access to healthy choices, or addressing emotional triggers.

To conclude, next time you’re working on a behavioural intervention, remember Taleb’s Swimmer’s Body Illusion. Focus on the selection factors – the conditions and contexts that shape our choices and behaviours – rather than just the results. This shift can lead to more effective and sustainable behavioural change.

Until next time! Keep thinking about the factors and enjoy catching some of that vitamin D.

PS. And the next time you feel intimidated by an overly athletic swimmer, remember that they were probably born with that physique—no amount of training we could have done would have achieved it. What a relief!

Are you a forward-thinker?

We have translated the most groundbreaking insights from the psychology of influence into practical methods and tools. We teach these in our two-day Behavioural Design Fundamentals Course. You can download the brochure here NL and UK. The training is available in both Dutch and English, and can be tailored for teams. But it is especially suited for forward-thinkers.

0,5 MINUTE:
NOT TO BE MISSED THIS WEEK

The Importance of Importance

This week, I want to end with a powerful quote with you by business woman Mary Kay Ash, who at her death had a fortune of 98 million dollars:

“It’s so simple, yet makes such a difference. Pretend that every single person you meet has a sign around his or her neck that says, ‘Make me feel important.‘”

Imagine the impact this could have on your interactions. Whether you’re talking to clients, colleagues, or friends, this mindset can transform your relationships. Acknowledging and valuing others makes them feel important and appreciated, which can lead to more meaningful connections and positive outcomes.

Give it a try this week—see how making others feel important can make a big difference in your professional and personal life.

Until next week,
Astrid Groenewegen

Thanks for reading. You can get more actionable ideas in our popular email newsletter ‘1,5 Minutes on Influence’. Every Thursday, we share 1,5 minutes of insights to explore compelling questions and uncover strategies to positively impact decision-making by applying Behavioural Design. Enter your email and join over 15.000 other forward-thinking professionals.

Happy 1,5 Minutes on Influence!

Here is your weekly dose of applying the psychology of influence
to positively impact choices and behaviours.

Looking forward to sharing insights with you!

Warm regards,

Astrid

1 MINUTE:
INSIGHT OF THE WEEK

Although I’m not a football fan myself, there’s no denying that the European Championships have started. Here in The Netherlands, everything turns bright orange (the colour of the royal family) and football fans are in full-on supporter mode.

Listening to some of these fans, I heard them say things like, “We just weren’t lucky” or “Luck wasn’t on our side tonight.”

This triggered an interesting insight about luck and chance that I’d like to share with you this week.

How does luck affect our decision-making, and is there a way to end a string of bad luck?

After all, besides football, in all aspects of our lives, we sometimes need the luck scale to tip in our favour.

When examining luck, we quickly see a human tendency: we are ultimate harmony seekers. We want good things to happen to good people and vice versa. To make sense of our world, we want things to be fair and honest. This creates a common belief that fortunes will eventually change or that a streak of bad luck will come to an end.

This also skews our decision-making: enter the gambler’s fallacy.

This fallacy was named from research in a Reno casino. Researchers found that gamblers who watched one spin of the wheel evenly divided their bets between red and black. However, as the wheel landed on red (or black) in consecutive spins, the betting changed significantly.

After five consecutive reds, 65 per cent of the bets were placed on black, and after six consecutive reds, 85 per cent of the bets were on black. Though the sixth spin of a roulette wheel is not influenced by the previous five spins, gamblers still placed their bets as if it was.

Just like a roulette ball doesn’t favour a colour, luck doesn’t favour a person. Bad luck is as random as a roulette ball. Sometimes bad things happen to good people, and good things to bad people.

At the same time, behavioural science suggests that luck plays a more significant role in success than we often acknowledge. So, is there something you can do to maximise your luck? Fortunately, there is!

Recent research suggests that luck is not just about preparation but even more about perseverance.

