Creating Habits

While preparing for today’s lecture, I enjoyed reading Verplanken et al.’s (2008) article about opportunities to discontinue and change habits. As Ray also highlighted in class, the researchers found that the likelihood of changing a habit increased during a transformational moment in the individual’s life—in the case of the study participants, during a move, although both Ray and the researchers suggested that it could also occur during other major life events (i.e. going to college or having a child). 

The researchers determined that these major life events, when combined with values that are associated with the target behavior, created circumstances that caused individuals to be more likely to change their habits. The researchers specifically studied commuting behavior and found that individuals who were environmentally-concerned and moved were more likely to travel to work using public transportation, as compared to others who were similarly concerned and did not move, or did move and were not concerned. 

As an aside, I think that it would have been helpful if the researchers determined if the respondents planned to utilize public transportation before their move; personally, I switched from using a car to public transportation after I moved into my first apartment, but I chose my apartment purposefully so that I would be within walking distance of the train. I suppose the detail could be academic, but I think it would be interesting to know if the study respondents planned to change their behavior beforehand, or if they hadn’t given much thought to it previously but were open to it after moving.

Regardless, the study still suggests that there are interesting intervention opportunities available to individuals who are entering these major life events. I assume that some of these events are instinctively capitalized upon by marketers or institutions; many of the products available that are “absolutely necessary” for both college students and new parents are extensive and likely not too essential, and universities host organization fairs early in the school year for students to get more involved on campus (an example which Ray has admittedly already discussed in class). However, we can certainly take advantage of these opportunities with thoughtfulness and intention. 

Not necessary, but I do see some potential here.

To continue with the moving example, I imagine that there could be an interesting intersection with the community/Eco-Team based approach. If a community has their own Eco-Team, they can welcome new residents to the neighborhood with information about recycling, public transportation, the local farmer’s market, and any other useful procedural knowledge from which they may benefit. The team can then invite them to become a member of the team and attend their regular meetings. Such an approach wouldn’t be guaranteed to work, but I imagine that there would be a higher chance of durability for those behaviors that are tested due to their being introduced during this major life event. Plus, the commitment/feedback associated with joining an Eco-Team could be a nice boost to durability as well.

A few questions:

• Do you think there are other major life events during which we can encourage pro-environmental behavior change?
• Can you think of any habits that you picked up during one of these major life events? Or any that you tried but didn’t stick? Why or why not did they become a habit?

References

Verplanken, B., Walker, I., Davis, A., & Jurasek, M. (2008). Context change and travel mode choice: Combining the habit discontinuity and self-activation hypotheses. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 28.

A Frame's Worth a Thousand Words

Recently, the Yale School of Forestry came out with a new data visualization for the United States. It’s called the Yale Climate Opinion Maps – U.S. 2016. This new map has a drop-down list of different kinds of questions regarding climate change beliefs, risk perceptions, policy support, and behaviors. You can change different aspects of the map to look at these questions and how they vary across the country, states, or other subdivisions. 

For certain questions, like the one pictured above ("global warming is happening"), the map may look a bit homogeneous, which is reassuring -- the redder the color, the higher the percentage. But go just one down on the drop-down menu ("global warming is caused mostly by human activities"), and you might get something a bit less exciting...

The tool is a fun, useful visualization, but I'm writing about it now because it actually highlights a framing issue that I believe many Americans fall victim to. This map below expresses the response to the prompt "global warming will harm me personally."  It's pretty blue, huh? 

But if we tweak the question just a little, to, say, "global warming will harm people in the U.S.," we get a very different map.

So the situation we have here is this: respondents, who live in the United States, generally do not believe that global warming will harm them. However, these same respondents generally believe that global warming will harm people within the United States. Seeing as it's not a regional thing, there's something going on here. And that something is a framing issue. 

