Pictures of a beneficiary with her savings box 

In many parts of the Global South, millions of individuals face the harsh realities of extreme poverty each day. They carry the heavy burden of not having enough resources to meet their needs, and this constant struggle takes a toll on their mental bandwidth. It makes it tougher to make important decisions and shape their futures. Promising evidence from several years of work, including by our Global Development team, shows that cash transfer programs can ease some of this cognitive burden. By providing recipients with cash, they create cognitive slack, helping to mitigate some of the pressures of chronic cognitive scarcity and enabling individuals to make choices that align with their own intentions and in the service of improving their own well-being and future. When cash transfer programs are thoughtfully designed with additional supports to tackle the behavioral constraints and biases that influence decision-making, their impact goes beyond alleviating some of the immediate effects of scarcity. This approach guides recipients in making the most effective use of the funds, increasing the likelihood of achieving positive long-term results.

In a recent randomized control trial (RCT) in Ghana, we were able to implement and test several behaviorally informed designs (in partnership with the World Bank Social Protection and Jobs team in Ghana and the Government of Ghana),within a productive inclusion program Complementary Livelihoods and Asset Support Scheme (CLASS), that provides cash transfers and additional support, such as training and mentorship, to households experiencing extreme poverty. In addition to the promising evidence from our quantitative analysis, we conducted qualitative research to uncover the experiences of cash transfer recipients, and gain deeper insights on the impact of our solutions. Our intervention included two main components: 

1. Tools such as a box for storing savings, and goal-setting and plan-making activities to help recipients save for productive investments
2. Business-planning tools, including a business growth activities tracker with a soft commitment component, to enable cash recipients to grow their businesses 

Our solutions had a positive and significant effect on recipient savings behaviors such as setting a clear savings goal, developing a plan to achieve it, and actually setting aside money to save, but the impact did not extend to improved business practices. 

What we were not able to ascertain from the RCT results was how and why the solutions worked in the way they did.

Beyond numbers: uncovering human stories through qualitative research

To understand both the how and why a bit more deeply, we also conducted qualitative interviews with a subset of cash transfer recipients. Through these interviews we sought participants’ perspectives and experiences with our solution designs to try to tease out any underlying factors that influenced their interactions with the designs and, ultimately, lead to mechanisms for effective behavior change.

By talking directly to recipients, we were able to uncover the reasons the savings component of our designs had such a significant impact: the savings box we provided helped keep the act of saving top-of-mind. This box was thoughtfully labeled with the specific productive goal chosen by the beneficiaries, creating a meaningful reminder of the exact purpose they were saving towards and providing a tangible connection to the concrete goal they were striving to achieve. Additionally, we designed stickers for recipients to place on their savings boxes whenever they contributed to their savings, helping them easily track their progress in saving toward their productive goal. 

As one recipient told us, “I used to sell and bring the money home, keep it in the house and send anybody to go and take money for every little expense but after the training, I realized that what I did was a big mistake because that money could have been saved to improve my business”.  Another recipient captured the essence of savings in just a few words, “they (trainers) showed us a picture and a man planted a maize and watering it. As it is watered, it grows and is the same way, when you save and set a goal, you will be able to achieve it”.

The recipients we interviewed also praised the box’s convenience. It not only offered them an easy-to-use tool for saving for the future but also convenient and immediate access to cash in case of an emergency, providing an otherwise elusive financial cushion. 

As one program participant put it, “I can save any time I get money and can also rely on it at any time”. The box also helped keep savings separate from daily expenses, as explained by another participant: “Anytime I got money, I would put it in my pocket and would be spending it anyhow, but after the ideas42 training and when you gave me the box, that is where I started saving.”

Overcoming challenges and expanding opportunities: the journey from savings to entrepreneurship

People facing chronic scarcity are often burdened by limited resources and the multitude of pressing concerns that demand their immediate attention. As a result, they may find it challenging to allocate mental energy towards exploring new avenues for increasing their earnings. Recognizing this, our intervention was designed to alleviate the impact of scarcity. We found that as program participants started building their savings and gaining financial flexibility, they experienced a positive shift. This newfound financial stability allowed them to envision better futures and explore more creative ways to enhance their earnings and achieve their goals. For instance, one recipient started a business to process groundnuts, and with the earnings, she was able to buy a mixing machine to produce bofrot, a type of Ghanaian donut made with the groundnut oil she produces. It was encouraging to see the positive impact that combining cash and behavioral components can have on those who experience chronic scarcity–by giving them tools they can use to leverage the temporary financial relief brought by the cash infusion and enabling them to set and act upon their own goals, ultimately leading them down the path to a brighter future of their own choosing. 

As for business plan specific interventions, which involved actionable steps to grow the business, such as identifying and connecting with new customers, staying connected with existing customers, improving their business activities by learning from other successful business owners, and so on, we discovered that many CLASS recipients were unable to apply these business principles in a timely manner. For example, some cash recipients shared with us that they could not apply these principles due to the unavailability of required raw materials in the local markets during the time of the endline survey, which prevented them from launching their business activities. However, when we interviewed some of the recipients a couple of months later, we found that they had managed to secure the necessary inputs to kickstart their businesses and had started implementing the business principles. 

For instance, one participant mentioned that she has “gained wisdom to do [her] business better”, as she has started saving to buy additional inputs for her shea butter business and is now able to buy twice the amount of raw materials. Additionally, she has been searching for new customers to expand her business and has started to sell her products in new communities which she had previously not tapped into. “This shows that my business is making progress”, she told us. These insights highlight the importance of the timely element in delivering behavioral interventions. Although our business plan specific interventions were simple and actionable, their potential impact could have been limited by the fact that the concepts taught did not always align with the time when the cash recipients were able to act on them.

Another program participant mentioned, “we were always depending on gifts and favors to survive. However, with the business knowledge and skills from the training and the grant from CLASS, I now make my own money to manage my life and family expenses from the little money I get from my business”. This insight demonstrated how the behavioral components of the intervention, combined with the cash, influenced how individuals see and shape their own lives, as they can now envision a whole new direction that leads them towards financial independence and stability. 

Similar to our other behavioral interventions designed to improve the impact of cash transfer programs in the Global South, our efforts to enhance CLASS using behavioral insights resulted in positive outcomes in Ghana. Through the conversations with recipients conducted as the core of our qualitative research, we were able to gain firsthand insight into the impact of these programs on lives–including fulfillment of aspirations and restoring a sense of agency to more people. Coupled with critical cash resources, thoughtful behavioral supports have the potential to make a meaningful difference in combating poverty and improving lives for so many around the world. 

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Charitable giving is rapidly evolving. Contributions from foundations and corporations have increased, while more and more dollars from individuals pass through donor-advised funds. Who is giving—and how much—continues to shift. And, in the wake of COVID, even what counts as giving is expanding.

Navigating these changes is critical for non-profits, funders, platforms, and others in the giving space. New research on donor behavior can spark innovations to increase proactive, strategic, and impactful giving. This can mean more funds for more charitable organizations to solve critical social problems around the world.

To support this work across philanthropy, we’re excited to share a resource to help those who work toward social good navigate these changes: an update to our literature review on the behavioral science of how donors give.

In this work, supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, we examine scholarly research on social norms, shared identity, incentives, framing, and more. Reflecting a parallel emphasis in the field, the literature review pays increased attention to insights on racial and gender equity within giving.

The full review includes many techniques that practitioners can explore to drive donor attention toward organizations that confront social inequities. Here is a selection of the novel studies we encountered:

• Changing how a charitable appeal is presented to match the recipient’s political beliefs can increase donations. This lab study shows that identifying the values of your audience, and tailoring your message to fit those values, can significantly change how that audience gives. Existing giving patterns are a reflection of fundraising language; tailoring that language can engage audiences who might seem uninterested in supporting organizations that advance racial and gender equity.
• Specifying the impact of a prospective donation may give people less of an “excuse” not to donate. People often feel guilty for not giving, and will often go out of their way to avoid being asked to give. Research has uncovered other strategies that people use to avoid feeling guilty for not donating. For instance, when people are uncertain about the impact that their donation would have, they use that ambiguity as an excuse not to donate. Making the impact of a donation clearer can reduce this “moral wiggle room” that people give themselves, and thus increase their willingness to give.
• Demonstrating that a non-profit is underfunded relative to its peers can increase giving to that organization. Past research on social norms suggests that people tend to act similarly to their peers, so we might expect people to be more likely to donate to non-profits that already receive the most support. However, research has found that, when asked to decide between an NGO that had received lots of funding from previous study participants and an NGO that had received fewer donations, people generally chose the less popular organization. One explanation for this phenomenon is that people value fairness when giving, and generally prefer to spread donations around, rather than concentrate them.

The studies above represent a small sample of the new and emerging research cataloged in our 2023 updated literature review. While this update is not an exhaustive summary of the available research, it highlights significant contributions and advancements in charitable giving that can be of use to others working in the space. We hope that this review will serve as a primer on the many potential applications of behavioral insights in the philanthropic space, as well as a starting point for future interventions that seek to increase charitable giving, and help donors give more intentionally and impactfully, and ultimately strengthen the problem-solving abilities of non-profits and other charitable organizations.

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Behavioral science has the power to catalyze progress across the sexual and reproductive health (SRH) sector. Over the last decade, our Global Health team has worked on more than 250 projects in over 30 low-and middle-income countries applying behavioral science to programs across the ecosystem. From reducing provider bias during contraceptive counseling to boosting male engagement around contraceptive use, the need for behavioral science to drive the sector forward is clear. 

Despite our successes, women’s opportunity to choose when and how they’d like to start or grow their families continues to be challenged worldwide. So, in order to effectively help women avoid unintended pregnancies, we must work smarter. To reflect on our work thus far and prepare for the future of family planning access, we spoke with key stakeholders across the ecosystem and together have started to build out five bold ideas for how behavioral science can advance sexual and reproductive health right now: 

1. Embrace complexity in cross-cutting themes. 

Global health has historically operated in silos, often divided by health areas. Yet many challenges have drivers that cut across areas, such as resiliency, community empowerment, and social accountability—themes which often underfunded because they are hard to measure. Behavioral scientists, however, can bring a unique lens to de-mystify these complex, cross-cutting themes by distilling vast literature and practical experience into actionable and measurable programmatic pathways tied to funder priorities. Data generated can clarify and refine these pathways and their impact on other outcomes. Behavioral insights can also be used to develop new programs as we gain more evidence. 

2. Tackle upstream behavioral changes in health systems.

Most behavior change work in sexual and reproductive health focuses on individual women and health workers, yet it’s often structural factors that inhibit contraceptive uptake. By using behavioral science to understand the decisions of people in power who ultimately shape the contraceptive options available to others, we can shape “upstream” actors’ behavior to ensure the priorities of local communities and advocates are met. 

3. Catalyze social movements and systemic change.

Transformative change in sexual and reproductive health requires effective advocacy to shift public opinion and political will. Yet many advocates haven’t accessed the full range of insights about human behavior to strengthen their work. Behavioral science can make a critical contribution to advocacy by bolstering the effectiveness of tactics advocates employ and accelerating the generation of actionable evidence on effective social movements.