You need to put yourself in as many situations as possible to increase your chances of getting lucky, thereby accepting or even embracing the randomness of life. By continuously putting yourself out there, learning from each experience, and never giving up, you create a greater statistical chance for luck to find you.

I wish you lots of good luck, and if luck reaches you, you now know how random it is, and you can feel extra lucky.

Are you a forward-thinker?

We have translated the most groundbreaking insights from the psychology of influence into practical methods and tools. We teach these in our two-day Behavioural Design Fundamentals Course. You can download the brochure here NL and UK. The training is available in both Dutch and English, and can be tailored for teams. But it is especially suited for forward-thinkers.

0,5 MINUTE:
NOT TO BE MISSED THIS WEEK

The Proximity Principle

At SUE, we have a vibrant community of alumni who have completed our training programs. We regularly share examples, questions, and lessons learned. Just yesterday, a discussion started about an insurance company and some brands providing free sunscreen at places where it’s needed, like the beach, festivals, and recreational areas.

This is a fantastic example of making it easier for people to adopt the desired behaviour. If you want to change someone’s behaviour, a CAN intervention (making sure people can actually engage in the desired behaviour) is very effective.

CAN interventions align with how our brains work: we’re always looking to minimize cognitive effort. Making things easy does just that.

In this case, it’s the CAN intervention of Proximity: Can we bring the desired behaviour closer to people? Judging by the responses in the discussion, it works. People mentioned using the free sunscreen at various locations.

It highlights another point I often make: people usually want to do the right thing but simply forget.

We want to protect ourselves from sunburn, but we often forget to bring sunscreen. By providing it at this Moment That Matters, sunscreen producers and insurance companies add value for both people and brands.

Until next week,
Astrid Groenewegen

Thanks for reading. You can get more actionable ideas in our popular email newsletter ‘1,5 Minutes on Influence’. Every Thursday, we share 1,5 minutes of insights to explore compelling questions and uncover strategies to positively impact decision-making by applying Behavioural Design. Enter your email and join over 15.000 other forward-thinking professionals.

Happy 1,5 Minutes on Influence!

Here is your weekly dose of applying the psychology of influence
to positively impact choices and behaviours.

Looking forward to sharing insights with you!

Warm regards,

Astrid

1 MINUTE:
INSIGHT OF THE WEEK

For a few years now, I’ve been fascinated by the idea that behavioural psychology might hold the key to something most of us crave: more happiness.

Although, I have to admit I recently came across a rather disheartening quote: “Trying to be happier is as futile as trying to be taller.”

But I chose to ignore that and dig a bit deeper into what science has to say on the matter. I found some interesting insights that I’d like to share with you today.

After doing my research, I actually think the quote is partly right, but it’s because of the word “be.” You can’t just suddenly “be” happy. It’s like when you’re about to give an important presentation, feeling terribly nervous, and someone tells you, “Just don’t be nervous.” If only life were that simple!

So, are we lost in our endless search for happiness? Because let’s face it, we are looking for it. I typed “happiness” into the book section of Amazon.com and found over 60,000 self-help books on the topic.

The answer is no, we’re not lost. We just have to do more than read a book and wish for happiness.

We need to engage in behaviours that boost our baseline happiness. To understand which behaviours might help, I found some valuable research.

A quick disclaimer: I don’t claim to have all the answers on how to increase your happiness. There’s no one-size-fits-all-in-every-situation solution. But I do believe in experimenting with what research suggests to see what works for me (or not).

One behaviour I’ve been practising lately that has really boosted my mood is savouring.

What is savouring?

In behavioural psychology, savouring means intentionally making good experiences last longer and feel more intense. It involves paying close attention to and enjoying the present moment or a happy memory to fully feel joy, contentment, or satisfaction.

To make it practical, try to really savour an experience, memory, or something you’re seeing or hearing every day. For instance, I like to closely examine all the details in architecture or something in nature. Spend some time on it, at least five minutes. Let it really sink in. Try doing this for a week or two and see how it affects your mood.

