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E. C. Tolman emphasized the purposiveness of behavior — the idea that much of our behavior is goal-directed. For instance, employees who aim for a promotion work diligently to meet their targets. Tolman argued that when classical conditioning and operant conditioning occur, the organism acquires certain expectations. In classical conditioning, a child might fear a dog because they expect it to bite. In operant conditioning, a person might consistently work overtime because they expect a...
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Errors as a Means of Reducing Impulsive Food Choice
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Learning from Behavioural Changes That Fail.

Magda Osman1, Scott McLachlan2, Norman Fenton3

  • 1Biological and Experimental Psychology Group, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK.

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|November 1, 2020
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Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Examining failed behavior change interventions reveals valuable insights. Understanding why interventions backfire advances the science and practice of behavior change.

Keywords:
behaviour changebehavioural interventionscausal analysisfailurenudgepolicy making

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Area of Science:

  • Behavioral Science
  • Psychology
  • Public Health

Background:

  • Behavior change techniques are widely used by organizations and institutions.
  • Existing research focuses on factors contributing to successful behavior change.
  • There is a need to understand why interventions sometimes fail.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To explore the value of studying failed behavior change interventions.
  • To identify causal pathways underlying intervention failures.
  • To develop a taxonomy of causal interactions leading to failure.

Main Methods:

  • Analysis of interventions that inadvertently failed.
  • Identification of underlying causal mechanisms of failure.
  • Development of a taxonomy categorizing types of failure.

Main Results:

  • Failure analysis provides novel insights into behavior change.
  • Specific causal pathways characterize different types of intervention failure.
  • A taxonomy of causal interactions in failure was established.

Conclusions:

  • Studying intervention failures offers unique theoretical and practical advancements.
  • Understanding 'backfiring effects' is crucial for effective behavior change strategies.
  • The proposed taxonomy can guide future intervention design and evaluation.