4. Strengthen and scale norm-shifting programming.

Gender and social norms strongly shape women’s reproductive choices and effective programs to address them exist. Programs for which evidence is strongest are multi-level with significant resource demands, making it challenging for them to be sustainably scaled. Behavioral science principles can be used to identify relevant intermediate outcomes, and rapid experiments can highlight the most critical program aspects to shift outcomes and elucidate the most important pathways to change.

5. Optimize the self-care revolution.

As self-care options become more widespread, individual choice must remain the north star. Behavioral science provides us with insights about decision-making that allow us to introduce self-care options in a way that facilitates choice—allowing women to make choices in ways that align with their preferences and goals. Behavioral science can also inform new self-care product development that goes beyond contraceptive methods.

To learn more about these ideas, read our full letter to practitioners or contact our team at gh@ideas42.org.

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Stable employment and career opportunities are critical components of development, but many people living in developing countries still lack access to them. To combat this, countries institute labor programs to match job seekers with employers, but too often these programs fail to design for the context in which job seekers actually behave. As a result, these well-intentioned and essential programs may not be as impactful at alleviating unemployment as they could be. To reduce inequality of opportunity in the labor market, our Global Development team recently worked with Egypt’s Network for Employment Promotion (NEP) to help more youth find stable employment.

Youth unemployment is an urgent issue in Egypt. With one of the highest youth unemployment rates in the world, there is serious risk to sociopolitical and economic stability if the problem persists, and unemployed youth remain excluded from the benefits of having a stable income.

Despite Egypt’s high youth unemployment rate, Egyptian employers across all sectors struggle to recruit workers to fill their vacancies. In response to this need, the NEP designed a program to connect youth job seekers with these open vacancies in the blue-collar sector. But the program faced challenges such as a high drop-off rate—of the 78% of job seekers who received a nomination for at least one job that was pre-vetted to match their interests, only 27% were ultimately placed in a job—preventing job seekers from successfully completing the program and gaining employment.

Why do so many capable job seekers fail to land jobs? To identify and address the barriers preventing job seekers from completing the program, we interviewed job seekers and NEP staff to better understand job-seeker behavior. As a result, we found that job seekers struggled to identify their unique skills and strengths that would qualify them for a job placement—an important component of interviews with potential employers. This discovery was paramount, leading us to understand that negative self-perceptions were seriously harming job seekers’ ability to persevere through the program and gain employment.

Overcoming these barriers required designing behaviorally informed solutions to boost job seekers’ self-esteem and help them preemptively plan for key moments along their job-search journey. Unsurprisingly, interviews revealed that job seekers had many of the relevant skills needed for the jobs they were interviewing for, despite feeling as though they were lacking. Through an affirmation activity, we prompted job seekers to consider their experiences outside of a formal work or educational setting, including skills gained from hobbies, sports teams, or even family settings. From experience playing on a team to teaching a family member how to use their phone, this activity allowed job seekers to uncover and reframe their unique skill sets. In addition to the affirmation activity, we designed a job interview checklist that demystified this unfamiliar process, helping job seekers to feel prepared for interviews as opposed to discouraged, and a flier that prompted job seekers to remember why they were seeking employment through the program, as job seekers may weigh the immediate costs of finding a formal job higher than the long-term benefits.

In the end, job seekers who received the designs were 192% more likely to persist to an additional job interview if not placed in the first round and 58% more likely to be successfully placed in a job, underscoring the significant benefits of designing for the human experience.

Though labor market programs like the NEP are designed to address a critical need, in order to be most effective they must be designed with the complexities of the job seeker’s experience in mind. Our partnership with the NEP confirmed that using behavioral science to design interventions that centralize job seekers’ experiences can help more people find stable, supportive jobs. With this evidence in hand, we encourage more labor market access programs to consider human behavior from the outset—designing programs that help job seekers feel equipped with the skills they need to navigate their job search.

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Memphis, Tennessee, is often the subject of negative media attention, particularly when it comes to crime and poverty. However, after working for months with local non-profit organizations as part of our Narrative Change work, we were able to confirm what residents of the city have always known—that there is so much more to Memphis than the media headlines suggest. Jennifer, a young, proud Memphian who lives in the heart of the city that she describes as “lively, diverse, and charming” put it best: “Memphis is just something you have to see to believe. There are too many negative news stories that don’t accurately portray what it’s like to spend a day in the area.”

While Memphis is undoubtedly a city bursting with culture, diversity, and liveliness, it also faces a range of challenges, including racial equity, crime, and poverty. Unfortunately, solutions to these problems are often imposed by outsiders, neglecting to consider the unique challenges of each community and failing to build upon their distinctive strengths. It raises the question: In light of limited resources, how can local governments truly connect with, understand, and make choices that reflect the diverse viewpoints, preferences, and needs of their constituents?

To really combat the complex drivers that create and sustain poverty, it’s crucial to learn directly from the real experts—those experiencing it first-hand. With this in mind, we partnered with six local grassroots organizations that are deeply committed to supporting Memphians and promoting community engagement. We also connected with an extensive informal network of non-profits, academics, and advocacy groups that share our goal of building effective data-driven solutions to create a brighter future for our communities. We recognized that traditional survey methods wouldn’t be enough if we wanted to capture the depth and nuance of people’s experiences. That is why we developed an open-ended survey that encouraged people to express their genuine thoughts and feelings in their own words, and to fully elaborate on their experiences and perspectives. By using this flexible format, we were able to gain a more nuanced understanding of people’s viewpoints and uncover insights that might have been missed with a more structured approach. Additionally, by spreading the word via our networks and partners, we were able to gather a remarkable range of insights from 418 individuals of various backgrounds who live in 52 different zip codes within Shelby County, Tennessee.

Our subsequent research centered on two questions from the survey, which delved into the most commonly discussed social issues in Memphis, and the necessary changes required to improve the city’s image in the eyes of others. To analyze the responses, we used a method called natural language processing (NLP), which is a subfield of artificial intelligence (AI) that applies algorithms to understand and decipher human language. 

The results from this exercise validated findings from Community Circles, where we engaged in discussions with local residents to understand their perspectives on their own communities. These conversations revealed that crime, violence, and poverty are by far the biggest issues on residents’ minds. The chart below shows the main issues mentioned by survey respondents, as well as the top keywords associated with each issue.

Despite being critical of their city, Memphians also have a strong sense of pride in their hometown, as reflected in the comments of one study participant, Jana, who described the city as “the people you bump into, weird, over-the-top friendly, nuts … we are one big, dysfunctional family, full of love and energy that you must experience to understand!” Her views of Memphis also summarize the perceptions of most participants by suggesting that to change the negative view of outsiders, they first need to “change some of the actual problems, like poverty, crime, education.” Additionally, her comments suggested locals should shift their mindset and attitudes toward their hometown, and get involved in their city’s progress to observe “the good things happening all around us.” Finally, she suggested that Memphians take responsibility for the narrative they project to others by avoiding “perpetuating negative stereotypes, and being mindful of the impact of their self-deprecating jokes and complaints on Memphis’s image.” 

The following chart shows the solutions that were most frequently mentioned by survey respondents to improve other people’s perceptions about their city. In addition to addressing issues related to crime and poverty, the idea of “experiencing true Memphis” was also frequently suggested as a way of improving the city’s reputation.

In summary, our study showed that using natural language processing was an effective way to efficiently analyze large amounts of text-based data. From that analysis, we could extract valuable insights into the concerns and sentiments of community members that can inform more equitable and effective solutions. Ultimately, these are what will make a real difference in people’s lives.

In this context, the power of large language models such as the recently launched GPT-4 can revolutionize the way local governments gather and analyze opinions from their residents. This approach can be a game changer for allocating resources, creating new programs, and investigating other areas for social impact. As these AI tools become more accessible and prevalent, local governments can become more responsive to their citizens’ needs and preferences, promoting programs and policies that enhance resident autonomy and dignity. 

It’s crucial, however, to use these models responsibly and be mindful of the potential harms they can cause if misused. By using these tools cautiously, local governments can take significant steps toward improving the lives of their citizens and implementing equitable policies that make a positive impact on their lives.

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Unintended pregnancies are a persistent global challenge with significant health, financial, and social consequences that disproportionately impact those with the least. Despite significant strides in increasing the availability of contraceptive services, 49% (111 million) of all pregnancies are unintended each year in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), preventing women from having the opportunity to choose when and how they would start or grow their family, increasing poverty and scarcity for those already resource-constrained, and widening historical gender inequality. 

Through 17 projects in nine countries across Africa and Asia, our Global Health team has used behavioral science to understand and address the behavioral factors that contribute to unintended pregnancies, with the ultimate goal of helping women and their families make family planning choices in ways that align with their goals. We’ve synthesized these cross-cutting insights and identified six key behavioral principles critical for designing effective family planning programs.

Behavioral Principle 1: Identity and norms. Social and gender norms shape identities while also guiding and constraining individual behavior. Identity—and its effect on choices—is not singular or static. We can harness untapped opportunities for contraceptive use to align with, rather than challenge or undermine, core aspects of an individual’s identity and the norms of their community.

Example: In some contexts, social sanctions for not having children or having too few children are highly visible. Demonstrating how family planning use is consistent with good motherhood and desired family size may help assuage concerns about the possible social costs.

“Living in this world, the benefit is having a baby.”

– WOMAN

Behavioral Principle 2: Ambiguity. Diffuse responsibilities and discomfort combine to make conversations about childbearing and contraception rare. If we can create spaces for open communication and joint decision making, existing alignments can surface and alignment can increase over time.

Example: Male partners may be viewed as deciders, but don’t initiate conversations, so it’s not clear who should or can bring up a conversation about childbearing or family planning. If men and women can be made to feel more confident broaching the topic, alignments in their preferences may more readily come to light. 

“Families do not discuss when to have children.”

– MAN

Behavioral Principle 3: Attention. Distractions and competing priorities mean that family planning often falls outside of the “tunnel” of the here and now. Understanding what else competes for a client’s or health worker’s attention can help us better ensure that women are able to fully consider the options available to them and follow through on their intentions.

Example: Clients may receive information about family planning during health visits where other topics are prioritized. If health workers can view and describe family planning as connected to the primary purpose of a client’s visit, they may be more successful.

“Even when we discuss FP during antenatal care or other times,

women forget or say ‘you didn’t tell me.’”

– HEALTH WORKER

Behavioral Principle 4: Risk perception. Quirks in the way our brains process information and assess risk lead myths to be particularly durable and influential. By understanding where myths originate and what perpetuates them, we can design more effective approaches to counter misconceptions.

Example: Stories of negative consequences are often widely shared and easy to recall, even when they are false. If similarly memorable success stories of family planning use can be widely shared, those stories will come more easily to mind and exert a counterbalancing effect on perceptions of risk.

“[My sister in-law has a] 7-year old child but up to now,they are unsuccessfully trying to get another child. She took the pills then some people argued that they were the cause.”

