The key to behavior change: removing roadblocks

LF46 | Since healthy longevity is largely about behavior change, this handy book about five ways to REDUCE barriers to change is well worth a read

The Catalyst by Jonah Berger (Amazon)

As I explore how to make healthy longevity happen, a lot of it comes down to behaviour change. In my explorations on this topic I came across Catalyst, by Wharton Professor and NYT best selling author Jonah Berger. This book starts with the very reasonable assumption that simply telling someone to do something rarely works, instead it suggests identifying the roadblocks preventing people from changing. It lays out five of these, in a handy acronym, REDUCE:

REACTANCE

As Newton’s 3rd Law states, the harder you push, the harder they’ll push back. Instead of telling someone what to do it suggests giving the other person agency; for example sharing a set of options for your recalcitrant toddler who doesn’t want to get dressed (‘Do you want Daddy to put your shirt on, or would you like to do it…? It works.)

Active listening by building trust and mirroring also works - hence the approach now taken by hostage negotiators is to befriend and engage even violent criminals, rather than trying to brow beat them into submission.

This concept reminds me of another book I’ve just been recommended, Scarcity, which explores how people tend to obsess about the things they can’t have.

ENDOWMENT

This recognizes the inertia that keeps people wanting to vote for the same party or shop in the same place, year after year. This is related to the strong sense of loss aversion - people tend to value losing the same thing more than buying it new. To get round this, you could try highlighting the costs of inaction - doing nothing is not a costless exercise, it’s not as easy as you think. In 1519 when Hernán Cortés landed in Mexico, he gave the order to ‘burn the boats’; this was a way to commit to a new path and not backslide to the comfortable status quo.

Dominic Cummins deployed smart tactics to overcome the endowment effect with Brexit; it was generally thought people would stick with the status quo and not leave Europe. He highlighted the cost of inaction, with the (perniciously false) promise that leaving the EU would allow the UK to give the £350m per week to the revered NHS. And he countered the inherent loss aversion by reframing the status quo not as the last 50 years of relatively successful EU membership, but some hazy, ideal time in the past (we won the War, right) with the slogan ‘Take Back Control’. Brilliant, effective and deadly.

DISTANCE

This is about not being too far outside what people deem acceptable, resulting in a quick No, i.e. you need to avoid the zone of rejection. Knowing what this is isn’t trivial, but a safe strategy is to ask for less. So to get a volunteer to spend a weekend cleaning trash from the beaches, you probably want to start by seeing if they’d be willing to have a phone call or a short meeting, allowing them to get closer to where you need them to be.

The author suggests identifying those in the middle ground who may be willing to move over a particular issue - so for gun rights advocates there’s likely to be a range of topics they feel more strongly about than others; find the ones with common ground to start with and work from there.

UNCERTAINTY

One logical reason people may not want to move is because they don’t know what the other state would mean for them. Consider offering them a trial, to get a sense of what the new world looks like, without requiring them to be all in from Day One.

The tech world has discovered this approach with freemium products that allow a try before you buy. They’ve also addressed this with lowering costs, making products free for consumers by creating an advertising-based business model.

CORROBORATING EVIDENCE

The CE in the word REDUCE comes from what is essentially social validation; sources of data from trusted sources that make it seems safer and less unusual to adopt the new. Here you can benefit from strength in numbers - everybody’s doing it! - to show that the new path is increasingly common. It also matters where the evidence comes from - is it people like us rather than a group of others that we wouldn’t be swayed by.

Finally, the timing of the evidence can be impactful; two similar messages from trusted people a year apart may not make as much of an impression as those same two messages two days apart.

This is an easy read (one plane ride, domestic) and lays out this practical approach that you can start to see being applied everywhere. Trying to pitch the board on a big new initiative? Don’t start with the ask but get them on side first, give them options, empower them to make the decision with you, highlight the costs of inaction, offer it in bite-size chunks, remind them it’s core to their mission and identity and show how everyone else is doing it. The same applies whether it’s a corporate initiative or a someone trying to not eat a cookie.

Would be interested in hearing stories about this working, or not. Good luck changing hearts and minds!