Since the emergence of psychological and behavioural science, one of its foundational goals has been to explain human behaviour. Although the discipline has been highly successful in this endeavour, there is an elephant in the room. Psychological and behavioural science has neglected studying the most challenging aspect of human behaviour−transformative behavioural change. This change can be described as a fundamental and difficult-to-achieve shift in someone’s actions that involves a transformation of one’s way of living. Understanding transformative behavioural change is essential not only for psychological and behavioural science to accomplish its foundational goal but also to maintain its contemporary relevance. Indeed, it is imminent that both solving the world’s biggest issues (e.g., climate change) and living through major disruptions (e.g., technological revolution) will require people to transform their behaviour. In this perspective, I first review and discuss previous relevant research, and then propose a seven-step agenda for how psychological and behavioural science can become the science of transformative behavioural change.

It is perhaps uncontroversial to claim that behavioral science research is playing an increasingly important role in practice. However, practitioners largely rely on media reports rather than original research articles to learn about the science. Do these media reports contain all the information needed to understand the nuances of the research? To assess this question, we develop a set of rubrics to evaluate the fidelity of the media report to the original research article. As an illustration, we apply these rubrics to a sample of media reports based on several research articles published in one journal and identify common patterns, trends, and pitfalls in media presentations. We find preliminary evidence of low fidelity in presenting participant characteristics, contextual elements, and limitations of the original research. The media also appear to misreport correlational evidence as causal and sometimes miss acknowledging the hypothetical nature of evidence when hypothetical scenarios were used as the sole basis of conclusions. Furthermore, the media often present broad conclusions and personal opinions as directly backed by scientific evidence. To support more discerning consumption of behavioral insights from media sources, we propose a checklist to guide practitioners in evaluating and using information from media sources.

Many decisions are curated, incentivised or nudged by a third party. Despite this, only a handful of studies have looked at paternalistic decision-makers and the psychological processes by which they arrive at their decisions. The role of affect, in particular, has been ignored so far, and yet restricting agency on a potentially large group of people might be highly unpleasant. We are the first to propose a conceptual framework of affective paternalism which explicitly accounts for the role of affect in paternalistic decision-making, identifying all entry points through which affect may create systematic deviations in decision outcomes. We shed light on some of these phenomena by using a novel survey experiment in which we let participants make paternalistic decisions whilst also asking them about their motivations behind their choices, including cognitive reasons and affect. Our findings suggest that affect may play a significant role in paternalistic decision-making and lead to systematically different decision outcomes. To the extent that these that could result in inefficient, undesirable or unfair consequences, our framework may help more accurately predict a paternalist's decision and suggest entry points for where and possibly how to intervene in the paternalistic decision-making process.

Phishing emails cost companies millions. In the absence of technology to perfectly block phishing emails, the responsibility falls on employees to identify and appropriately respond to phishing attempts and on employers to train them to do so. We report results from an experiment with around 11,000 employees of a large U.S. corporation, testing the efficacy of just-in-time feedback delivered at a teachable moment – immediately after succumbing to a phishing email – to reduce susceptibility to phishing emails. Employees in the study were sent an initial pseudo-phishing email, and those who either ignored or fell victim to the phishing email were randomized to receive or not receive feedback about their response. Just-in-time feedback for employees who fell victim to or ignored the initial pseudo-phishing email reduced susceptibility to a second pseudo-phishing email sent by the research team. Additionally, for employees who ignored the initial email, feedback also increased reporting rates.

This study empirically examines gender inequality in tolerance for women's opinions and identifies how the provision of normative gender-egalitarian message can mitigate this inequality by conducting online randomized experiments in Japan. In this experiment, I asked the participants to evaluate the agreement score for 10 anonymous statements and implemented two types of random interventions: disclosing the gender of the statement poster and providing normative statement for gender equality. The results of both cross-sectional and panel data analyses showed that people significantly reduced the agreement score for women's opinions compared with men's and non-gender disclosure opinions. Meanwhile, the negative impact of female gender disclosure was neutralized when participants were provided with a normative message.

To what extent can the harms of misinformation be mitigated by relying on nudges? Prior research has demonstrated that non-intrusive ‘accuracy nudges’ can reduce the sharing of misinformation. We investigate an alternative approach. Rather than subtly reminding people about accuracy, our intervention, indebted to research on the bystander effect, explicitly appeals to individuals' capacity to help solve the misinformation challenge. Our results are mixed. On the one hand, our intervention reduces the willingness to share and believe in misinformation fact-checked as false. On the other hand, it also reduces participants' willingness to share information that has been fact-checked as true and innocuous, as well as non-fact-checked information. Experiment 1 offers proof of concept; Experiment 2 tests our intervention with a more realistic mix of true and false social media posts; Experiment 3 tests our interventions alongside an accuracy nudge. The effectiveness of our intervention at reducing willingness to share misinformation remains consistent across experiments; meta-analysis reveals that our treatment reduced willingness to share false content across experiments by 20% of a scale point on a six-point scale. We do not observe the accuracy nudge reducing willingness to share false content. Taken together, these results highlight the advantages and disadvantages of accuracy nudges and our more confrontational approach.