Climate change is typically seen as a "distant" issue for people in the United States. They feel that the issue will affect people who are further away (spatially distant) and/or future generations (temporally distant). Basically, they feel like it will effect everyone except them! So how do you motivate a population that thinks they won't be affected by climate change, even if they think their neighbor might be? 

Luckily, an issue of framing can be solved by framing! Too often today, we see climate change communicators presenting the parts about climate change that belong in movies like 2012 or Mad Max: Fury Road -- the flooding, droughts, extreme weather events. They're trying to get people to realize how dire our situation is, but these scare techniques can make a person feel helpless. And while the evidence for climate change may be stacking up, if people are scared by it, they're going to keep distancing themselves from the issue like we see here.

So if you want to try to get people to acknowledge reality and realize that they will be impacted by climate change, try promoting efficacy. It's like what Ray's always saying in class -- the declarative knowledge isn't as important. It's the procedural knowledge on how to get it done. When someone feels like they can do something about it -- when they feel like their individual actions will really help mitigate the problem in some way -- they will be more motivated to do something about it (Dickinson et. al., 2013).

As for the Yale map, I suggest you go play around with it a bit -- it's really an interesting tool! 

Sources

Dickinson, J. L., Crain, R., Yalowitz, S., & Cherry, T. M. (2013). How Framing Climate Change Influences Citizen Scientists’ Intentions to Do Something About It. The Journal of Environmental Education, 44(3), 145-158. doi:10.1080/00958964.2012.742032

Micro-targeting for Good?

Given my background as an Economics major in undergrad and working in Economic consulting prior to coming to Michigan, my intuition was that feedback would be one of the best ways to change behaviors. That is, people strive to make rational and optimal decisions, but lack the information or processing capabilities to do so (and feedback can fill that void). On the other hand, from prior exposure so Prospect Theory, I saw framing as a very powerful tool (though potentially immoral, to elicit emotional and not logical reactions to shift behavior).

However, after reading about framing and feedback, I found myself very surprised by the complexity and challenges inherent in effectively using these tools. Regarding framing, Pelletier & Sharp (2008) discuss the importance of difference frames in each of three decision-making phases (detection phase, decision phase, and implementation phase). In addition, to focusing messages differently for each phase, differences in individual motives and beliefs (e.g. altruistic vs. egoistic) will lead to different responses to different frames. Perhaps it should be unsurprising that people vary significantly and their responses to messaging vary significantly. Still, this creates a challenge when delivering messaging and information to increase pro-environmental behavior – if everyone will perceive the same message differently, how can we effectively and efficiently foster change?

In a similar vein, I was surprised to read of potential issues that feedback faces. Among other issues, Buchanan et al (2015) identified inability to reach disinterested customers, limited durability, boomerang effects, and that motives in their study appeared to be primarily financial. With all these issues, feedback certainly is less effective than I expected and far from a catch all solution to environmental issues. (As a side note, feedback will likely be most effective when targeted as individuals that are in Pelletier & Sharp’s “implementation phase.”)

Still, reading about framing and feedback and the way frames and feedback has such varied effects on different individuals implores tailored frames specific to the individual. This brings up the idea of micro-targeting, something that has become a controversial topic following the US election. Stories have surfaced of how Cambridge Analytica used Facebook and other data to divide the US into 32 personality types and provide Trump canvassers with “political views and personality types of the inhabitants of a house” and “guidelines for conversations tailored to the personality type.” (Grassegger & Krogerus) The data available on everyone through social media is vast and can create a surprisingly vivid and accurate picture of all of us.

It seems to me that this sort of micro-targeting and utilization of big-data so that each frame is tailored and feedback is focused on those that will be most receptive could be incredibly successful at promoting pro-environmental behavior. But, is this method invasive? Is it manipulative? Is it moral? Can the benefits of promoting pro-environmental behavior justify this? What do you think?

- Noah Feingold

References:

Buchanan, K., R. Russo & B. Anderson (2015). The question of energy reduction: The problem(s) with feedback. Energy Policy, 77: 89–96.

