The Foundations of Behavioural Science
Have You Heard the One About the Elephant? 🐘
When it comes to changing behaviour, Psychologist Jonathan Haidt offers a simple yet powerful analogy: imagine we all have two sides — an emotional side (the Elephant) and a rational side (the Rider).
The Rider represents our analytical, rational thinking. It’s the part of us that can plan, analyze, and make logical decisions. The Elephant, on the other hand, is our emotional side — full of instincts, feelings, and impulses. The Rider may be able to see the path ahead, but the Elephant provides the strength to move forward.
Change can be challenging
This analogy helps explain why behaviour change can be so challenging. Even if the Rider (our rational side) knows the right direction, the much larger and stronger Elephant (our emotional side) can easily take over if it's not on board.
This idea is similar to concepts from other popular books on behaviour change, like Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow or Steve Peters' The Chimp Paradox. Chip and Dan Heath also use the Rider and Elephant analogy in their book Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard. They describe it this way:
"Perched atop the Elephant, the Rider holds the reins and seems to be the leader. But the Rider’s control is precarious because the Rider is so small relative to the Elephant. Anytime the six-ton Elephant and the Rider disagree about which direction to go, the Rider is going to lose. He’s completely overmatched."*
Three things you can do
So, when planning behaviour change programmes ask yourself how can we successfully guide our audience’s Elephant in the direction we want to go?
1. Motivate the Elephant.
Tap into emotions. Your Elephant needs to feel inspired and energized to move. Advertising in health has been doing this for decades. A wonderful example are the This Women Can adverts which build on consumer insight and tap into women’s fear of judgment and motivate to do it anyway. Supported by local and national get active programmes this campaign is a wonderful example of positive motivational messaging.
2. Make the Path Clear.
Make sure the path is easy to follow for the rider. Remove any obstacles that could derail the Elephant. Our environments are key to change. In behavioural science making the desired behaviour easy is a game changer. But where are you asking your elephant to go? This is one major challenge communication leads bump into. The path to the change is often littered with obstacles for the audience that no messaging can overcome. As a service planner you need to know your behavioural steps so you can see the barriers and remove them. That’s what behaviuoral insights do.
3. Shorten the Distance
Break down the journey into smaller steps, making it feel less overwhelming for the Elephant to stay on track. This is where your understanding of behavioural biases comes into play. Techniques such as chunking down and checklists are all cognitive shortcuts that improve capability.
But just pause a moment to think of your desired behaviour and ask - can it be the default choice? Imagine how easy and short that distance could be.
And don’t forget when you shorten the distance to your desired behaviour also lengthen the distance to your problem behaviour.
On a personal note I will pop all sugar-laden goodies inside a hard to open tin, at the back of the cupboard to reduce by snacking habit. Environmental nudges like these are well tested in public health and industry.
Oglivy ran a workplace study to improve hydration and nutrition and by rearranging access to the healthy choices they increased
It’s called Choice Architecture and we’ll share more on it in this blog and on the podcast soon.
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