To improve public health and promote environmental sustainability, widespread dietary changes are necessary in high-income countries. However, adopting and maintaining dietary goals is challenging and requires repeated self-regulation. Effective public policies can facilitate healthy food choices and reduce the likelihood of goal failure. This study examines the relationship between individuals’ dietary goal failures and their acceptance of public food policies, using data from an experience-sampling study (Ni = 409 and Nobs = 6,447). Regression analyses revealed that participants who experienced more frequent dietary goal failures were generally less accepting of health-promoting food policies and perceived them as less effective. Additionally, perceived policy effectiveness positively predicted policy acceptance. Exploratory analyses showed that the negative relationship between dietary goal failure and food policy acceptance varied depending on the type of intervention (pull policies vs push policies) and the location of food selections (home vs out-of-home). Notably, we found a positive relationship between dietary goal failure and acceptance of pull policies for food selections made out-of-home. These findings highlight the importance of better understanding the complex interplay between public policy attitudes, the food environment and adherence to dietary goals.

Traditionally, corruption is seen as a rational pursuit of profit, focusing on personal gain. However, this view overlooks other influences. This paper focuses on the behavioral aspects of corruption, providing a deeper understanding of its complexities, and addressing the factors overlooked by conventional approaches. Reviewing some of the literature, we highlight how researchers have approached corruption from the perspective of behavioral sciences. Additionally, we examine how the emerging discipline of Behavioral Public Policy (BPP) employs innovative methods to reduce corrupt practices, offering new strategies that transcend traditional perspectives. Our paper innovates by demonstrating how corruption can be reduced by substituting traditional regulations with nonregulatory tools like nudges and sludge audits, or by leveraging digital choice architectures to minimize human-to-human interactions, known corruption enablers. By reducing regulations and administrative red tape, and introducing digital frameworks, these tools simplify processes minimizing opportunities for corrupt behavior. In this paper, we aim to infuse corruption research with a behavioral twist, a digital approach, and a deregulatory perspective, offering policymakers an alternative path to foster transparency, accountability and ethical governance. While this approach will not completely eradicate corruption, it strives to show how BPP can reduce its occurrences.

Following the growing interest in using behavioral theory and choice architecture in the public sector, several new studies have looked at how changes in the choice architecture of budget simulations influence the participants’ budgetary decisions. These studies have also introduced the possible problem that participants may make inappropriate choices in the budget simulation, like creating a budget with unacceptably high budget surpluses. Building on Thaler and Sunstein’s NUDGES framework, we seek to answer the question, ‘How can budgetary choice architects correct for errors such as large ending surpluses at the end of the budget simulation?’ We replicate earlier results on budget starting conditions. Additionally, we test a budget treatment that encourages participants to reduce ending budget surpluses. The budget treatment works as intended and suggests that the large ending budget surpluses stem from errors made by participants in the simulation rather than loss aversion. The need to both nudge and budge participants is important for practicing choice architects, like public budgeters who have to design and implement tools that inform citizens and reveal accurate preferences that conform with legal requirements.

Indoor air pollution is one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality worldwide, but its sources and impacts are largely misunderstood by the public. In a randomised controlled trial including 281 households in France, we test two interventions aimed at changing indoor polluting behaviour by raising households’ awareness of health risks associated with indoor air pollution. While both generic and personalised information increased knowledge, only personalised information including social comparison feedback changed behaviour, leading to a reduction of indoor PM2.5 (particulate matter with an aerodynamic diameter ≤2.5 µm) emissions by 20% on average. Heterogeneous treatment effects show that this effect is concentrated on the most polluted households at baseline, for whom the reduction reaches 40%.

Developing countries, with limited monitoring and auditing capabilities, face significant tax evasion issues. This study examines the impact of various text message combinations on promoting tax compliance, particularly in encouraging service providers to submit monthly sales tax returns in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. A randomised controlled trial involved 18,087 service providers and tested three types of SMS reminders. These included a basic reminder for the due date, a reciprocity message emphasising social responsibility, and a loss aversion (LA) message highlighting financial penalties and deactivation. Subsequently, service providers who didn’t file on time received one of three warning messages. These warnings included a basic alert about potential legal action, financial penalties, and deactivation, as well as a message framing continued non-compliance as an active choice (AC). Overall, the interventions did not significantly influence tax filing behaviour beyond basic reminders and warnings. However, compliance improved for early registrants with the LA reminder and AC warning, and these results were robust to multiple hypothesis testing corrections. Compliance worsened for recent registrants in all combinations except the LA reminder and AC warning. These findings suggest that targeted low-cost messages that convey vague threats can improve tax compliance among certain taxpayer groups.

We report the results of a field experiment designed to increase honest disclosure of claims at a U.S. state unemployment agency. Individuals filing claims were randomized to a message (‘nudge’) intervention, while an off-the-shelf machine learning algorithm calculated claimants’ risk for committing fraud (underreporting earnings). We study the causal effects of algorithmic targeting on the effectiveness of nudge messages: Without algorithmic targeting, the average treatment effect of the messages was insignificant; in contrast, the use of algorithmic targeting revealed significant heterogeneous treatment effects across claimants. Claimants predicted to behave unethically by the algorithm were more likely to disclose earnings when receiving a message relative to a control condition, with claimants predicted to most likely behave unethically being almost twice as likely to disclose earnings when shown a message. In addition to providing a potential blueprint for targeting more costly interventions, our study offers a novel perspective for the use and efficiency of data science in the public sector without violating citizens’ agency. However, we caution that, while algorithms can enable tailored policy, their ethical use must be ensured at all times.