Pelletier, L. G. & E. Sharp (2008). Persuasive communication and proenvironmental behaviours: How message tailoring and message framing can improve the integration of behaviours through self-determined motivation. Canadian Psychology, 49(3): 210–217.

Grassegger & Krogerus. “The Data That Turned the World Upside Down.” Motherboard. January 28, 2017. Available at https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/how-our-likes-helped-trump-win.

Technology and Green Behavior Change

In class, we’ve talked a number of times about the issues with interventions or theories that fail to focus on behavior change through a values-drive approach (though we’ve also spoken about the difficulty of this). While it may be easy to dismiss approaches using technology as either fleeting or bad for the environment, it is important to think about how technology can be utilized differently in environmental behavior change. The question for me then becomes: how do we best mesh values-drive approaches to behavior change with popular technology.

Some may argue that our increased use of technology shows that we are changing in fundamental ways and that our societal values are shifting as a result. I would argue that in many ways, new technology makes it easier for us to incorporate our values into increasingly varied aspects of our lives. In the US, our society values efficiency and timeliness, and technology can certainly assist us to access those more easily. As a society, however, we also value togetherness and connectedness. The social media apps that have been most successful (such as Facebook) leverage this fundamental value in a way that easily incorporates new technology. Social media apps that have not been as successful (Secret) failed to connect people in the same way because they allowed users to interact with one another anonymously (Katz, 2017).

New technologies and app development have not been limited to the social media sphere. Behavior tracking or behavior change apps are abound in the health and medical fields, and are even finding their way into schools. The National Association of School Psychologists acknowledge the importance of technology in many aspects of our lives and give recommendations to teachers in how to best utilize apps in behavior change and classroom management approaches in their classrooms. The apps selected for review involved behavioral reinforcement and feedback for the users, which we have also spoken about in class as being important for behavior change interventions (Fefer, Brown, Rossi and Kuehnel, 2015).

In the same way that successful technologies, such as social media apps, are able to harness long-standing and important American values (like connectedness), and that behavior change apps in the classroom utilize behavioral feedback and reinforcement, we should think about how to incorporate those strategies for behavior that is beneficial for the environment. Is there room for a social media app involving feedback and reinforcements to encourage environmental friendly behavior? Or is the use of such technology mutually exclusive with long-lasting and effective environmental behaviors?

References:

Katz, Miranda. Backchannel. March 10, 2017 https://backchannel.com/these-failed-apps-discovered-a-hidden-rule-of-the-web-391471ca5952#.vq2976vs2.

Fefer, Sarah, Brown, Kayla, Rossi, Catherine, & Kuehnel, Carolyn. “Apps for Behavior Management: A Review.” Communique. Volume 44 Issue 1. September 2015. https://www.nasponline.org/publications/periodicals/communique/issues/volume-44-issue-1/apps-for-behavior-management-a-review

The Power of Prospection

Before coming to the University of Michigan, I had never heard of prospective thinking, nor had I given much consideration to the utility of this style of thinking within the psychology field. As Ray discussed in class, past-driven approaches have been the focus of psychology research. With that in mind, why would I have given any thought to the future and its role in psychology?

Regardless of what’s in fashion in academia, however, listening to Ray highlight prospection and reading “Navigating into the Future or Driven by the Past” (Seligman, Railton, Baumeister, & Sripada, 2013), has made me think about behavior differently. The lecture occurred early in the class but I think that it has been helpful to keep it in mind as the course has continued. 

