This class ultimately focuses a great deal on the dominant values approach. Rightly so, as this approach focuses on common or dominant ways that people make judgements and decisions, essentially what works for all members of our species. In this way, we get the most bang for our buck or in applied terminology, the most behaviour change for our interventions. No doubt, this justification for the dominant-values approach makes perfect sense, but I continuously find myself drawn to the variant-values approaches.

At the end of the day, I don’t think I’m the only one. We only need to look as far as the personality quiz popping up in your newsfeed on facebook this morning or the horoscopes that were read off hand at the back of the newspaper. It’s evident that we crave individuality, but also look to find similarities between others and ourselves. We essentially categorize ourselves into different classifications to determine how we fit with others. If we’re so willing to self-categorize then perhaps variant-values approaches to behaviour change can be extremely successful. By using those groups into which we self-classify and indicate as important to us perhaps personal norms (Norm Activation Model) can be changed by other group members. Additionally, the groups into which we self-identify can indicate when we’re most vulnerable to behaviour change interventions. If we’re already going out of our way to highlight our variant-values perhaps researchers should leap at the opportunity too.