– YOUNG WOMAN

Behavioral Principle 5: Choice architecture. The order, timing, volume, type, and framing of information clients are offered influences whether they use contraception and which method they choose. While no approach is truly neutral, we can guide clients to make autonomous, well-informed choices.

Example: Health workers may overestimate clients’ readiness to make an informed choice after group counseling. By reinforcing the value of one-on-one discussion and supporting health workers to have effective conversations within their time constraints, clients are more likely to receive the counseling needed to make a truly informed choice.

“l would say no [we could not ask questions after counseling]

because at that time the doctor was busy with other people.”

– WOMAN

Behavioral Principle 6: Frictions. For many clients, the process to adopt and use a contraceptive method is rife with frictions. Some, like transportation costs or inconvenient service hours, are easy to spot, while others remain less obvious. By unpacking when, where, and how frictions arise, we can reduce barriers to accessing services. 

Example: Short acting family planning methods present hassles. If we reduce some of the challenges that impede sustained use through community-based distribution of contraceptive methods or user-friendly reminders, we can further support women to consistently use their chosen method.

“It is a thing of remembering [to take the pill]. Sometimes

I remember to have it; sometimes I forget to take it.”

– WOMAN

Together, we can continue to use the power of behavioral science to understand family planning challenges more deeply and build bold new solutions that accelerate progress toward the parallel aims of improving access and respecting agency and autonomy. Learn more about the behavioral science principles critical to family planning programs and examples of how they could be applied in our report “Advancing Access and Autonomy.” This report is also available in French. 

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A broad goal of American democracy is to have a government that reflects, in composition and action, the will of a broad, diverse public. This ideal demands widespread and persistent public participation in civic discourse and action. Such engagement is critical to reducing the likelihood that the loudest, most extreme voices will be overrepresented in the civic arena.

Many people care about public policy issues, who represents them in government, conditions in their communities, and the well-being of their neighbors. Nevertheless, community organizers and activists often find it difficult to mobilize their constituents—even those they know support their goals—to participate in civic programs, advocacy campaigns, and voting. ideas42 has delved deeply into the behavioral factors affecting voter turnout in the United States and identified key barriers to participation, particularly in local elections.

The ideas42 NYC Behavioral Design Center (BDC) has drawn on this and other behavioral science research to help non-profit organizations in New York City increase multiple forms of civic engagement among their clients and constituents, from participatory budgeting to advocacy with policy makers, as well as voting. The BDC was established to help staff of New York City non-profit organizations identify and ameliorate behavioral barriers that impede effective service delivery and civic engagement efforts. Most grassroots advocacy and civic participation campaigns underscore the importance of the issues at stake, and often their target audiences agree. Yet if organizers fail to address these common barriers, even constituents who share their concerns may not move from concern to intention and from intention to action.

Organizations promoting civic participation have requested the BDC’s help in increasing the number of people who take a desired action—from contacting a public official to attending a community meeting, from voting to volunteering. In our work with a number of these organizations, we have found that key barriers to engagement include:

• Skepticism that their individual action will make a difference
• Inaccurate or incomplete mental models of what’s involved in civic participation
• Perceived complexity of the process or the issues addressed
• Limited time and attention

We helped staff in the organizations profiled below apply behaviorally informed strategies to encourage their constituents to take action. Key strategies included:

• Simplifying and streamlining communication
• Correcting inaccurate or incomplete mental models
• Highlighting benefits and impact

Sparking and sustaining volunteer involvement in participatory budgeting

Participatory budgeting is a democratic process in which community members decide how to spend a portion of a public budget. For over a decade in New York City, many city council members have dedicated a portion of their discretionary district funds to be allocated through participatory budgeting initiatives, allowing their constituents to select from an array of proposed uses for those funds.

While a popular idea among residents, it doesn’t always attract sufficient participation from volunteers available to serve in an intensive, ongoing way as budget delegates who review and develop proposals for participatory budgeting funding. In 2019, as New York City was preparing to create a citywide participatory budgeting process, the BDC partnered with the Participatory Budgeting Project to better understand what motivates volunteers to serve, and the behavioral barriers that can discourage involvement and lead delegates to drop out.

Barriers identified through our observations and interviews included: ambiguity and false mental models about participatory budgeting and aspects of the delegate role and process; hassles involved in participating; and disappointment and frustration when individuals’ preferred projects were not selected for the ballot or chosen by voters. To mitigate these barriers, we provided communication templates and strategies for improving outreach and understanding, including:

• Reducing hassles—such as holding meetings in easily accessible locations and online; disseminating meeting notes to keep people informed when they can’t attend.
• Correcting inaccurate mindsets about participatory budgeting by showcasing community improvements from previous participatory budgeting allocations; clarifying volunteer responsibilities, and highlighting benefits to serving as a delegate even if your favored project doesn’t win (e.g., learning more about your community; familiarizing yourself with government officials and procedures; enhancing your resume; socializing with neighbors and making new friends) as well as other ways that unselected projects can be funded.

Outcomes: At the request of staff at the Participatory Budgeting Project and City Council, the BDC briefed Council members and staff on its findings and recommendations. In addition, the Participatory Budgeting Project circulated the BDC’s insights and recommendations to local affiliates and followers around the country.

Inspiring Grassroots Advocacy

The Citizens’ Committee for Children of New York (CCC) is a nonpartisan child advocacy organization that works to advance policies and programs that benefit New York children and families. As other forms of advocacy were curtailed by the pandemic, CCC relied more heavily on its E-Action Network. Unfortunately, at the same time, CCC noticed diminishing participation in its “Take Action” online letter-writing campaigns.

In 2021, the BDC partnered with CCC to uncover the behavioral barriers to participation in the Network’s outreach to state and city policy makers. Among the obstacles we heard about from CCC members:

• Discouraging mental models—if people lack evidence for the impact of advocacy, they may be less likely to engage with CCC: “I don’t think they [letters] hurt, but I do not believe they help … It feels like I just keep writing letters and nothing changes.”
• Email overload and limited attention: Members receive many emails from CCC and each one contains a lot of information.

To mitigate these barriers, the BDC created a revised email template (see image below) that streamlines information, makes campaign actions and deadlines salient, and highlights the impact that outreach to policy makers can have. We also provided general recommendations for similar changes in other CCC emails to constituents.

Outcome: CCC staff reported an increase in open rates for Take Action emails; and the open rates for all emails increased by 40% (from 15% in 2021 to 25% in 2022).

Engaging Community Members in Co-creating a Civic Education Initiative

Last year, Women Creating Change (WCC) was preparing to launch a Design Team to shape its Civic Matters workshops. Reflecting WCC’s vision that all women have the power to be changemakers, the program aimed to co-create opportunities for women to gain the knowledge and skills they need to participate in civic processes and advocate on the issues that matter to them. The Design team was to develop community-led workshop curricula and an inclusive space for women to learn, share, and build collective power.

WCC staff came to a BDC Office Hour for guidance in creating outreach materials to recruit Design Team members and, later, to showcase the Civic Matters workshops. During the Office Hour, we discussed how to improve the working group “job description,” communications, and sign-up survey forms, based on WCC’s goals for the group and expectations of group members. We encouraged WCC staff to:

• Shorten all communications.
• Highlight the benefits of serving as a Design Team member.
• Specify the time commitment.
• Simplify requirements for signing up, and shorten the survey—by considering what information is essential at this stage and what can be gathered later.

Outcome: Based on this advice, WCC staff reported that they “transformed all of the materials” about the working group. Their promotional flyer and other communications successfully incorporated many behaviorally informed best practices, including: highlighting benefits to the individual and shared community values; clear, concise presentation of essential information about eligibility; participant role and responsibilities; and next steps. The initial outreach succeeded in attracting “great group members,” and WCC will continue using the materials to recruit future members.

* * *

The next step is for more organizations to put the above insights and recommendations into practice, adapting them to address their particular contexts and challenges. Please reach out to the BDC (laura@ideas42.org) or sign up for an Office Hour for help enhancing civic participation using strategies grounded in research about human behavior. Together, we can promote activism and advocacy critical to strengthening democratic processes and maintaining a thriving democracy that truly reflects the voices of those living in it.

The post Civic Participation Beyond the Ballot Box: Harnessing Behavioral Science to Strengthen Democracy appeared first on ideas42.

ChatGPT is a cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) tool that has the potential to revolutionize the way we produce written content. We may very soon see writers using it as their own personal assistants to generate ideas, publishers using it to generate content effortlessly, and programmers using it to write pieces of code quickly. 

However, the quality of the output generated by ChatGPT is only as good as the data it was trained on, as well as the effectiveness of the prompts provided to it. And since it was trained on text written by humans, ChatGPT reflects our collective societal biases, including the sets of beliefs or “narratives” that shape how we think, talk about, and attempt to address social issues like poverty. Many of these narratives include flawed thinking about class and race that could be spread further through AI. This is especially true since the content generated with the help of AI might be used again to retrain ChatGPT or other similar large language models (LLMs) in the future.

Harmful poverty narratives are stereotypes and misconceptions about people living in poverty that can perpetuate discrimination and stigma. As part of our narrative change work, the ideas42 Economic Justice team identified five key harmful narratives commonly used to understand poverty: fatalism, paternalism, welfare, personal, and meritocracy. To analyze the prevalence of these narratives, we ran multiple national surveys assessing individual attitudes toward poverty and created scores for each poverty narrative. Each narrative was evaluated on a scale from 1 to 5: 1 meant strong disagreement with a given harmful narrative, while 5 indicated strong agreement.

Then, to understand how biased the content generated by ChatGPT is compared to the average person, we asked the model the same questions. We were pleasantly surprised to see that ChatGPT scores lower for all narratives compared to the national average and, in general, doesn’t seem to subscribe to any of them.

However, we know that some safeguards have been added to the model recently to avoid generating inappropriate content (e.g., filtering out hate speech by using a list of predefined keywords or phrases). Despite OpenAI’s (the company that created ChatGPT) best efforts, people find ways to get around these safeguards, exposing its “artificially safe” content and bringing light to its hidden biases. To uncover what ChatGPT really “thinks” about welfare fraud, we asked it about using SNAP (formerly food stamps) to buy beer. The answer we got is that welfare fraud is not common, which we know to be true. However, as we varied our queries and asked about the prevalence of “benefit trafficking” in NYC, ChatGPT reported this to be a common problem in the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens, stating, “Studies have shown that welfare fraud is more common in neighborhoods with high crime and a large number of illegal immigrants.” See the full response from ChatGPT:

These “studies” do not, in fact, exist. When we asked for the specific studies in question, ChatGPT was unable to provide references for them. This is a common example of “AI hallucination,” which is a known weakness of Large Language Models generally, and raises concerns about trustworthiness and accountability. This occurs because ChatGPT is a text prediction algorithm, but does not have a way of verifying whether the statements it makes are in fact true because it does not possess genuine knowledge or beliefs about the world. Therefore, the term “bullshitting” may be a more appropriate description of what these models do. An example of the harmful effects of this type of biased content would be the reinforcement of negative stereotypes about immigrants, discouraging them from applying for benefits—even if they are eligible and in need of them—due to the fear of making caseworkers suspect that they might be “cheating the system” only because of their nation of origin. And this danger is exacerbated by the fact that AI systems communicate information with confidence and authority, which can increase the risk of “automation bias,” or the excessive reliance on automated systems. This means that AI’s outputs with inherent biases will remain uncorrected without using human judgment and validation.