Image source: http://www.4thgearconsulting.com/blog/future-thinking-can-change-the-game/

It could be easy to disregard the utility of prospective thinking because of the structuring of the psychology field, or because many of the models that we have covered are past-driven instead of future-driven. I think it may help to remember, though, that many of the interventions that we have studied have components of prospective thinking and envisioning. Commitment, for example, is to commit to do something in the future. Intrinsic and extrinsic motivations suggest that there will be a promise of either an internal or external reward in the future for completing a behavior. Goal-setting, obviously, is rooted in prospective thinking. With feedback interventions, individuals can prepare to complete the behavior even more successfully in the future. Plus, research has shown that future orientation—which is both a personality trait and cultural characteristic—strongly influences pro-environmental behavior (Carmi & Arnon, 2014).

I’m drawn to highlight prospection after reflecting about how much of a role it plays in my own thinking. As an informal experiment, I tried to be mindful of what I thought about and talked about with others, and categorized the subject-matter as past- and future-focused. I didn’t keep a formal Ulysses-style record of my thoughts, but generally, I was surprised by how future-focused my thoughts were. (It’s a fun exercise; you should try it.)

Furthermore, I feel like a great deal of my personal growth and development has occurred due to future-driven thinking. I’m not the only one: in a more extreme example, a violent and aggressive prisoner who was interviewed in the Invisibilia podcast discussed how he wanted to change his personality, so he did it, presumably with the help of prospection (Spiegel, 2016). The article doesn’t go into a great deal of detail about his process, but it seems that he envisioned the person who he wanted to be and took steps to become that person. It seems like it was simply a more extreme version of what we each go through to continually improve ourselves.

Not to mention that prospective thinking has led each of us to be where we are today—literally. I think that it’s fair to say that it is the reason that we are collectively studying at the University of Michigan. Sure, I guess it’s arguable that we learned in the past that we will benefit from higher education, but it seems to me that we used prospection to imagine ourselves here and to decide that the degree (with its accompanying knowledge, professional opportunities, and so on) would be worth the cost. Considering that this process has somehow convinced each of us to spend ~$20,000-40,000 per year, it is clearly a powerful force.

A few questions:

• Do you think some environmental behaviors are more appropriate to address with prospective thinking and envisioning?
• When do you find yourself using future-based thinking most effectively to make decisions or to guide your behavior?
  

References:

Carmi, N., & Arnon, S. (2014). The Role of Future Orientation in Environmental Behavior: Analyzing the Relationship on the Individual and Cultural Levels. Society and Natural Resources, 27(12), 1304–1320. https://doi.org/10.1080/08941920.2014.928393

Seligman, M. E. P., Railton, P., Baumeister, R. F., & Sripada, C. (2013). Navigating Into the Future or Driven by the Past. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 8(2), 119–141. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691612474317

Spiegel, A. (2016). Invisibilia: Is your personality fixed, or can you change who you are? Shots: Health News from NPR. http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/06/24/481859662/invisibilia-is-your-personality-fixed-or-can-you-change-who-you-are

Short-term Commitment, Lasting Impact

In Katzev’s work on commitment theory (1986, 1987-1988 with Pardini), two conclusions intrigued me: commitment leads to behavior adoption that lasts much longer than the actual commitment time frame, and commitment can act as a catalyst to start non-target but related behaviors, i.e. spillover. While we've talked about them before, the possibility of a behavior change intervention being powerful enough to change countless other behaviors brings a chain reaction of collapsing dominos to mind. Who isn't excited by that?

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/5Ap5j5dlr7o/maxresdefault.jpg

These two tendencies match with intervention evaluation metrics durability and generalizability, respectively, which are rarely present in interventions. This intervention sounds ideal, but the path to get from a simple commitment to extensive behavior change is poorly explained.

In class, Professor De Young suggested that these two strengths of commitment interventions are connected to internal motivation, which is generally more durable, more reliable, and more generalizable. Lanzini & Thøgersen (2014) and Dolan (2015) are in line with this idea. They describe spillover behavior as linked to target behavior by underlying motivation, goals, and self-identity that have an impact longer than monetary incentives.

