Technology and Behaviour Change

Adam N JoinsonProfessor of Behaviour ChangeBehavioural Research Lab & Bristol Social Marketing CentreBristol Business School

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• McLuhan (1963):- technology as an extension of human senses.

Affordances

• A quality of the object

• An ‘action possibility’

• A ‘perceived’ affordance - relational

Persuasive technology

• B J Fogg

E-A-S-T framework

Extension

• Based on McLuhan’s definition of media

• Technology and tools…

• Make things faster, easier, more efficient.

• Remove barriers to completing an action – ease of completion

• Makes new actions possible

• Changes the reward structure

Extension

Amplification• Use of the tool amplifies an existing effect.• E.g. Uncertainty Reduction Theory (Berger,

1979)• Online interaction amplifies uncertainty,

and reduction behaviour (Tidwell & Walther, 1992; Gibbs, Eliison & Lai, 2011)

• E.g. Multiple audiences and anxiety (Goffman, 1959)• Marder, Joinson & Shankar (in prep) –

impact of multiple audiences on Facebook.

Social proof Social proof

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AUTHORITY

SCARCITY

CONSISTENCY

Computers as Social Actors• Reeves and Nass (1996): people apply

social rules to interaction with objects, computers.

• E.g. reciprocity (Moon, 2000), politeness (Fogg and Nass, 1997)

• Amplification can occur via application of social rules to interaction with a tool…

Shaping

• Choice architecture / nudges plus perceived (and real) affordances.

• “we shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us” (Churchill, 1943)

• Power of defaults (e.g. opt-out organ donation, pensions etc)

Shaping via defaults

Shaping

Shaping via biases

Shaping via constraints

Shaping via constraints

Shaping: Rewards

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Questions?

Discussion