Since this tool is used by writers to generate content, we also asked ChatGPT to write a story about poverty in New York. At first glance, the model did not produce any biased content, but when we asked for more information about the characters in the story, stereotypes began to appear, with the character’s father being portrayed as a son of immigrants who is involved in criminal activity, addicted to drugs, and whose poor decisions led to his family living in poverty.

The follow-up questions revealed biases that were not evident with our initial prompts. This illustrates another important consideration for human interaction with large language models: the results we get back are highly sensitive to small differences in the prompts we start with (and any biases the user includes). As large language models become ubiquitous tools, the creators of these technologies must make clear how to properly create prompts so that users can get the information they want, while minimizing the propagation of bias.

OpenAI has been able to identify and correct some errors and biases through community feedback. However, the development of this technology will rapidly shift from dissemination to monetization. Once that happens, the ability to identify and correct biases will be limited, while the goal of financial returns and scalability will make labor-intensive feedback and oversight mechanisms unlikely. The result—as with social media platforms—could be the further spread of harmful and incorrect content.

Testing ChatGPT with poverty-related questions using different prompts has shown us that the choice of words used for input significantly affects the accuracy of the model’s responses. That is why “prompt engineering” is so important—it is the process of optimizing inputs to produce better outputs from AI systems. This technique is vital to minimizing biases and increasing trust in AI by helping users understand its limitations. As AI plays a bigger role in our lives, investing in prompt engineering research and development is crucial for safe and ethical regulation of these systems. Behavioral science can contribute significantly to this process by creating pathways to incentivize users to craft better prompts, allowing them to use AI systems responsibly. This can involve integrating prompt engineering into the systems themselves and providing heuristics for creating effective prompts.

In our upcoming blog series, we will explore behavioral approaches that can help mitigate the risks of this technology. We will also delve into the various ways that ChatGPT’s biases can impact outcomes and inequality across our Health, Safety and Justice, and Financial Health portfolios. Stay tuned for more!

The post Uncovering Hidden Biases in ChatGPT’s Written Content–and Preventing Them from Exacerbating Existing Inequalities appeared first on ideas42.

For many rural low-income pregnant women in Liberia, the ability to deliver at a health facility is riddled with barriers. While they may intend to deliver their baby at a health facility and believe it’s the safest place to give birth, it often requires extensive planning and saving, from determining when and how to leave for the facility, to saving for the cost of transportation and medical supplies required at the facility. 

In 2021, our Global Health team in partnership with Breakthrough ACTION undertook a new project to address these challenges. We conducted formative research applying a behavioral science lens to explore the context-shaping decision-making and behavior of pregnant women—and others with influence—then undertook a collaborative co-design process that engaged local and national government stakeholders, pregnant and postpartum women and their families, and community and facility-based health workers. The resulting set of behaviorally informed solutions helps to address barriers and facilitate facility-based delivery (FBD); for example, by leveraging Liberian storytelling traditions to build on the important relationship between women and trained traditional midwives (TTMs). We are excited to share the next phase of this work!

We are currently piloting the solution set in two districts, Buchanan District and District 4, in collaboration with Americares, a health-focused relief and development organization that has been working in Liberia since 2015. 

After an initial training on how to implement the solutions, program implementers, policymakers, and health workers were enthusiastic about the designs and their ability to support women in their communities seeking to access safer deliveries. Some of the feedback we received included:

Before, pregnant women will come to the facility, we will just check you and tell you to do this, buy this, buy this, but now, through the tools we understand that early planning helps a lot to prevent you from difficulties while carry your baby. – Provider, Grand Bassa

It’s [savings tracker] a good thing because we never had the idea first, but now we have the idea, we used to just tell them when to come to the clinic, we didn’t use to tell them how to keep money in cash box. So the thing I learned from there it’s good because when the cash box is there you’ll be able to save small money. So when time come you can look in the cashbox to solve some problem. – TTM, Grand Bassa

Yes we never use to plan with them [pregnant women], but now right after the training we decided to plan how to save money for them for their saving…The training I really like it because it’s encouraging mainly the stories made for people to come to themselves and say yes let me go to the hospital, it’s helping we, the CHA, ourselves because we used to talk to them, they would say “all my children I been borning how I used to born them” but the stories when you talk to them they can listen. – Community Health Assistant, Grand Bassa

In the training where I was one participant–it was very interactive, the materials used were accessible and then, yes we had a good time because we were able to talk lengthily and the time for the training was appropriate… During the training that we saw, they [TTMs] were zealous, they have the interest. It is something that they have been doing, but not in this manner… From what I saw, I know that they are willing to use it [planning tools]. – Grand Bassa County Health Team

Leveraging this enthusiasm, we plan to apply forthcoming insights gained from the initial pilot period to continue to refine and update our facility-based delivery solutions and implementation guidance. Ultimately, implementation of the solutions will extend beyond the initial districts and will support more rural Liberian women to succeed in following through on their intention to deliver at the health facility—and help make more births safe for women and their infants. 

If you are interested in implementing the facility-based delivery (FBD) designs or would like more information, please visit our design guide and reach out to us at gh@ideas42.org.

The post Refining Solutions for Supporting Facility-Based Delivery in Liberia appeared first on ideas42.

Beginning April 1, 2023, people enrolled in Medicaid will have to renew their coverage for the first time in three years.

During the federally-declared COVID-19 public health emergency, people did not have to renew their Medicaid coverage. This continuous coverage ensured families had consistent access to health care. As a result, Medicaid enrollment increased by 20 million people since February 2020 to over 90 million current total enrollees. But when Medicaid’s continuous coverage provision comes to an end on March 31, 2023, 15 million people are at risk of losing their health-care coverage. While that prospect is worrying, states can leverage this moment to increase health-care coverage and promote racial equity by streamlining their Medicaid renewal processes.

Continuous coverage temporarily suspended the Medicaid renewal process, a process that was time-consuming and burdensome and too often prevented families from accessing health-care coverage. But when continuous coverage ends, enrollees will have to navigate existing and new barriers to renew their coverage:

• Many people who currently have Medicaid may be unaware that they must renew or are unfamiliar with the process.
• If a person’s contact information has changed, they may not even receive a notice to renew. 
• During renewal, people may need to gather proof of income and other paperwork, such as tax returns, recent pay stubs, alimony, or proof of citizenship or immigration. 
• People without access to a computer or internet may need to travel to renew their coverage in person. 
• Anyone with questions about the process may experience long wait times, as state agencies will likely be under-resourced and overwhelmed by their new caseloads. 

Around 7 million eligible people are at risk of losing their coverage because of the time, money, and other effort required to successfully renew coverage. These so-called administrative burdens will affect everyone, but they more acutely harm people with the fewest resources to overcome them.

These burdens also exacerbate existing racial inequity. Due to historical discrimination, people of color and immigrant populations are overrepresented in jobs that do not provide health-care coverage and are disproportionately covered by Medicaid. Therefore, they will likely lose Medicaid coverage at higher rates when these tedious renewal processes resume.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Historically, state policy makers have included more burdensome requirements in programs that disproportionately benefit people of color and people with low incomes. Yet policy makers did not include these same requirements in programs that disproportionately benefit white and middle- to high-income earners—like homeownership tax subsidies. While a person automatically gets the mortgage interest rate tax deduction when they complete their tax return, other income-based benefits—such as Medicaid, SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), and TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families)—require people to complete separate, time-consuming forms. Burdensome requirements are a policy choice, and decisions about when to add burdens are often rooted in false and racist beliefs about why people experience poverty. 

While the unwinding of the continuous coverage provision poses enormous risks to health-care coverage, it also presents an opportunity for states to improve their Medicaid programs. They can make the policy choice to reduce administrative burdens and test new ways to increase coverage. This will not only mitigate the anticipated harms of the unwinding process, but it can also address historical forms of injustice and advance racial equity.

What can states do to mitigate unwinding?

As the continuous coverage provision comes to an end, states can take several steps to reduce administrative burden in Medicaid and maintain health-care coverage:

1. Maintain continuous coverage wherever possible: The easiest way for states to reduce administrative burden is to maintain burden-free, continuous coverage for as many people as possible, regardless of income fluctuations or other changes during these specified periods of time. This might include, for example, coverage periods of 12 months, 24 months, or several years for certain populations, including postpartum individuals, young children, formerly incarcerated people, or adults who are chronically unhoused.
2. For those that must renew, make the process easy and simple: To reduce the burden associated with renewal, states should increase the number of people who are automatically (or ex parte) renewed. That is, states use available information to verify that certain people are still eligible without requiring them to submit additional paperwork; for example, people who qualify for other benefits programs like SNAP or TANF, or for those who previously reported no income. States can also hire more staff to cut wait times and make it easier for people to renew coverage.
3. Test new programs and policies explicitly designed to advance racial equity: Many states have (and should continue to) experimented with ways Medicaid funds can address the social determinants of health and reduce racial health disparities. Enhanced benefits could, for example, provide access to housing, healthy food, employment, transportation, child care or family care services, and more.

[See below for a chart of the different policy levers states can utilize to implement these policies]

Finally, as states begin their unwinding process, it is critical that they measure and report coverage losses, application numbers, average wait times, and more. In addition to following federally mandated reporting requirements, states should be as transparent as possible and release data as soon as it is available. States must use this data to evaluate their unwinding efforts and iterate as needed to improve their programs, expand coverage, and advance racial equity. 

Actions States Can Take During Unwinding

• State Plan Amendment (SPA): States submit a State Plan Amendment to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to gain approval for proposed permanent program changes.
• Section 1115 Demonstration Waiver: States can submit Section 1115 waivers to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to gain approval for experimental, pilot, or demonstration projects designed to implement and measure new policy approaches to improve their state’s Medicaid program.
• Section 1902(e)(14)(A) Waiver: States can submit Section 1902(e)(14)(A) waivers to temporarily support their unwinding process following the end of the COVID-19 public health emergency and the Medicaid continuous coverage provision.
• At State Discretion: These are policies that state Medicaid agencies and/or other state entities can take that do not require federal approval.

We’ve seen that health-care policies intended to be temporary stopgaps during the COVID-19 public health emergency actually make for good, longstanding policy. While these protections may soon be rolled back, state policy makers and advocates should use this moment to implement new policies that get more people the health coverage they need.

The post The Harms of Unwinding Automatic Medicaid Coverage appeared first on ideas42.

It’s February. How are you doing on your New Year’s resolutions for 2023? Here are 10 “microbehaviors” to keep your health goals on track.

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If you made a health-related New Year’s resolution this year, you’re not alone; health-focused resolutions make up the top three most common goals, year after year. And if you’re still going strong, congratulations! You’re in the minority; only 19% of resolution makers are still on track past the first month of the year.