How, exactly, does a time-limited commitment turn into an internal motivation that supports goals, shapes self-image, and promotes consistency? Does the internalization process described in Self-Determination Theory (Sheldon, 2016) accurately describe the conversion from an externally suggested goal to an autonomous identity? If so, how do we promote this process?

https://s3.amazonaws.com/lowres.cartoonstock.com/dating-commitment_phobia-commitment-commitment_issue-pencil-pen-dcrn1521_low.jpg

Research on behavioral spillover is clearly evolving. Two papers (Lanzini & Thøgersen, 2014; Dolan et al., 2015) disagree on whether a high-cost or low-cost initial behavior is best – while spillover may only occur for easy-to-perform behaviors (implying that interventions should start with a relatively hard behavior), it may also be true that hard-to-perform initial behaviors cause rebounding while easy initial commitments build to more challenging behavior (i.e. “foot in the door”). While Dolan recommends keeping initial target behavior visualizations conceptual (rather than concrete) to allow self-identity considerations to come into play, Professor De Young recommended making interventions for specific behaviors. How can these competing interests be satisfied?

My current suggestion is for the intervener to suggest a type of behavior change (i.e. move to a more eco-friendly commute method), describe the underlying goal of the change (i.e. reduce carbon emissions), and guide the participant decide in details of the commitment (i.e. the participant decides to commit to taking the bus three times a week for the next month). Hopefully, this will allow people to consider self-identity while making sure they have a concrete goal. Signing an eco-friendly petition could serve as an initial foot-in-the-door, while a challenging commitment could keep individuals engaged and allow for a range of "easier" spillover behavior. Goal-internalization can further be aided by having participants give a reason or a value for why they are signing the commitment.

What do you think? Could this work? What would you tweak?

References

• Dolan, Paul and Galizzi, Matteo M. (2015) Like ripples on a pond: behavioral spillovers and their implications for research and policy. Journal of Economic Psychology, 47. pp. 1-16. ISSN 0167- 4870
• Katzev, R. D. (1986). The impact of commitment in promoting consumer energy conservation. (Chapter 21, Pp. 280-294). In E. Monnier, G. Gaskell, P. Ester, B. Joerges, B. Lapillonne, C. Midden and L. Puiseux (Eds.). Consumer Behavior and Energy Policy: An International Perspective. NY: Praeger.

• Katzev, R.D. & A. U. Pardini (1987-1988). The comparative effectiveness of reward and commitment approaches in motivating community recycling. Journal of Environmental Systems, 17: 93-133.
• Lanzini, P. & J. Thøgersen (2014). Behavioural spillover in the environmental domain: An intervention study. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 40: 381-390.
• Sheldon, K. M., Wineland, A., Venhoeven, L., & Osin, E. (2016). Understanding the Motivation of Environmental Activists: A Comparison of Self-Determination Theory and Functional Motives Theory. Ecopsychology, (December), 228–238.

The Rewarding Aspects of...Rewards

In the readings for last week, I was really struck by a point in the Price, Vining, and Saunders article (2009; this was the case study of the Nature Swap program at a Chicago zoo). The importance of extrinsic rewards for the program's success was a common theme in interviews of parents and staff members, which seems to contradict everything we've learned about the problems with extrinsic rewards (overjustification effect, lack of durability and generalizability). But these interviews also made a point about an important characteristic of these extrinsic rewards--that is, that they were linked to the program's goals. Children brought in natural objects in exchange for points, and their reward was to choose another natural object to take home.

It seems like such a simple idea, and yet it strongly stuck with me, perhaps because it doesn't seem to be a strategy that's often employed (despite its simplicity!). Why don't we link extrinsic rewards to the actual goals of the intervention program more often?? For example, I can imagine an energy use reduction program that would provide incentives, not in the form of monetary rewards or even billing discounts, but rather by rewarding successful reduction with a free low-flow showerhead or free CFL lightbulbs. What better way to make an extrinsic-reward program durable, and perhaps even increase its effect over time? After all, as stated by several of the articles we've read, systematic efficiency upgrades (e.g., installing low-energy showerheads and lighbulbs) are likely to have a much larger practical impact than the individual curtailment behaviors that tend to receive more focus.

