CHANGING

BEHAVIOR

1 Warm up
In pairs, discuss the following questions.

1. Have you eaten more than you should have at any point in the last month?
2. Have you exercised less than you should at any point in the last month?
3. Have you ever left the bathroom without washing your hands?
4. Have you ever texted while driving?
5. What do you think it would take for you to always make better decisions in each of the
above questions?

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2 Listening comprehension

Listen to the first section of the talk "How to Change Your Behavior for the Better" (00:00-03:39)
and decide if the following statements are True or False.

1. The topic of the talk is how appearance can make a difference.

2. The speaker thinks talking about dangerous behavior is easier in public than talking about
personal hygiene.

3. The speaker believes the problem with financial literacy is that people don’t have enough
information about it.

4. The speaker believes changing the environment is more effective than trying to change people.

5. His rocket metaphor is to underline the need to make change as easy as possible and to give
people the highest amount of motivation possible.

3 Identifying vocabulary

Complete the vocabulary by writing in the missing vowels (a,e,i,o,u).

1. _ ll _ re (n) - the quality of being able to attract and excite people

2. _ l _ gn (v) - to be arranged in a way so as to be able to work together
3. br _ nd _ d (adj.) - being made by a well-known business and displaying the logo or emblem
4. c _ nf _ _ nded (adj.) - being confused and surprised
5. g _ n _ r _ c (adj.) - shared by all the elements of a group of things, not special in any way
6. p _ r _ ty (n) - the quality of not being mixed with anything else

Now write the vocabulary in the correct gaps in the second part of the talk (page three). You may
have to change the form of the word.

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 How to Change Your Behavior for the Better
Part 2
A. So let’s first talk about friction. In this particular
case study I’ll tell you about, there’s a pharmacy, an
online pharmacy. Imagine you go to your doctor.
You have a long-term illness, your doctor
prescribes to you a medication, you sign up for this
online pharmacy and you get your medication in
the mail every 90 days. Every 90 days, medication,
medication, medication. And this online pharmacy
wants to switch people from 1
medication to
2
medication. So
send people letters, and they say, "Please, please,
please, switch to generics. You will save money, we
will save money, your employer will save money."
And what do people do? Nothing.
B. So they try all kinds of things and nothing happens.
So for one year, they give people an amazing offer.
They send people a letter, and they say, "If you
switch to generics now, it will be free for a whole
year." Free for a whole year. Amazing! What
percentage of people do you think switched? Less
than 10 percent. At this point, they show up to my
office. And they come to complain. Why did they
pick me? I wrote a couple of papers on the "
free." In those papers, we showed that if you
reduce the price of something for, let’s say, 10
cents to one cent, nothing much happens. You
reduce it from one cent to zero, now people get
excited.
C. And they said, "Look, we read these papers on
’free,’ we gave ’free.’ Not working as we expected.
What’s going on?" I said, "You know, maybe it’s
a question of friction." They said, "What do you
mean?" I said, "People are starting with branded.
They can do nothing and end with branded. To
move to generic, they have to choose generic over
branded, but they also have to do something. They
have to return the letter." So this is what we call a
" 4
design."
D. Two things are happening at the same time. It’s
branded versus generic, but it’s doing nothing
versus doing something. So I said, "Why don’t we
switch it? Why don’t we send people a letter and
say, ’We’re switching you to generics. You don’t
need to do anything. If you want to stay with
branded, please return the letter.’" Right? What do
you think happened? Lawyers, lawyers happened.
It turns out, this is illegal.
they
E. By the way, for brainstorming and creativity, doing
things that are illegal and immoral, it’s fine, as long
as it’s just in the brainstorming phase. But this was
the
5
of the idea,
because the initial design was the branded had the
no-action benefit. In my illegal, immoral design,
generic had the no-action benefit. But they agreed
to give people a T-intersection: send people a letter
and say, "If you don’t return this letter, we will be
forced to stop your medications. But when you
return the letter, you could choose branded at this
price, generic at this price." Now people had to take
3
of
an action. They were on even footing. Right? It
wasn’t that one had the no-action benefit. What
percentage do you think switched? The vast
majority switched. So what does it tell us? Do
people like generics, or do we like branded? We
hate returning letters.
F. This is the story of friction: small things really
matter. And friction is about taking the desired
behavior and saying: Where do we have too much
friction so it’s slowing people down from acting on
it? And every time you see that the desired
behavior and the easy behavior are not 6
,
it means we want to try and realign them. That’s the
first part. We talked about friction.
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4 Reading comprehension

Skim the second part of the talk (page three) and answer the following questions in your own words.