Behavioral science gives us tons of insights about why New Year’s resolutions are so hard to stick to, as well as strategies for increasing our odds of success. Most of these insights and tactics are pretty intuitive: make goals that are specific, measurable, and achievable; enlist accountability buddies; create a plan for how you’re going to achieve them; be sure that they align with your values, and that they’re (at least somewhat) enjoyable; break them down into bite-sized pieces. Sound familiar?

That guidance is great, and can be helpful if you already know exactly what your goal is and how to achieve it. But what if you don’t know where to start, or feel overwhelmed by the prospect of making big changes to your lifestyle? I have good news: there are some relatively minor tweaks you can make to your daily routines that can have an outsized impact on your health.

I call these “microbehaviors,” and they’re the perfect first steps toward forging long-lasting habits. Starting with these can help you build momentum toward bigger lifestyle changes you may want to make down the line. Microbehaviors are easier to adopt than other, more “traditional” health behaviors. Here are some behavioral reasons why:

• Planning fallacy: People tend to underestimate the amount of time things will take, and overestimate the amount of time they’ll have to dedicate to something. These microbehaviors can be done any time, any place, don’t require any advance planning, and can be completed in five minutes or less.
• Choice overload: There are about a zillion things you can do to improve your health, and it can be hard to know which ones to try. The list of microbehaviors I’ve curated for you below take the guesswork out of the equation.
• Endowed progress: How good does it feel to cross something off your list? With microbehaviors, you can give yourself this sense of accomplishment every day, multiple times a day, instead of waiting to reach longer-term, yearlong milestones.
• Habits and automaticity: These microbehaviors fold in seamlessly with things you’re already doing as you go about your day. No need to add a reminder in your phone, pack a gym bag, or buy any special equipment.

Have I piqued your curiosity? If so, read on for 10 microbehaviors to jumpstart your healthy lifestyle and optimize your physical, mental, and social well-being. I’ve broken them down into three overarching categories: nutrition, physical activity, and mental health. If you’re looking to improve in one of these areas, start by choosing one or more from that list; if you’d like to go for a more general approach, you can start with one from each and work up from there!

Nutrition

1. Up your veggie intake by adding a handful of microgreens (such as microkale), sprouts (such as broccoli sprouts), or fresh herbs (such as basil) to one meal a day. Microgreens, sprouts, and herbs are some of the most nutrient-dense foods you can find, go with pretty much anything, and don’t require any chopping or cooking. And many are grown hydroponically or aeroponically, meaning you don’t even need to wash them!
2. Drink more water by filling up a big jug with markings to keep you on track throughout the day, and keep it on your desk. The jug itself will serve as a reminder to drink, and the markings will serve as an accountability mechanism. When you drink enough water—about 13 cups per day for men and about 9 cups per day for women—everything works better, from your joints to your muscles, your brain to your digestive tract (and beyond)!
3. Snack healthier by replacing a sugary or salty afternoon snack with a sour one (namely, a fermented one). Fermented foods like pickles, sauerkraut, kimchi, kefir, yogurt, and kombucha stay good for a long time, so you can stock up and always have it in the house. Regularly eating fermented foods can help with digestion, absorption of nutrients, and may even reduce feelings of stress and anxiety and reduce sugar cravings. You can even make your own fairly easily and cheaply.

Physical Activity

1. Gain strength with “exercise snacking.” A few times a day, perhaps when you find yourself mindlessly scrolling on your phone, do a quick “full body circuit”: 10-20 push-ups (on your knees is fine), 10-20 squats, and a 30-60 second plank. You’ll feel the burn and get all the benefits of moving your body, without having to change your clothes, wash your hair, or drive to the gym. If those movements aren’t accessible to you, try stretching as you’re able, or contracting a muscle group for a few seconds at a time.
2. Get extra movement by taking the long way. Instead of grabbing the parking spot closest to the store or getting off the metro right at your destination, consider parking a bit farther away or getting off a stop early. Five minutes of walking here and there can really add up over time, bringing benefits like reduced joint pain, decreased cancer risk, and increased immune function, to name just a few!
3. Stretch out with a three-minute circuit right when you get out of bed in the morning and right before getting into bed at night. Run through two series of cat/cow, downward dog, and forward fold, holding each for 30 seconds while taking deep breaths. After doing these three poses, you’ll feel taller, lighter, and more relaxed.

Mental Health

1. Nurture your relationships by calling friends and family members while you’re doing other tasks, like driving to pick up your kids, walking to the metro, or folding laundry. Connecting with others, even briefly (about eight minutes seems to be the sweet spot) can reduce feelings of loneliness, depression, and anxiety.
2. Cut out the noise by performing a social media audit. People spend hours of our lives on social media, which has been linked to depression, anxiety, and low self-esteem. However, you have the power to curate your virtual spaces so they bring you joy. There are a few ways to do this, one of them being to unfollow any accounts that make you feel upset, anxious, or bad about yourself with the content they post.
3. Re-center yourself with a one-minute breathing exercise when you return to work after a break. With feet flat on the floor and eyes closed, breathe in for seven seconds, hold for seven seconds, and breathe out for seven seconds; repeat three times. Simple mindfulness practices like this one can help reduce stress, improve your focus, and relieve anxiety—potentially even as much as medication.
4. Protect your peace and quiet by setting your phone to “do not disturb” during working and resting hours. Most phones can be set to automatically do this during specified hours, so you don’t have to remember every day. You won’t miss the constant pinging, but you will almost definitely increase your productivity and focus. Just do it. Now. Go.

We’re living in a world where many people want to get healthier, but believe that they need to drastically change their behavior—and give up things that make them happy—in order to do so. We’re also inundated with information about different diets, workouts, and other healthy habits we should adopt, making it hard to know where to start. The microbehaviors I’ve offered here are meant to be actionable, simple steps that you can easily take to get over that first hurdle and build momentum on a path toward your best health.

What are your favorite healthy microbehaviors? Let us know by sharing this post to your social media and tagging @ideas42!

The post Want to Get Healthier but Don’t Know Where to Start? Try Microbehaviors appeared first on ideas42.

To those looking in on the scientific process, it can often seem like a tidy operation of perfectly measured ingredients and serene labs. Researchers and journalists tell the story of this work from idea to insight as relatively linear. Whether or not they arrived in the same place they expected, this often makes it seem like the results were inevitable.

The reality, of course, is much messier.

Behavioral science is no exception. Ideas that produce fantastic results in one place and time maddeningly fail to reproduce in other contexts. Work that is theoretically sound sometimes doesn’t translate to the real world. Mistakes sometimes lead to crucial breakthroughs.

This disconnection between how science is neatly told but haltingly performed does a disservice to those looking on. Science’s messiness is a feature, not a bug, because if we were never surprised or confounded, there would be no need to perform studies. It is often where our expectations are dashed and our patience tested that we learn the most about how to remedy some of the world’s toughest problems.

Let’s correct that artificial neatness. As 2022 winds down, we’d like to celebrate the mess of science—and its power to move us past our expectations and toward unimagined futures. In the spirit of continually learning, here is a small smattering of surprising findings that have provided invaluable insight into how to make our work even more impactful.

1. People on both sides of the political spectrum have authoritarian tendencies.

This surprise came to us from our research into what narratives people believe about individuals living in poverty in the United States. In particular, our Narrative Change team has been looking at how constructs such as social dominance orientation, right-wing authoritarianism, and racial resentment relate to harmful poverty narratives in the United States.

Let’s look closer at the first two. Social dominance orientation measures people’s opposition towards equality for everyone in society, known as anti-egalitarianism, and their willingness to maintain (and increase) dominance of their group versus others. Right-wing authoritarianism is broadly defined as the tendency to submit to traditional authorities and values, as well as punish those who disagree.

Belying expectations, we found people across the political spectrum endorse authoritarian and anti-egalitarian views. Although there is a pattern where more Republicans rate higher in social dominance orientation and right-wing authoritarianism than Democrats in the U.S., there are a fair number of Democrats that also score highly on social dominance orientation. In fact, many more than we expected.

These findings offer important insight about how to get people to the polls or to vote for policies that promote generous social policy (in particular those types of policies that may help reduce inequality).

2. Job seekers persist more when asked to affirm their skills and accomplishments, rather than their identity as unemployed.

One project from our Global Livelihoods work aimed to help young Egyptians tap into their existing skills to get hired.

Unemployment is often associated with harmful stereotypes that may lead people to believe that they don’t have the skills for a job. For example, many job seekers told us that they had previously believed formal jobs required a bachelor’s degree, so without that level of formal education, they felt unqualified for the positions offered. We found that a basic priming activity could discourage people from following through on seeking employment.

To combat this, we designed an affirmation activity that allowed job seekers to reflect on their skills and accomplishments (rather than their identity as unemployed). Job seekers were more likely to think of their positive identities and strengths, which, when paired with an interview checklist, led to 58% more people getting a job. Wow!

3. Supplemental materials may have led more probation officers to deny petitions.

A third surprising finding concerns our work out of our U.S. Safety and Justice portfolio to reduce the costs of probation—both to courts and to people who use them.

A growing body of evidence shows that long probation terms are costly for court systems, drive up incarceration rates, and do not contribute to greater public safety. Many people on probation face significant challenges to rebuilding their lives, such as being barred from employment and housing opportunities.

With the Georgia Department of Community Supervision (DCS) and the Council of State Governments, we developed new supplemental materials for probation officers and judges that reinforced the idea that emphasized the benefits of early termination.

We found that in places where these supplemental materials were used, judges were more likely to approve petitions to end parole. But to our surprise, probation officers who used the materials denied about 35% more petitions.

This points to the different context of judges and parole officers, a critical insight on the path to ensuring that more efficient processes are also delivering fair results. As we’ve long known and this work confirmed: context matters. Now we have a new question to answer about what will help parole officers increase approval of petitions early termination for qualified parolees.

4. Do girls in Ghana think smoking is socially acceptable? It depends on socioeconomic status.

Tobacco use is rising exponentially among adolescent girls in Ghana. Our Global Health team is studying which interventions and behavioral barriers can help disrupt this rise.

In particular, we found that girls on either end of the socioeconomic spectrum—those with very low or very high access to resources—are more likely to smoke compared to their middle-class peers.

Why are girls on either socioeconomic extreme more likely to pick up smoking? We don’t yet know, but we’re working to find out.

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The apparent paradox of behavioral science is that the more we learn about human behavior, the less confident we are that we can predict it. Change comes from testing our ideas, co-designing solutions with people who know the experiences best, and methodically seeking to understand the contextual features. We have to see how real people behave in real situations.

The upshot of this is that despite a sense that the world’s problems are only growing more complex, our way of approaching those problems—with humility and a rigorous dedication to evaluation—remains sound. In the years to come, we are optimistic about what we can learn and how we can use that to build a more equal world.

The post Behavioral Science Can Still Surprise Us appeared first on ideas42.

