New Study: Information and Belief Changes Have Limited Effect on Individual Behavior Change

Social support and tapping into an individuals habits can have a more sizeable impact when trying to bring about behavioural changes in people in times of a pandemic or for tackling climate change as strategies like giving accurate information or trying to change beliefs have negligible effects, a new study has found.Removing practical obstacles to behaviour like providing health insurance to encourage healthy behaviour too can be effective, they said.Interventions targeting knowledge, general attitudes, beliefs, administrative and legal sanctions, and trustworthiness -- these factors researchers and policy makers put so much weight on -- are actually quite ineffective.

Social support and tapping into an individual's habits can have a more ''sizeable impact'' when trying to bring about behavioural changes in people in times of a pandemic or for tackling climate change as strategies like giving accurate information or trying to change beliefs have ''negligible effects,'' a new study has found.

Removing practical obstacles to behaviour like providing health insurance to encourage healthy behaviour too can be effective, they said.

''Interventions targeting knowledge, general attitudes, beliefs, administrative and legal sanctions, and trustworthiness -- these factors researchers and policy makers put so much weight on -- are actually quite ineffective. They have negligible effects,'' Dolores Albarracín from the University of Pennsylvania, US, said. The study, reviewing results from multiple studies, is published in the journal Nature Reviews Psychology.

Unfortunately, many policies and reports are centred around goals like increasing vaccine confidence (example of an attitude) or curbing misinformation, Albarracín said.

Co-author Javier Granados Samayoa, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, said while targeting knowledge and beliefs to effect behavioural changes seems straightforward, ''it's not that easy.'' ''What the literature suggests is that there are a lot of intervening processes that have to line up for people to actually act on those beliefs, so it's not that easy,'' he said.

The authors said knowing which behavioural change interventions work at what level - individual or social - will be especially crucial in the face of growing health and environmental challenges.

In their analysis, the researchers found that 'knowledge' measures like educating people about the pros of vaccination and measures targeted at 'general skills' like programmes encouraging people to quit smoking had negligible effects on changing behaviours.

Instead, they found that targeting habits at an individual's level such as extending support to people for starting or stopping a behaviour was effective.Measures targeting attitudes and which involved making people associate certain behaviours as being 'good' or 'bad' also were helpful in causing a change in behaviour, the researchers said.

Empowering people with skills such as learning how to remove obstacles towards achieving a certain desirable behaviour also is an effective measure, they said.

Social strategies like vaccine sanctions and structural measures aimed at improving trust or justice in an organisation or government entity (like providing means for voters to voice their concerns) too were found to be ineffective in changing behaviours.

Instead, the researchers observed that measures improving access like providing flu vaccinations at work could effect more behavioural changes.

They also found that measures encouraging social support - for example, enabling groups of people helping each other meet their physical activity goals - were effective in bringing about changes.

The researchers, therefore, called for policy makers to look at evidence for determining which factors will return the investment.

''When faced with massive problems like climate change, policy makers and other leaders have this desire to do something to change people's behaviour for the better,'' Samayoa said.

''Our research can inform future interventions and create programs that are actually effective, not just what people assume is effective,'' he said.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)