Thread by @vascobrazao

A little behavior change story: How I Used ✨Behavioral Science✨ to Reduce Anxiety & Save My Relationship.

Alternate title: The 1 Weird Trick Smoke Detectors Don't Want You to Know!!

Anyway, come along ☺👇

#BehavioralScience #BehaviorChange

We recently moved to a new apartment with an old water boiler. You get a long lighter and light the little pilot flame when you want to use it, but you should turn it off once you're done to spare the mechanism and because less gas use = less money for russia to commit genocide.

Also you don't want to leave that flame on when you leave the house and then have intrusive thoughts about that one time you left the soup on the stove for 5 hours and is our house burning down and why am I so stupid we should have never made plans OUTSIDE anyway ahhhh

And yet, I KEPT FORGETTING.

"Did you turn off the gas?"

"Shit- I don't know. Did I??"

"Why don't you care about this?"

"I do! But brain... Brain silly."

So... how to help brain be less silly and avoid a fiery doom?

A great conceptual tool behavioral scientists use is the COM-B model of behavior, part of the Behavior Change Wheel framework.

Check out this open-access paper led by @SusanMichie for details, keep reading 🤓 for the gist!

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…

Why do we do what we do? We've done a deep dive on motivation before, so today we will zoom out a bit.

According to the COM-B model, there are ✨three essential conditions✨ for a behavior to occur: capability, opportunity, and motivation. What's that?

🧠💪 CAPABILITY is about your internal ability to the thing -- the knowledge, the skills, the strength.

Do you know you should be doing the thing? Do you know how to physically do the thing? Are you able to physically do the thing?

🛠👍 OPPORTUNITY is external ability -- the people around you, the objects in your way, the amount of time.

Does the physical and social world around you permit and encourage you to do the thing? Do you see important others doing the thing? Do you have time to do the thing?

💎⚡ MOTIVATION is the driving force -- your wants, needs, intentions, desires.

Do you want to do the thing more than you want to not do it? Do you believe it is good to do the thing? Is doing the thing pleasurable to you? Is it a habit?

Here's a diagram to help you remember: for a behavior to occur, Capability, Opportunity, and Motivation must be present. And your behaviors themselves influence these factors. To change a behavior, you should consider the entire system. Now back to the water boiler.

Let's do a quick behavioral diagnosis 🧐 to help us figure out what to do about the problem.

Did I have capability? Of course! I already knew

🧠 That I should be turning off the fire, and
🧠 How to do it with this water boiler. Plus,
💪 I had done it before and had the necessary strength and dexterity (nothing to be too proud of).

Did I have motivation? You bet I did!

💎 I understood why I should turn off the fire, and really wanted to do it. Plus,
⚡ Fear of firey doom is an extremely strong motivator 😱

Did I have opportunity? Well..

👍 Social opportunity yes -- @boychenko_sasha will attest that, ahem, the other people in the house highly approved of correct behavior. Plus,
🛠 Twas easy access to the boiler and the required knobs.

But... How should I know WHEN to turn it off?

By the time I was done showering I would get into automatic mode and forget any pre-shower intention I might have of turning off the fire. Also, it's possible we would wash dishes after, or someone else would shower, and by then who knows what I would be thinking about...

I would pass by the kitchen blissfully unaware that behind the closed white door there was a little flame that no one remembered to turn off.

Until I ran COM-B in my head and ... 💡 that's it💡! If I could only SEE from afar if the fire was on, all might just fall into place.

Sawing off a display window was out of the question, so I made an AI system:

Every time you turn on the fire, human-powered AI moves a little sheet in a little envelope thingy to indicate 🔥danger🔥. When you turn it back off, the same Intelligence moves it back. Wanna see?

🎇Ta-da! A wonderful little behavioral intervention, made with mine own hands and sweat (increasing my commitment to this little game), that has so far not failed us once. I think?

There are two crucial elements:
1. We *always* do the little action. It is very easy to do if you piggyback it with turning the fire off/on. It becomes part of the motion: look at paper ➡ change to new position ➡ open door ➡ change the fire ➡ close door.

2. The default is that it stays off. We pass by the kitchen often and notice whether the fire is off. If it's on, we either turn it off immediately or confirm that it's on for a reason.

Behavioral science is not a panacea, and little parts of it (e.g., nudges) cannot possibly solve all our problems. But looking at problems through the tools behavioral science offers us can often lead to insightful solutions!

So, next time you puzzle at your or someone else's behavior -- "Why can't you just do it?" Remember COM-B (🧠💪 CAPABILITY, 🛠👍 OPPORTUNITY, 💎⚡ MOTIVATION) and consider if one or more elements are missing.

Should the missing element be Motivation, the algorithm thinks you might want to check this thread out next:

https://twitter.com/vascobrazao/status/1356346474364342273