Staff members at Springboard To Opportunities heard repeatedly from their clients that the thing they needed to successfully reach their goals was more cash. In response, the Jackson, Mississippi, organization launched the Magnolia’s Mother’s Trust in 2018. It couldn’t have been simpler: for 12 months, it provided low-income Black mothers with $1,000 cash, no-strings attached, each month. According to Aisha Nyandor, the chief executive at Springboard To Opportunity, “We launched with the bold idea that you can trust individuals with money, you can trust Black women with money, you can trust financially vulnerable Black women with money.” Trust was at the center of this idea, and the ultimate key to the program’s success.

Over 100 similar guaranteed income programs—sometimes called guaranteed basic income—have been launched across the country. Although there is considerable variability in the amount and timing of payments, most distribute monthly payments ranging from $500 to $1,000 to people living at or below certain income thresholds, many of whom are members of historically marginalized groups. Participants are able to purchase the things they need, on their own terms, to improve their lives—from food security to investing in durable goods, such as a car or a refrigerator, and seeking education and training that creates longer-term economic security.

Providing these resources can have a profound impact on families’ lives. Deontrez, a 23-year-old father of a one-year-old daughter, explained, “The funds have helped me pay for things that my daughter needs like diapers and wipes and some household needs. Due to receiving these payments, I was able to pay for my test to get my Commercial Driver’s Licence, which is how I provide for my family. These payments have helped me set the foundation for my family.” Friends and family members in the recipient’s network can also benefit from the increased resources.

Giving People Cash Relieves Stress and Creates Bandwidth

Unconditional cash transfers support dignity and self-determination by placing decisions about how to spend cash in the hands of those experiencing poverty. Unlike other benefits programs, guaranteed income programs recognize that poverty is a context—not a personal failure. Unconditional cash transfers help change that context.

People living in poverty experience chronic scarcity, a continued lack of key resources—such as time, money, food, and other resources. Experiencing chronic scarcity is particularly harmful to mental bandwidth because it causes tunneling—a narrow focus on addressing the acute lack of resources that can lead people to ignore or deprioritize other needs. If rent is due, for example, you may focus exclusively on paying that bill to keep a roof over your head. As a result, you may not be able to pay for your driver’s license renewal. In the short term, the decision makes sense. But, in the long term, it can have dire consequences. Late fees will add up. Driving without a license can even lead to jail time.

Unconditional cash transfer programs directly address chronic scarcity by simply freeing up bandwidth and letting people focus on longer term goals.

Such programs work by giving people the primary resource they lack—cash—and letting them use the money where they need it most. And because they don’t require people to complete multiple rounds of complicated paperwork or travel to and from offices, or spend hours waiting for appointments, they give people an often overlooked but incredibly important resource—time. Halimah, a single mother of two who participated in the I.M.P.A.C.T. program in Atlanta, which provides participants with monthly payments of $500, described it this way: “I have worked since I was 16 and now I am 40 years old still working hard—this past year I didn’t have to feel like I was just scraping by, I could actually breathe.” Unconditional cash cuts the costs to participate in the program and creates slack by providing cash that people can use when and where they need it most.

Policy Makers Should Expand Guaranteed Income Programs

Worldwide, cash transfer programs have been successful in helping people reach their financial goals and build resilience. ideas42 has worked extensively to help countries in the Global South implement behaviorally informed cash transfer programs that help people make the right choices for themselves. Giving people the money they need, to use how they need it, works. Momentum is building in the United States to expand guaranteed basic income and other unconditional cash transfer programs.

Most guaranteed income programs in the United States have been implemented by local governments or community organizations. States should fund guaranteed income programs, as California has recently done, and more localities should adopt these programs.

No-strings-attached cash-benefits programs check all the boxes for behaviorally sound policy, as they recognize that families are experts in their own lives and meet them where they are. Giving them the resources they need to use how and when they need them helps them build long-term economic stability, while freeing up their time and reducing chronic scarcity.

Watch our recent panel discussion, Basic Income Programs: Successes, Challenges, and Policy Solutions, to learn more.

The post Policy Lab: Guaranteed Income Programs Give People What They Need Most appeared first on ideas42.

Savings help families secure a comfortable retirement, weather financial emergencies, make major purchases, and decrease stress. Unfortunately, nearly 57 million workers in the U.S. do not have access to an employer-based retirement plan, including over 63% of Hispanic workers, 53% of Black workers, 45% of Asian American workers, and 41% of white workers. Even workers with access to a retirement plan might not use one: over 20% of full-time workers and about 60% of part-time workers that have access to a retirement account don’t participate. 

What’s worse, those with access who choose to participate might still not have sufficient savings by the time they retire: over 22% of retirement contributions made by people 50 or younger are withdrawn from accounts each year. People often withdraw retirement funds early to address immediate needs, particularly when they don’t have short-term savings. A recent study found that 45% of households couldn’t pay an unexpected $400 expense without dipping into their retirement accounts; this number jumps to 65.2% for Black households, compared to only 46.7% for white households. 

To build savings and promote financial equity, families must have access to a retirement account, choose to save, and limit their pre-retirement withdrawals. Congressional action is needed to ensure that all workers have access to retirement accounts. Additionally, policymakers should leverage the principles of behavioral science included below so that more families with the ability to save choose to do so and reduce their pre-retirement withdrawals.

1. Automaticity and Defaults Increase Participation in Savings

A key insight from behavioral science is that we, as humans, can be lazy. We have limited cognitive energy yet face thousands of choices every day; to get by, we minimize active effort and utilize heuristics and other cognitive shortcuts wherever we can. Therefore, we might put off actions we know we should do because they are tedious or overwhelming. We are more likely to engage in behaviors that are easy and simple. Automatic processes eliminate the required effort and make engagement easy. For example, automatic enrollment and automatic escalation policies have tripled participation in savings programs and nearly quadrupled dollars saved. Similarly, default options reduce effort by offering pre-set options that take effect unless the user elects otherwise. Defaults can eliminate the need to take action at all or can serve as powerful references to ease decision-making. Default contribution rates, when set appropriately, can significantly increase dollars saved. An effective savings program should automatically enroll new employees, default employees into a contribution plan, and automatically escalate contributions to a set maximum in order to increase savings.

2. Financial Incentives Can Motivate Pro-Saving Behavior

Financial rewards, even small micro-incentives, can have outsized impacts on behavior. Small payments can signal the importance of an action, make the future benefits of an action more concrete today, or incentivize behavior in cases of true uncertainty. Financial incentives – like tax credits or micro-payments – have been shown to increase retirement savings. Financial incentives can also serve as rewards that encourage certain behaviors repeatedly; over time, the behavior might become a habit, leading to long-term pro-saving behavior. As much as possible, Congress should provide financial incentives that motivate employers to offer retirement plans to their employees and encourage employees to save.

3. Trusting People Promotes Self-Efficacy while Saving

People need to feel empowered to make their own choices. When people feel forced or coerced, they may avoid engaging in certain behaviors, even behaviors in their best interest. For example, messaging to eat healthier or stop smoking can have opposite effects on behavior if framed in ways that threaten people’s perceived autonomy. For savings, Congress must promote self-efficacy so people feel they can save on their own terms. This includes trusting people to make their own financial decisions, providing people with the option to opt out of any program feature they don’t like, and allowing people to make tax-free emergency withdrawals from their retirement account if they deem it necessary.

An Ideal Congressional Solution

Ideally, Congress would create a national savings program that provides all workers with a retirement plan if their employer does not offer one. This program should cover both traditional as well as nontraditional workers – including contract, gig, and independent workers – who are disproportionately people of color and/or people with low incomes. Workers should also have the ability to build rainy day funds to more permanently address immediate needs when they arise, rather than being forced to make costly pre-retirement withdrawals. The MarylandSaves program offers one potential model for a solution. This program provides state-sponsored retirement plans to any uncovered worker, as well as emergency savings accounts. The worker’s payroll deductions first fill their emergency savings account up to $1,000 and then go towards their 401(k). Tax-free withdrawals can easily be made from their emergency account for immediate expenses. Additional contributions replenish the emergency account first (if applicable) before adding to their 401(k). Regardless of the specifics, an ideal Congressional solution would provide all workers with access to a retirement account and a vehicle to build emergency savings.

The Path Forward

Currently, in Congress, there are two bipartisan savings bills that begin to tackle these issues. In March 2022, the House passed the Securing a Strong Retirement Act of 2022, and in June 2022, the Senate Finance Committee unanimously approved the Enhancing American Retirement Now (EARN) Act, clearing it for a full Senate vote. To learn more about what these bills do, and which specific provisions from each incorporate the behavioral science principles mentioned above, read our policy brief here. In addition to highlighting which provisions from each bill should be included in a final savings bill passed by Congress, we also include other actions Congress can take to help families build savings.

The post Policy Lab: Leveraging Behavioral Science to Help Families Build Savings appeared first on ideas42.

This year, we mark one decade of an overlooked occasion with outsized impact: Giving Tuesday. During this season, we come together to donate to causes we care about, an altruistic extension of the previous days of indulgence in the United States and a socially conscious way to use any bonus cash we’ve accrued. In 2021, about 35 million Americans donated on Giving Tuesday alone, amounting to over $2.7 billion in collective donations, jump-starting a generous period through December.

At ideas42, we believe in the power of behavioral science to make it easier for people to achieve their charitable giving goals. On Giving Tuesday, many people feel excited about the call to give, but taking action can still feel challenging. In our work with donors, we’ve found that actual giving behavior is not always aligned with the giver’s own values. Instead of giving strategically to causes we care about, for instance, we often donate spur-of-the-moment when a direct solicitation moves us. Yet relying on reactionary donating can bias our decision-making away from deserving and effective charities.

So how can you give intentionally and make the most of your donations? Here are four considerations rooted in behavioral science to help you be more generous and impactful this giving season.

1. How much can I spend?

   Good news! You probably have more to spend on donations than you think. As a first step, take a few minutes to think about how much of your budget you can set aside for charitable giving. Planning your budget will ensure you maximize your charitable donations while preventing you from spending more than you intend to.

   Try putting your giving budget in tangible terms—ordering takeout once a week, going to the movies twice a month, or taking a cab instead of public transportation a few times a year. This will help you steer clear of mental shortcuts that limit your desire to give.

2. What causes matter to me?

   Charitable giving is emotional, so it’s helpful to think about what motivates you to give. This will help strengthen your connection to your giving practice and make it more sustainable over time. Once you determine what drives you and what issues you want to focus on, search for organizations that serve those causes, communities, or geographies. To broaden your impact past the most visible causes, challenge yourself to consider organizations that you usually wouldn’t.

   You can direct your whole giving budget to a single organization, or you can distribute it across a few if that feels better to you. With thousands of options to choose from, it can be hard to choose which organizations to support. One way you might consider distributing your donations is by thinking of a range of causes: one cause in need of urgent aid such as a global crisis or natural disaster, one organization in your area that serves a community you care about, and one organization focusing on solutions that address the root causes of societal issues through advocacy and policy change.

3. How can I multiply my impact?

   Your donation is great, but why not triple it? One of the most powerful mental shortcuts we use when making a decision is to look to what people we trust are doing. Your friends and family may be feeling overwhelmed by the many causes and organizations seeking donations this season. You can help them and increase your impact on the causes you care about by letting your network know where your donations will be headed. To reduce friction that may cause people to give up on donating, make it easy for them: share a direct donation link or post your fundraiser on social media.