1. Did giving people a financial incentive to change their behavior work?

2. What effect did giving people an even larger financial incentive to change their behavior have?

3. Why was the company who wanted change upset with the speaker?

4. What was the friction in this particular example?

5. What does the speaker say is illegal?

6. What was the result of forcing people to choose?

7. What is the conclusion regarding desired behavior and easy behavior?

5 Listening for detail

Listen to the third section (07:20-11:41) of the talk and complete the notes with one or two words.

1
The next study took place in Kibera, a very poor community in . The
aim of the study was to encourage them to save money. This was tried in different ways.

1) A text asking them to save money.

2
2) A text made to look as though it was from asking them to save
money.
3
3) A text saying that if they saved shillings they would get 10% or
20% interest.

4) The same idea as number 3, but instead of getting the money afterwards, they got it before and
4
would lose it if they didn’t save enough. This is an idea known as , which
is thought to work because people are more open to not getting extra money compared to losing
money.

5) Using a coin to note down if they saved or not each week.

5
The most effective of all these methods was .

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6 Reading for gist
Write the given adjectives in the correct gap in the fourth part of the talk (page five).

complex / crazy / familiar / sad / poor / invisible / difficult

How to Change Your Behavior for the Better

Part 4

A. So, I’ll tell you how I started thinking about the coin, and then we’ll come back to it. So, you know, when I do
research on, let’s say, buying coffee, I don’t need to go anywhere. I can sit in my office. I’ve bought enough
coffee. I know how it works. The details, I’m 1
with. When you do research in some
of the poorest places in the world, you have to go and visit and see what’s going on and get some insight
about how the system works. And on that particular day, I’m in a place called Soweto in South Africa, and I’m
sitting in a place that sells funeral insurance.

B. You know, in the US people spend 2

amounts of money on weddings? In
South Africa, it’s funerals. People spend up to a year or two years of income on funerals. And I sit in this place
– by the way, before you judge the South Africans as being irrational with this, I just want to remind you that
spending a lot of money on funerals compared to weddings, at least you know for sure you only have one.

C. OK, so I sit in this place that sells funeral insurance. And this guy comes in with his son - his son is about 12 -
and he buys funeral insurance for a week. It will cover 90 percent of his funeral expense only if he dies in the
next seven days. Right? These are very 3
people, they buy small amounts of
insurance and small amount of soap and such. And he gets that certificate, and in a very ceremonious way, he
gives it to his son. And as he gives it to his son, I think to myself, why the ceremony? What is this father doing?

D. Now, think about the breadwinner that decides on that particular day to direct some money into insurance or
savings. What is the family going to see tonight? They’re going to see less. Right? At that level of poverty,
there’ll be less food, less kerosene, less water - something less tonight. And what his father was doing and
what our coin was trying to do is to say, yes, there’s less food on the table, but there’s another activity. You see,
what happened is, there are many good, important economic activities, like savings and insurance, that are 4
.
And now the question is: How do we make them visible? So let’s go back to our rocket model. We have to, first
of all, look at the system and see where there’s little things we can fix, with friction, where is there that we can
remove friction? And then the next thing we want to do is to think broadly about the system, and say: What
other motivations can we bring in? And that’s a much more 5
exercise, and we
don’t always know what would work best. Is it going to be money? Is it going to be loss aversion? Is it going
to be something that is visible?

E. We don’t know, and we have to try different things. We also have to realize that our intuition sometimes
misleads us. We don’t always necessarily know what would work the best. So, if we think about this gap
between where we could be and where we are, it’s a really 6
thing to see this gap and to think
about it. But the good news is, there’s lots we can do. Some of the changes are easy, some of the changes
are more 7
. But if we’ll attack each problem directly, not by just providing more
information to people but trying to change the friction, add motivation, I think we can... Can we close the gap?
No. But can we get much better? Absolutely, yes.

Thank you very much.

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7 Reading comprehension

Complete the sentences with endings a - g.

1. Researching life in poor places is different from ...

2. The difference between the US and South Africa is that ...

3. Buying funeral insurance in South Africa in this particular community meant families ...

4. For poor families, the benefits of ...

5. When getting people to change their behavior, the motivations for ...

6. Finding the answer to changing people’s behavior will involve ...

7. Ultimately, changing the way people act will be down to giving them plenty of obvious
motivation and ...

a........reducing the friction needed to arrive at the new decision as far as possible.

b........doing so need to be very obvious to them.

c........researching purchasing coffee as it requires visiting the place in question.

d........going without in some other area of their life.

e........saving money aren’t visible to them in day-to-day life.

f........spending on funerals is much more common than on weddings in South Africa.

g........trying several different methods.

8 Talking point

In pairs, discuss the following questions.

