New 2021-22 Behavior Change for Good Virtual Event Series: Authors@BCFG
Fridays at 12 PM ET- September 24, October 15, and December 3 Register here!
The Power to Improve Lives
The Behavior Change for Good Initiative unites a world-class, interdisciplinary team of academic experts with leading organizational partners to help advance the science and practice of behavior change. We identify what works at scale by conducting mega-studies (massive random-assignment A/B tests), in which we simultaneously test our Scientific Team’s best ideas for changing a target behavior. Our approach gives us the power to understand which strategies work best overall, what works best for whom, and how to most effectively use behavioral science to transform people’s lives for the better.
New BCFG Studies on Encouraging Vaccination
BCFG, in collaboration with the Penn Medicine Nudge Unit, has released findings from two of the largest-ever studies on vaccination uptake. Conducted with Walmart and two regional health systems (Penn Medicine and Geisinger), these studies show a cost-effective way to encourage vaccination: sending SMS reminders mentioning a flu vaccine is “reserved” or “waiting for you”. The Penn Medicine/Geisinger study was recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. These promising results can be applied to COVID-19 vaccination efforts. To learn more, check out the press release about these findings.
Behavior Change Spotlight: Award Winning Books by BCFG Scientists
Congratulations to Adam Grant (Think Again), Ethan Kross (Chatter), Cass Sunstein (Noise), and BCFG Co-Director Katy Milkman (How to Change) for having their books named to Amazon’s list of the 20 “best business and leadership books of 2021 so far.” A full fifth of the Amazon’s selections were written by BCFG Team Scientists!
Recordings from the 2020-2021 BCFG Virtual Seminar Series are available here:
View Spring 2021 Seminar Videos View Fall 2020 Seminar Videos
Featured Research
A megastudy of text-based nudges encouraging patients to get vaccinated at an upcoming doctor’s appointment
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, April 2021
Teaching temptation bundling to boost exercise: A field experiment
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, October 2020
Forgoing earned incentives to signal pure motives
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, July 2020
BCFG Tip Sheets
We created a toolkit for encouraging vaccine adoption (with a focus on COVID-19), which summarizes the main take-aways from BCFG’s megastudies on nudging flu vaccination uptake with a guide for implementation.
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, BCFG asked our talented team of 100+ behavioral scientists to provide their tips for encouraging masking-wearing, which we complied into an easy-to-read flyer.
BCFG in the News
Philly announces first winners of its vaccine lottery, The Philadelphia Inquirer June 2021
These are the text messages that get people to take vaccines The Washington Post May 2021
Texting patients to get a flu shot increased vaccination rates – but some messages worked better than others Academic Times May 2021