4. How can I have an impact throughout the year?

   So you gave your budgeted amount to your favorite causes and shared these causes with your friends and family. Nice! Now can you keep that up all year? It’s going to be harder than you think. Even if we have the best intentions of incorporating a practice of charitable giving into our lives in the new year, we get busy, and grand plans of finding a new and exciting cause to donate to each month get overshadowed by laundry, doctor’s appointments, and birthday parties.

   But you can stop giving from being crowded out by setting up a recurring donation. Setting recurring donations is a smart way to take the burden of remembering off your future self. Even small monthly donations will make a big difference in your overall giving by Giving Tuesday next year.

* * *

Once you’ve hit that last “Donate” button (and checked “Set recurring donation”), take a moment to pat yourself on the back and feel good about what you did. Giving isn’t a requirement, and it comes from the generosity you feel toward people and causes that need help. The warm glow we feel from giving can be a big motivator for continued generosity, so don’t forget to let yourself enjoy it.

The post 4 Tips for Making the Most of This Giving Season appeared first on ideas42.

While most rural pregnant women in Liberia intend to give birth in a health facility, there are many barriers that often prevent them from following through on this intention. Facility-based childbirth requires extensive preparation, from determining when and how to leave for the facility to saving for the cost of transportation and drugs and medical supplies required at the facility. This can create delays in receiving care throughout the course of a woman’s pregnancy and ultimately in arriving and receiving care at the time of delivery. 

In tackling this challenge, our Global Health team, working through the USAID-funded social and behavior change project Breakthrough ACTION, learned about the important and influential role of traditionally trained midwives (TTM), community-based health workers who support and counsel women during pregnancy and often accompany them to the facility both for prenatal care and at the time of labor and delivery. Pregnant women primarily seek advice from the TTMs during pregnancy as a trusted source of information.TTMs often the first point of care during pregnancy, and they advise women on when to leave for the facility for delivery. 

To support women in identifying the necessary logistics and developing a plan to reach the health facility at the time of labor, as well as saving the funds required to support the plan, we conducted a collaborative co-design process to develop a suite of ideas. The co-design process engaged officials from the Liberian Ministry of Health, health care providers, TTMs, and pregnant women and their families. Many of the ideas  leveraged the important relationship between women and TTMs; however, we were faced with a design challenge given the realities of the rural Liberian context:

How do we create an easy to use, engaging tool for childbirth planning and saving — which is institute and can be used by a low literacy population — and needs minimal support and training?

We decided to leverage the tradition of Liberian storytelling to create stories that could be retold by TTMs and could convey the importance of planning for facility-based delivery. Liberian storytelling is a traditional improvisational and participatory oral art form used to share important lessons, oral history, and customs. To develop compelling and memorable stories in a familiar Liberian tradition that could impart important details about how to prepare and save for facility-based delivery, the project worked with Gbahtou Comgbaye, a Philadelphia-based Liberian storyteller. 

Enjoy an excerpt from one of Gbahtou’s stories, “Red Deer, Black Deer,” and see how Gbahtou develops these stories in the video below.

To explore Gbahtou’s other stories and learn more about our other facility-based delivery designs visit our design guide.

The post The Art and Science of Planning for Facility-Based Childbirth in Liberia appeared first on ideas42.

ideas42 was founded nearly 15 years ago on the belief that many of the world’s greatest challenges, particularly those that disproportionately impact those with the least, could benefit from behavioral solutions.

Poverty, education, health, the justice system—across all of these issues and more, persistent inequalities resisted easy resolution. We’ve been at the forefront of pioneering an approach that centered insights about how people actually live and was sensitive to the contexts that shape people’s lives. Now, we’re more sure than ever that behavioral science has an irreplaceable role to play in building a more just world where everyone can thrive. 

What evidence do we have to support that? 

Our 2022 Impact Report showcases the broad range of our work and details how our approach to behavioral design is changing the world. Over the past decade, we’ve refined our work to be even more focused (and ambitious) on how we can counter global inequality.

Closing the gaps that create inequality using behavioral science is our North Star. In everything we do, we ask, How will this move us toward a more equitable world? Though ideas42’s work covers a range of issues, across all of them them our organizing principle remains the same: to remove barriers that perpetuate inequality.

What does this look like in practice? Here are just three Spotlights—representative case studies, chosen from dozens of insights—that showcase what we’ve accomplished and, most importantly, model how ideas42’s approach to behavior change can create impact across a broad range of contexts and in ever more ambitious ways. Recently, we’ve worked to:

1. End mistreatment in maternity care. In 2018, our Global Health team collaborated with birthing women, care providers, health administrators, and policymakers in Zambia to identify why women are often mistreated during childbirth. Our team then worked with the organization Safe Motherhood 360+ as part of the Breakthrough RESEARCH portfolio funded by USAID to develop four solutions that reduced abusive care, increased pain management support, and fostered greater empathy among providers.
2. Boost college students’ success. Our U.S. Education team has found time and again that seemingly minor issues—like procrastinating on an application deadline or being slow to make new friends on campus—can accumulate to push down overall graduation rates. After generating, applying, and testing dozens of behavioral insights to raise college completion rates, we’re scaling up our approach to help millions of U.S. students stay on track and earn degrees.
3. Redefine the narratives of poverty. Tens of millions of Americans live in poverty, struggling to make it from month to month, day to day. Through surveys and focus groups in six cities across the United States, we’ve worked to rigorously examine narratives behind systems that keep people in poverty and limit their ability to lead lives of their own choosing, so those narratives can then be changed. Now, our priority is to move from understanding negative poverty narratives to helping foster positive ones. From our perspective, this is the next frontier in behavioral science. 

We haven’t accomplished these successes (or taken steps in our ever-more ambitious ongoing efforts) alone. We are grateful to our partners, funders, collaborators, and the growing behavioral science community for working with us to fulfill our mission. Because you share a vision for a future where inequality is a thing of the past, we’re optimistic about what’s to come. 

Learn more about our work in our latest impact report or by contacting us at info@ideas42.org.

The post Using behavioral science to close the gaps that create inequality appeared first on ideas42.

The nature of work is changing, and so are the skills required to be successful. While technical or ‘hard’ skills are essential for most jobs, there is growing evidence that ‘soft skills’ such as problem-solving, teamwork, and resilience play a key role in job market success. This is especially critical in low- and even middle-income settings, where employment options can be informal, scarce, and unpredictable. 

Soft skills, sometimes referred to as transferable skills, employability skills, or non-cognitive skills, are non-technical skills and competencies that help people navigate their environment, interact positively with others, and perform well in the labor market. To date, we’ve worked on soft skills development programs that include persistence, teamwork, communication, resilience, self-efficacy, and problem-solving.

Soft skills, and even qualities typically deemed ‘personality traits’ like perseverance, are skills that can be learned. This is why many workforce development programs include ‘soft skills’ and ‘life skills’ trainings as part of their curriculum. However, as we know from behavioral science, an introduction to a skill does not often lead to a person adopting and using it—decreasing the effectiveness of these programs and increasing the obstacles job seekers face as they try to stay competitive in an unpredictable market. 

The designs of traditional workforce development programs are rife with behavioral barriers job seekers must overcome before they can adopt and use their new skills in the workforce. From the hassles associated with learning about, applying to, and, ultimately, enrolling in the program to begin with, to then attending and actively participating in it, job seekers juggling competing priorities may find themselves unsuccessful at completing every step–even if they have a clear intention. And then, completion of the training is not enough, as successfully utilizing new skills requires that the lessons are salient in the moments they need to use them.

The good news is behavioral science provides a clear—and often more cost-effective—path to designing workforce development programs that help job seekers overcome such obstacles and gain the benefits the programs were made to provide. Seemingly small changes to programs, such as adjusting program timing or reframing its benefits, can have outsize impacts on successful job seeker participation when informed by behavioral science.

Here are just a few examples of some of the common behavioral barriers job seekers face with workforce programs, and some solutions that could overcome them: 

1. Problem Structure and Timing

Soft skills cannot simply be learned from a book: learning them requires experiential, active learning approaches. Ample time for practice, feedback, and reflection are necessary for ensuring these skills are top of mind, especially for job seekers experiencing resource or time scarcity. Interactive trainings, such as personal initiative trainings, are an important alternative as they allow participants to learn by doing — bridging the “know-do” gap so that people are better equipped to apply the right skills at the right time. Programs should also include follow-up refreshers, reminders, and nudges such as prompts to think about soft skills, to maximize retention and practice.

2. Complex Curriculums 

All people have limited attention. The more their attentive capacity is stretched, the more difficult it is to process new information. Participants in workforce programs likely have numerous priorities in their day-to-day lives that compete for their attention. Adding in long and comprehensive soft skills lessons may be overloading participants with unnecessarily detailed and complex information that inadvertently hinders learning. Behavioral insights point to ways programs can make key lessons easier to learn, absorb, and apply. For example, using shorter formats delivered in channels that meet participants where they are. We’ve previously designed an effective mobile-based training that simplified financial management lessons into digestible rules-of-thumb for participants to follow. 

3. Priming Negative Identities

Programs may, intentionally or unintentionally, ‘prime’ identities that individuals hold, and subsequently reinforce false narratives or stereotypes associated with that identity, which could prevent learning and action from taking place. Priming could lead job seekers to behave in ways that are associated with negative stereotypes of that identity and limit their perceptions of what they can achieve. To combat this, behaviorally designed programs should promote positive self-identity by highlighting positive social norms and/or adjusting program components to account for different identities. For example, when we worked to support women in Liberia to start businesses, we found that women perceived they had limited opportunities in traditionally male-dominated fields. As a result, we designed posters portraying women in male-dominated fields, such as brick-making, construction and electronics shops, and included testimonials from previous female participants as advocates for the training.

Soft skills can add tremendous value to people seeking to stay competitive in a rapidly shifting job market, but workforce programs seeking to teach soft skills must be designed to support individuals throughout the process of learning, developing, and applying such skills. Behavioral science is a cost-effective solution for strengthening and scaling soft skills programs by redesigning the program around how job seekers really live, think, and behave.

At ideas42, we are actively looking for avenues to incorporate behavioral science insights to improve the impact of workforce development programs, and by extension the economic well-being and stability of the lives of people around the world. Interested in partnering with us to enhance the design of your program? Email us at livelihoods@ideas42.org.

The post Why Soft Skills Development Programs Need Behavioral Science appeared first on ideas42.

The words spoken by public government officials matter; and more often than not, such words have real-life implications for the decisions people make and the actions they do or don’t take.

For example, much attention has been paid to President Biden’s recent declaration that the pandemic is “over”. On a recent episode of the broadcast news program 60 Minutes: “We still have a problem with COVID-19. We’re still doing a lot of work on it. But the pandemic is over . . . If you notice, no one’s wearing masks. Everybody seems to be in pretty good shape.” And although the president walked these statements back a few days later, the weight of those words were already felt, and the potential damage already done to current risk mitigation efforts.