1. What behaviors do you have which you would like to change?

2. What motivations do you think you can find for changing those behaviors? Try to think of a few
different ones for each behavior.
3. What friction is there which would make changing the behavior more difficult?
4. In general, which behaviors does society have in your country which you think need to change?
5. What are the motivations and frictions for changing those behaviors?

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9 Extended activity/homework

Choose a behavior that you have, that you would like to change. Write a short essay about what you
could do to change that behavior. Consider the following questions:

• What behavior would you like to change?

• Why would you like to change it?
• Why did you start doing this behavior?
• What could be the motivation to help you move away from this behavior?
• What is the friction that would stop you from changing this behavior?
• What period of time do you think you need to test out your ability to change the behavior?
• What preparations will you need to make?

You should:
1. Write at least 250 words.
2. Check your grammar, spelling and punctuation.

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Transcripts

2. Listening comprehension

Part 1: -

Speaker: Hi.

Speaker: You might have noticed that I have half a beard. It’s not because I lost a bet. Many years
ago, I was badly burned. Most of my body is covered with scars, including the right side
of my face. I just don’t have hair. That’s just how it happened. It looks symmetrical, but
almost.

Speaker: Anyway, now that we discussed facial hair, let’s move to social science. And in
particular, I want us to think about where is the potential for humanity and where we are
now. And if you think about it, there’s a big gap between where we think we could be
and where we are, and it’s in all kinds of areas.

Speaker: So let me ask you: How many of you in the last month have eaten more than you think
you should? Just kind of general. OK. How many of you in the last month have
exercised less than you think you should? OK, and for how many of you has raising your
hands twice been the most exercise you got today?

Speaker: (Laughter)

Speaker: How many of you have ever texted while driving? OK, we’re getting honest. Let’s test
your honesty. How many people here in the last month have not always washed your
hands when you left the bathroom?

Speaker: (Laughter)

Speaker: A little less honest. By the way, it’s interesting how we’re willing to admit texting and
driving but not washing our hands, that’s difficult.

Speaker: (Laughter) We can go on and on.

Speaker: The problem, the topic is that there’s lots of things when we know what we could do -
we could be very, very different, but we’re acting in a very different way. And when we
think: how do we bridge that gap? The usual answer is, "Just tell people."

Speaker: For example, just tell people that texting and driving is dangerous. Did you know it’s
dangerous? You should stop doing it. You tell people something is dangerous, and they
will stop. Texting and driving is one example. Another very sad example is that in the
US, we spend between seven and eight hundred million dollars a year on what’s called
"financial literacy." And what do we get as a consequence of that?

i
Speaker: There was recently a study that looked at all the research ever to be conducted on
financial literacy – what’s called a meta-analysis. And what they found is that when you
tell people, you teach them financial literacy, they learn and they remember. But do
people execute? Not so much.

Speaker: The improvement is about three or four percent immediately after the course, and then it
goes down. And at the end of the day, the improvement is about 0.1 percent - not zero,
but as humanly close to zero as possible.

Speaker: (Laughter)

Speaker: So that’s the sad news. The sad news is, giving information to people is just not a good
recipe to change behavior. What is?

Speaker: Well, social science has made lots of strides, and the basic insight is that if we want to
change behavior, we have to change the environment. The right way is not to change
people, it’s to change the environment. And I want to present a very simple-minded
model of how to think about it: It’s to think about behavioral change in the same way that
we think about sending a rocket to space.

Speaker: When we think about sending a rocket to space, we want to do two main things. The
first one is to reduce friction. We want to take the rocket and have as little friction as
possible so it’s the most aerodynamic possible. And the second thing is we want to load
as much fuel as possible, to give it the most amount of motivation, energy to do its task.
And behavior change is the same thing.

Part 3: -

Speaker: Now let’s talk about motivation. In this particular study, we were trying to get very poor
people in a slum called Kibera in Kenya to save a little bit of money for a rainy day. You
know, if you’re very, very poor, you have no extra money, you live hand to mouth, and
from time to time, bad things happen. And when something bad happens, you have
nothing to draw on, you borrow. The Kibera people can borrow at sometimes up to 10
percent interest a week. And then, of course, it’s really hard to get out of it. You live
hand to mouth, something bad happens, you borrow, things get worse and worse and
worse. So we wanted people to keep a little bit of money for a rainy day. And we
thought about what is the motivation, what is the fuel that we need to add?

Speaker: And we tried all kinds of things. Some people, we texted them once a week and said,
"Please try to save 100 shillings" - about a dollar - "this week." Some people, we sent a
text message as if it came from their kids. So it said, "Hi Mom, hi Dad, this is little Joey"
- whatever the name of the kid was - "Try and save 100 shillings this week for the future
of our family." Right? I’m Jewish, a little bit of guilt always works.