Of course, it's still possible that such incentives may trigger the overjustification effect, or that their effectiveness might taper off over time (for example, people might start wasting water because they feel that their low-flow showerhead gives them an excuse to take longer showers). This is where I think some other concepts from this class could be incorporated into an empirically testable solution.

We've already talked in class about how behaviors can feed back onto values and intentions, for example because performing an eco-friendly behavior strengthens a person's self-identity of being "pro-environmental," thus increasing their future eco-friendly behaviors. Also, the Verdugo (2012) article on "The Positive Psychology of Sustainability" discussed how performing pro-environmental behaviors can itself feel good, thus increasing the likelihood that those behaviors will be performed again. Both of these may be true for a extrinsic incentive program with goal-linked rewards, as installing the energy-saving reward may help to further strengthen their pro-environmental identity and also make them feel extra-good about their pro-environmental impact.

However, there is another aspect of "feeling good" that I think has been traditionally overlooked. At the beginning of the semester, we read Barb Fredrickson's (1998) article on the "Broaden and Build" model for positive emotions. Critical to this model is the idea that positive emotions broaden our attentional focus and foster more flexible thinking, thus allowing us to gain new ideas and skills and resources. We know that receiving rewards feels good, leading to an experience of positive emotions. But reward-based interventions usually just dispense a reward and then move on, without stopping to capitalize on the possibilities afforded by positive post-reward feelings. If feeling positive emotions leads to a "Broaden and Build" mindset, then this state shoud be the ideal moment to provide participants with information about the importance/impact of eco-friendly behaviors, and opportunities to reflect on this new information and their own behaviors, in order to produce durable behavior change.

This approach would map on nicely to the findings from this week's readings, about the effectiveness of small-group interventions that provide feedback and reflection opportunities. But the difference is that my approach would particularly capitalize on the positive feelings of getting a reward, to target participants specifically when they may be most receptive to exploring new ideas. And because the reward in this case would be relevant to achieving the program's eco-friendly goals, it should be particularly effective at keeping participants' focus on environmentally-relevant information and reflection. (This might not be true of non-relevant extrinsic rewards--e.g., money--because after receiving such rewards participants might be distracted by thinking about what they're going to do with the money, or might just be interested in getting the reward and uninterested in attending to additional information after they already have the money.)

This approach could take the much-maligned extrinsic incentive and turn it into a force for good :-), but of course, it would need to be empirically tested (as I don't know of any existing intervention that has tried this particular approach). What do you all think about this idea? Do you think that this intervention would actually work if it were tested in the real world?

If our environment could talk...would it matter?

During last week's lectures, Ray listed a set of guidelines for using extrinsic motivation and or/ commitment-based approaches for behavior change interventions. When looking at both strategies, it seemed they had the following features in common:

1) The behavior must be specific and explicit
2) The behavior must have social, instrumental, or informational value
3) Gentle interventions or small rewards are most effective (minimum justification principle)

Beyond these shared guidelines, I was also intrigued by the commitment-specific one that the behavior should be inconvenient, or costly in time, attention, or energy. I feel like this goes against a lot of the initiatives I learned about in school and work experiences where you are encouraged to meet people where they are in terms of energy investment – usually this means whatever is most convenient.

During this discussion, we also played with the question, if our environment could tell us what we're doing wrong, would it actually change our behavior? I decided to see what I could find. I read about a research fellow in Germany, Matthias Laschke, who designs inventions that are making convenient behaviors more difficult in an effort to make people more conscious about their behavior. He calls his set of inventions, "pleasurable troublemakers" (follow this link to read more about the ones he's created thus far!). What I found especially interesting about his ideas is that they call forth some of the guidelines we discussed for both extrinsic and commitment-based motivation.