Give it a go, and you might find that it makes a difference in how you feel.

Are you a forward-thinker?

We have translated the most groundbreaking insights from the psychology of influence into practical methods and tools. We teach these in our two-day Behavioural Design Fundamentals Course. You can download the brochure here NL and UK. The training is available in both Dutch and English, and can be tailored for teams. But it is especially suited for forward-thinkers.

0,5 MINUTE:
NOT TO BE MISSED THIS WEEK

If The Price Is Right..

In this week’s 0.5 minute, I want to talk about pricing. As you can imagine, pricing can be a powerful driver for sustainable growth without needing to change your product or service.

The key insight for optimising your pricing is understanding your customers’ willingness to pay. There are many ways to conduct a pricing study, but I came across the Van Westendorp method, which I love for its simplicity. It involves asking your potential customers four questions:

1. At what price would you start to question this product’s quality because it’s too low?
2. At what price does this product seem like a bargain?
3. At what price does this product feel expensive but not too expensive?
4. At what price is this product too expensive?

One criticism of this method is that it suffers from hypothetical bias. This means people might say they’ll do something in a survey, but in real life, they might not actually do it. Simply put, when you ask these questions, potential buyers don’t have anything at stake—they don’t actually have to spend money on your product.

However, considering that over 50% of companies have never even done one pricing study, this represents a significant growth opportunity that many are missing out on. And as you know: In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

Until next week,
Astrid Groenewegen

Thanks for reading. You can get more actionable ideas in our popular email newsletter ‘1,5 Minutes on Influence’. Every Thursday, we share 1,5 minutes of insights to explore compelling questions and uncover strategies to positively impact decision-making by applying Behavioural Design. Enter your email and join over 15.000 other forward-thinking professionals.

Happy 1,5 Minutes on Influence!

Here is your weekly dose of applying the psychology of influence
to positively impact choices and behaviours.

Looking forward to sharing insights with you!

Warm regards,

Astrid

1 MINUTE:
INSIGHT OF THE WEEK

This week, I’m working on creating the SUE Behavioural Design Academy’s self-paced courses (news flash!). However, as you might know or have experienced yourself, many online courses are started but not finished, or they’re completed but not applied. It’s a matter of professional pride for me to ensure they are infused with Behavioural Design to prevent this.

One of the main reasons we start things and don’t finish them is procrastination. Procrastination doesn’t just happen when taking a course; it pops up in all behaviours that require action and dedication. I thought it might be useful to share some insights from behavioural science to help you beat procrastination.

I remember my uncle had a little sign on his wall saying, ‘Why do today what you can put off until tomorrow‘. As a child, this baffled me. But as an adult, I sometimes couldn’t agree more. This is what procrastination is all about — our human tendency to delay taking action.

Before I offer some practical tips, let me start by saying that putting things off is a well-known and common human tendency.

One explanation in behavioural science is called present bias, which means we prefer immediate rewards over future benefits. So, going out with friends right now seems more appealing than flaunting a course certificate in a few weeks, or saving for your pension, losing weight, investing in sustainability, etc.

Another reason is that we simply forget. It sounds trivial, but it’s true. So, if you want to design behaviour, you need to take humans as your starting point — humans who have work, a private life, and probably many to-dos already. And because of that, humans need help staying on track.

So, what tips does the psychology of influence offer to beat procrastination?

1.     Create a Commitment Device
If you commit to something in writing or publicly, you’re much more likely to follow through. Your brain loves consistency, and if you commit, it feels logical to continue. This helps resist temptation.

A Behavioural Intervention: Tell someone what you plan to achieve, and make the behaviour you commit to very specific. Even better, have that same person hold you accountable. If you don’t have that special person, just write down your commitment for yourself.

2.     Set Deadlines
As common as they may seem, deadlines work primarily because they create a sense of urgency. They also help us plan and organise our time better by providing clear landmarks. Did you know that we often underestimate the time required to complete tasks? Deadlines force us to plan more realistically and allocate sufficient time to meet our goals.