While there may be nothing inherently untrue about any of these statements, their sentiment reinforces a pre-existing mental model Americans have of pandemics – in particular, regarding the behavior changes called for in the interest of public health over the last two years. In this case, the mental model of intentional risk mitigation acts such as public masking, staying up to date on vaccinations, and staying home when sick will no longer be necessary once the pandemic is over.

Declaring the pandemic over has created further division among two camps in the country. Those who agree with President Biden’s recent sentiments feel the emergency state of COVID-19 has stabilized and essentially ‘downgraded’ into an endemic disease, easily manageable like the seasonal flu (which continues to kill thousands of people each year). Those who disagree feel the pandemic is still widely unpredictable and dangerous, as evidenced by the fact that in addition to killing nearly 400 Americans from COVID-19 per day, it continues actively mutating and impacting people across the globe. Regardless of one’s position in this division, declaring the pandemic “over” has complicated the ongoing – and still necessary – public health efforts to fight COVID-19.

However the status of the pandemic is labeled, it continues to be a public health crisis in part because much of the early burden for risk mitigation was placed on individuals to change their behaviors (e.g. wear a mask, social distance, get vaccine/booster shots, etc.). It’s no surprise that as a population, we’ve grown somewhat complacent over time as the COVID-19 death toll no longer dominates our news or social media feeds. Much of this is understandable– gradually we will habituate to almost any new situation over time, even an emergency state. Moreover, the physical, social, and emotional toll of the pandemic has been difficult for many to bear and people are ready to move on. However, an authority making a declarative statement about the pandemic’s end has real-world implications for the way people perceive and respond to an ongoing crisis. Predictably, it can undermine behavioral recommendations made by public health officials to mitigate disease spread and protect its most vulnerable populations by making common-sense strategies – like wearing a mask in public when sick – seem less necessary. It also renders a government-run public health system that already suffers from lack of trustworthiness even weaker.

Beyond that, there are two key psychological principles — confirmation bias and decision fatigue — that help inform how people’s perceptions are formed, leading to behaviors that are either curbing the spread of COVID-19 or inadvertently contributing to its spread.

Confirmation Bias

Confirmation bias is the process of seeking or interpreting evidence in ways that align with existing beliefs, expectations, or a hypothesis at hand. It explains our tendency to cherry-pick information that confirms our existing beliefs or ideas, and dismiss information that goes against those beliefs. Initially, widespread social media misinformation and medical distrust amongst some communities had a significant impact on people’s interpretation of whether or not they should adhere to standard risk-mitigation guidelines. President Biden’s recent remarks about the pandemic being “over” merely caused people to strengthen their existing personal beliefs about basic risk mitigation behaviors–people who agreed feel justified in discontinuing those behaviors, and people who disagreed feel justified in continuing them. Confirmation bias helped entrench existing inclinations to disregard COVID-19 recommendations, at precisely a time when we need more people to increase risk mitigation behaviors.

To address confirmation bias, change the context

Our first recommendation is to reframe “COVID-19 mitigation behaviors” as “behaviors that further public health.” In particular, the group of people in the “movable middle” may have been taking certain actions (such as wearing a mask, handwashing, and covering up coughs and sneezes) because they felt temporary and limited to the context of a pandemic. This group is probably most likely to stop those behaviors once that context is removed, especially if they see those behaviors as burdensome. Now that we’ve had a statement from the president declaring the pandemic to be over, many of these people will now see that as a reason to let go of those behaviors, even though many of them are basic public health practices that are beneficial even outside of a pandemic.

One potential way to address this response to the changed context is to work on detaching public health behaviors from the specific context of the pandemic. For example, sharing messaging that reframes what was previously “COVID-19 risk mitigation behaviors” as general “public health behaviors” that are evergreen. Repeating this evergreen advice and increasing coordination between public health entities/figureheads so that their messages are clear, consistent, and do not conflict can also help counter repeated misinformation and the confusion of ever-changing public health guidance.

Relatedly, we need to acknowledge that for many people (including people who are immunocompromised, elderly, or chronically ill), COVID will remain a major risk for the foreseeable future. We cannot leave these populations behind in our efforts to create a new normal. The early days of the pandemic forced us to confront the fact that many essential services have not been equally accessible to all, and many changes were made to increase accessibility–including more flexibility for things like telehealth services, paid sick leave, and virtual participation in classes, conferences, and other events. However, many of these options have gone away over the past year, taking with them many people’s ability to meaningfully participate in society and access essential services. Rather than viewing these options as pandemic-limited, we must reframe these accommodations as evergreen and continue to push for maintained (and improved) accessibility, which will be beneficial even in a COVID-free world.

Decision Fatigue

Decision fatigue describes the act of choosing between options depleting self-control. It refers to the deteriorating quality of decisions made by an individual after a long session of decision-making. Since the onset of the pandemic, many people have been forced to make staggering pandemic priority decisions in a rapid and constantly changing environment. The pandemic has also made the process of making routine decisions seem unavoidably non-routine. Yet, following President Biden’s remarks, it seems that making mundane decisions should become easier. But at what cost or risk?

Should we attend our favorite band’s concert next summer, or would it be a safer bet to ask Alexa to shuffle their greatest hits? Should we continue to get booster shots, or run the risk of getting exposure to and passing on immune-evasive variants to vulnerable populations? These are examples of a number of decisions that add up to a state of decision fatigue, which wouldn’t ordinarily be part of our daily lives if it were not for the COVID-19 pandemic.

To address decision fatigue, increase slack

To help the group of people who might be fatigued from the past 2 ½ years of COVID-19 avoidance, we can find ways to reduce the burden on individuals to take action. This involves refocusing efforts away from only promoting the take-up of individual behaviors, spending more time on changing the behaviors of groups and organizations. For example, pushing for upgraded HVAC systems for improved ventilation can help remove some of the burden of individual masking at all times indoors.

As we shift to a new phase of the pandemic, complacency threatens to take away many of the gains we’ve made fighting COVID-19 over the last 2 ½ years and exposes us to continued and greater public health consequences in the future. It will take proven, behavioral science strategies to keep people safe. Regardless of what we believe the current status of the pandemic is, we still need the government and public health institutions to communicate clear, reliable messages that protect its residents and prepare us for the next health crisis that will inevitably arrive. This will require messaging that better frames peoples’ perceptions and does not discourage them from engaging in risk-reducing behaviors.

The post What it means to say that the COVID-19 pandemic is “over” appeared first on ideas42.

This is part of a series of conversations with members of the Niger and Burkina Faso National Innovations Teams (NITs), a group of 54 health professionals across government and non-profit sectors. NIT members engage in a hybrid online and in-person applied learning curriculum developed by ideas42, which includes an introduction to behavioral design and hands-on coaching from our behavioral economics experts.

Through the course, members develop and refine innovative solutions based on feedback from end users to address behavioral challenges across a range of health areas. The Burkina Faso and Niger NITs were established in 2020 by Breakthrough ACTION, the U.S. Agency for International Development’s flagship social and behavior change program.

This spotlight features Hamsatou Moumouni Moudi, head of the Communications and Public Relations Division at the Ministry of Public Health, Population and Social Affairs in Niger. During this interview, she explains how the knowledge she has received is being disseminated within the Ministry of Health, within other organizations, and as a trainer at the Institute of Public Health to a new generation of communicators.

Name: Hamsatou Moumouni Moudi
Country: Niger
Title: Communications and Public Relations Head
Organization: Ministry of Public Health, Population and Social Affairs

What motivated you to attend the training for both cycles? 

My team designs media and communication tools that promote behavior change, but we’ve often been confronted with behavioral barriers and constraints getting the community to change their behaviors. No matter how much we raised awareness, there has always been a certain reluctance. In other words, we haven’t been able to change the community’s behavior the way we intended to. We knew that something was wrong with our approach, and we wanted to understand why. We recognized the need for innovation. Breakthrough ACTION has really helped us develop innovative solutions that have the potential for impact. My motivation is to learn and adopt innovative approaches that will improve our communication strategies and results.

Is there anything that surprised you about cycle 1, cycle 2, or the refresher training?

What surprised me the most was learning about the importance of the development process—the process of engineering of materials—during the design phase. Now, I understand that outreach alone does not lead to behavior change, and that design is an integral piece to behavior change approaches. You have to go beyond believing that just because someone becomes aware of an issue, you’ve consequently convinced them that it’s an issue that impacts them and they will now decide to change their behavior in response to it—or that deciding they’d like to change their behavior means that they will follow through with it. Before, we believed people when they said they had made a decision and believed that they would act on it. We really thought that they would do it, that they couldn’t not act according to it. Now, I’ve learned that making a decision is simply not enough to change people’s actions, you have to continue to nudge them toward it.

Is there anything different in the way you now work?

Admittedly, we used to produce communication materials and then think the problem was solved. All that was left to do was to display the material. Then, once that had happened, we believed we had sufficiently raised awareness. Now that we’ve joined the National Innovation Team, we’ve learned how to do real design, which calls on a lot of other expertise in areas like psychology and sociology—aspects that help us better understand our intended audiences and stakeholders. Since then, I don’t take design lightly and I don’t rely on pretense. Instead, I carefully investigate the context, which is often not an easy thing to do. Incorporating behavior goes beyond people’s knowledge and attitudes, and allows me to create more effective designs. For a long time, we allowed ourselves to design without considering the socio-ecological context, but now we realize that every aspect of this context has its own purpose and deserves to be explored further.

Can you give an example? 

We’ve started paying much more attention to mood, physical environment, and social context. We’ve also learned how to account for chronic scarcity. We didn’t consider these things before. For example, we’d often approach organizing events around increasing visibility. We didn’t think about how there could be specific moments or new things in people’s everyday lives that could push them to take action. We learned this through the NIT training.

What has been most useful for you, and what will be most useful to you in your daily work?

Our department is at the macro level of the ministry and is attached to the General Secretariat. This means we’re in charge of coordinating all forms of communication, including responding to any government communication concerns. With the arrival of Breakthrough ACTION, we’ve created another group to coordinate social and behavior change communication specifically. For example, if the nutrition department wants to design new tools, we submit the designs to this group for validation. Now that I’ve learned that design requires much more innovation, I make sure that we use NIT-trained colleagues in the development of new designs and prototypes. We’ve stopped doing things the way they used to be done in how we approach developing communication tools. We also make sure partners understand it takes time to incorporate innovative approaches into project planning and implementation—and that good design necessitates it. I’ve also since adapted the way I teach at the National Institute of Public Health to incorporate what I’ve learned through the training and teach my students innovative approaches. The training has all had a big impact on my philosophies and approaches to my everyday work.

Do you have any other thoughts on the course? 

Soon, we’ll be revising the curriculum in our health worker training institute and are counting on Breakthrough ACTION to help us set up a pool of trainers. Through this training, they will learn how to innovate in the field and will be prepared to practice and implement innovative approaches using behavioral economics. Creating small groups that receive more training after the original workshop could be helpful so that some trainers are able to deepen their mastery of design and provide ongoing training and supervision to others on the ground.

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