Examples: an elevator that always takes you to the floor below your desired one to make you walk up one floor; a lamp that only works if you insert your smartphone to discourage texting and multitasking; or a stool that is wobbly intentionally to make you focus on your posture and keep your legs moving. What if our environment and devices gave us such feedback? Would this actually help us consider alternative behaviors or merely offload responsibility to external forces in the long run? It worries me that there is a trend of trusting technology instead of people to change their behavior. In a resource-limited future, we will have to take on these behaviors ourselves, without the aid of any devices. Could these interventions then act like training wheels to help us build skills and motivation? Maybe. But I like to believe we'd do better to develop strategies that are intrinsically driven.

Still, if we look at the guidelines posted above, it seems like these interventions perform well. They address a specific behavior and provide feedback and reinforcement, have informational value to help us learn, offer gentle reminders and small rewards, and make normally convenient actions a little less so. From a human information processing perspective, the amount of attention required may be greater, but they also draw on fascination and tangible visual cues in the environment.

If we assess his inventions through our evaluation metrics, they are also interesting. First, let's talk about durability. We learned that intermittent rewards are more effective than continuous ones. How does that play out here? It appears that people may become accustomed to these stubborn objects, and then they become less effective over time. It's unclear whether such behavior change is long term or only effective when the objects are present and there is reinforcement. Additionally, Laschke says he intentionally made these inventions so that people could cheat. He recognizes that humans are smart problem solvers, and so they always have a choice in doing a different behavior. For example, someone wanting to go to floor 4 in the elevator could just select floor 5, knowing the effect. This introduces an element of volitional over obligatory behavior change, which could increase its durability if people willingly choose a different option (or forget the default!). Overall, this metric seems like it presents the most problems for these inventions.

For particularism, it seems like Laschke tried to make inventions that are individually effective for single users but also can be distributed to a general population and setting. These inventions would not require much or any adjustment from one person to the next, because they rely on intuition and learning from feedback.

Both speed of change and reliability seem strong as well. Although individuals can cheat, these inventions are surely effective in causing an immediate change in someone's behavior or at least causing that person to think twice. They are also reliable in that repeated exposure to them is likely to have the same effect as the first time, with the added benefit that people might have learned to do something differently. Still, these inventions do benefit from their fascination and initial training period to change behavior, which could fade in effectiveness with each subsequent exposure.

Finally, generalizability is another unknown with these inventions. It seems he has purposely made designs that span across the spectrum of behaviors, recognizing that changing one kind of behavior may encourage other non-target behaviors. But again, I am skeptical whether using his kind of exercise elevator or anti-multitasking lamp would prompt awareness of the other. Maybe if your life was full of these devices!

In general, it appears that these pleasurable troublemakers act like extrinsic motivators, or incentives/rewards to pursue alternative behaviors. Still, they incorporate lessons from binding commitment strategies, especially if they link to individual goals, which make them a kind of hybrid approach. Would you purchase one of these devices for your own use? How effective do you think it would be for you?

References:

• https://www.fastcoexist.com/3040839/world-changing-ideas/dont-relax-uncomfortability-is-the-new-convenience 
• http://www.pleasurabletroublemakers.com 
• Katzev, R. D. (1986). The impact of commitment in promoting consumer energy conservation. (Chapter 21, Pp. 280-294).  In E. Monnier, G. Gaskell, P. Ester, B. Joerges, B. Lapillonne, C. Midden and L. Puiseux (Eds.). Consumer Behavior and Energy Policy: An International Perspective. NY: Praeger.
• Katzev, R. D. & T. R. Johnson (1987). Social Influences (Chapter 4, Pp. 89-107). Promoting Energy Conservation: An Analysis of Behavioral Research. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
• Katzev, R. D. & A. U. Pardini (1987-1988). The comparative effectiveness of reward and commitment approaches in motivating community recycling. Journal of Environmental Systems, 17: 93-113.