Speaker: (Laughter)

Speaker: Some people got 10 percent. "Save up to a hundred shillings, we’ll give you 10 percent."
Some people got 20 percent. Some people got also 10 percent and 20 percent, but they
got it with loss aversion.

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Speaker: What is loss aversion? Loss aversion is the idea that we hate losing more than we enjoy
gaining. Now, think about somebody who is in a 10-percent condition and they put 40
shillings in. They put 40 shillings, we give them four more, they say thank you very
much. That person gave up six. They could have gotten six more if they gave a
hundred, but they don’t see it.

Speaker: So we created what we call pre-match. We put the 10 shillings in at the beginning of the
week. We said, "It’s waiting for you!" And then if somebody puts 40 in, we say, "Oh, you
put 40 in, we’re leaving four, and we’re taking six back." So in both cases, pre-match or
post-match, people get 10 percent.

Speaker: But in the pre-match, they see the money they did not match leaving their account. So
we have text, text from kids, 10 percent, 20 percent, pre-match, post-match. And we had
one more condition.

Speaker: It was a coin about this size, with 24 numbers written on it. And we asked them to put
the coin somewhere in their hut, and every week, take a knife and scratch the number
for that week - week one, two, three, four - scratch it like a minus if they didn’t save and
scratch it up and down if they saved.

Speaker: Now, think to yourself: Which one of those methods do you think worked the best? Text,
text from the kids, 10 percent, 20 percent, beginning of the week, end of the week, and
the coin? I’ll tell you what the average people think. We’ve done these studies of
prediction, both in the US and in Kenya. People think that 20 percent will get a lot of
action, 10 percent less, the rest of it will do nothing - kids, coin, doesn’t matter.

Speaker: People think loss aversion will have a small effect. What actually happened? Sending a
text reminder once a week helps a lot. Good news! This program lasted six months.
People forget. Reminding people is great. Ten percent at the end of the week helped
some more. Financial incentives work. Twenty percent at the end of the week - just like
10 percent, no difference. Ten percent in the beginning of the week helps some more.
Loss aversion works. Twenty percent in the beginning of the week, just like 10 percent
in the beginning of the week, no difference. And the text message from the kids was just
as effective as 20 percent plus loss aversion – which is amazing, right? It’s amazing how
motivating messages from kids were. And one conclusion is we don’t use kids enough.

Speaker: (Laughter)

Speaker: And, of course, I don’t mean in a child labor sense. But if you think about parents and
their kids, we are the best that we can for our kids, and we think about the future, and I
think we should think about how to use that amazing source of motivation to get parents
to behave in a better way. But the big surprise of this study was the coin. The coin
basically doubled savings compared to everything else. And now the question is: Why?
What was it about the coin?

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Key

1. Warm up

5 mins.
This opens up the lesson with some questions which are posed at the beginning of the talk and asks students to
reflect on their own ability to change behavior.

2. Listening comprehension

5 mins.
This is designed just to open the talk and get students to focus on the basic ideas in the beginning. Students
should be able to answer these questions after only one listening but if necessary, play the recording again.

1. False. Anyway, now that we discussed facial hair, let’s move to social science.
2. True. By the way, it’s interesting how we’re willing to admit texting and driving but not washing our hands,
that’s difficult.
3. False. you teach them financial literacy, they learn and they remember. But do people execute? Not so much.
4. True. The right way is not to change people, it’s to change the environment.
5. True. The first one is to reduce friction. We want to take the rocket and have as little friction as possible so
it’s the most aerodynamic possible. And the second thing is we want to load as much fuel as possible, to give it
the most amount of motivation...

3. Identifying vocabulary

10 mins.
This identifies some key vocabulary in the second part of the talk and asks students to focus on spelling and then
scan the article to find the best gap to place the vocabulary in.
Answers:
1) allure; 2) align; 3) branded
4) confounded; 5) generic; 6) purity

1. branded 2. generic 3. allure 4. confounded 5. purity 6. aligned

4. Reading comprehension

1. No.
2. Only 10% of people changed.
3. He had said that offering people for free had more effect than reducing the price.
4. People were required to do something (return the letter) in order to get the benefits.
5. Changing medication without explicit permission from the customer.
6. The majority of people changed their behavior.
7. They have to align and be the same thing.

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5. Listening for detail

1. Kenya
2. their children/child
3. 100
4. loss aversion
5. the coin

6. Reading for gist

You may want to set a time limit for students to encourage them to skim read.

1. familiar 2. crazy 3. poor 4. invisible 5. difficult 6. sad 7. complex

7. Reading comprehension

1. → c. 2. → f. 3. → d.
4. → e. 5. → b. 6. → g.
7. → a.

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