Scientific Impact on Socially Beneficial Behaviors: Impact and Efficiency Evidence From Behavior Change Interventions

Psychology and related fields have developed a science of behavior change that supports interventions in various areas, including health, sustainability, and education. This review assesses the contributions of each discipline to the performance (i.e., efficacy) and efficiency (i.e., cost-effectiveness) of these interventions. We analyzed published experimental studies targeting 16 intervention targets, including knowledge, beliefs, social norms, social support, access, and habits. For each target, we estimated its prevalence in the literature, its efficacy in changing behavior, and its cost-effectiveness in improving outcomes. We then used GPT to assess the degree to which 14 academic disciplines (e.g., social psychology, psychology, communication, economics, and engineering) are linked to each target, based on their centrality to conceptualizing and measuring it. These disciplinary ratings were combined with target efficacy and cost-effectiveness to estimate each discipline's overall contribution to behavioral change. Psychology, including social and cognitive psychology, made the largest contribution to efficacious interventions, followed by communication, public health, and medicine. Economics and neuroscience were associated with the most cost-effective interventions, although all disciplines fell significantly below a common benchmark for cost-effectiveness in the health sector (i.e., $50,000 QALY). Despite its efficacy and cost-effectiveness, psychology receives relatively limited federal funding compared to other disciplines.