A Behavioural Intervention: Set weekly deadlines for yourself. Even better, put something at stake if you don’t meet your deadline. We dislike losing a lot and go to lengths to avoid it (loss aversion), which again helps you commit to the behaviour.

3.    Activate Reminders
When I was writing my book ‘The Art of Designing Behaviour,’ I hoped to find a behavioural intervention that was both extremely powerful and somewhat undiscovered, like discovering a new species of bird deep in the Amazon. I didn’t find an exotic new intervention, but I did discover something well-known yet incredibly powerful: the reminder! Often, we want to do something but simply forget. Life happens.

A Behavioural Intervention: It helps to put weekly reminders in your schedule to perform the behaviour you committed to. In fact, do it now. There’s no time like the present.

I hope this has been helpful. Please let me know if you’d like more insights and tips on how to complete what you start. Based on your feedback, I’ll cover these topics in one of my upcoming newsletters.

Are you a forward-thinker?

We have translated the most groundbreaking insights from the psychology of influence into practical methods and tools. We teach these in our two-day Behavioural Design Fundamentals Course. You can download the brochure here NL and UK. The training is available in both Dutch and English, and can be tailored for teams. But it is especially suited for forward-thinkers.

Want to read my book in Dutch? It is called ‘De Kunst van Gedrag Ontwerpen’ and can be ordered here.

0,5 MINUTE:
NOT TO BE MISSED THIS WEEK

My Most Frequently Asked Question: Are You In The Manipulation Business?

Rightfully, many people ask me whether Behavioural Design is about positive influence or manipulation.

For me, it all comes down to the intent behind its use. If you’re using the power of behavioural science solely for your own benefit, then it’s manipulation. But if you use it to help people make better decisions that improve their private lives, work lives, or environments, then to me, that’s positive influence.

And here’s the thing—a small epiphany I had. I realized that many behaviours that are good for us are actually quite challenging. Saving money, eating healthily, filling in forms, arranging a mortgage, getting fit—all these tasks can be difficult to start and continue. So, when behaviour is easy, you often don’t need Behavioural Design. But it can be of great value when things are tough for people.

This has become an important criterion for me: assessing whether people need help making better decisions or engaging in positive behaviours. If not, there’s maybe no need to apply Behavioural Design. However, where there is a genuine need to start and support positive actions, that’s when Behavioural Design truly shows its worth.

At SUE, we place great importance on Behavioural Design Ethics. Sometimes, determining what is better or more positive isn’t as straightforward as we might wish. The key is to ask the right questions at the right time. That’s why we’ve developed a Behavioural Ethics Toolkit. It’s designed to help you evaluate at every stage of a project whether your interventions are having a positive impact and who benefits (or who is harmed from them). It’s not perfect yet, but we’ll keep optimising it as we reflect and learn. The toolkit is available for everyone to download free of charge. You can access it here.

Until next week,
Astrid Groenewegen

Thanks for reading. You can get more actionable ideas in our popular email newsletter ‘1,5 Minutes on Influence’. Every Thursday, we share 1,5 minutes of insights to explore compelling questions and uncover strategies to positively impact decision-making by applying Behavioural Design. Enter your email and join over 15.000 other forward-thinking professionals.

Happy 1,5 Minutes on Influence!

Here is your weekly dose of applying the psychology of influence
to positively impact choices and behaviours.

Looking forward to sharing insights with you!

Warm regards,

Astrid

1 MINUTE:
INSIGHT OF THE WEEK

0,5 MINUTE:
NOT TO BE MISSED THIS WEEK

Until next week,

Astrid Groenewegen

Thanks for reading. You can get more actionable ideas in our popular email newsletter ‘1,5 Minutes on Influence’. Every Thursday, we share 1,5 minutes of insights to explore compelling questions and uncover strategies to positively impact decision-making by applying Behavioural Design. Enter your email and join over 15.000 other forward-thinking professionals.