Do we underestimate Behaviour Change?

Ladies and Gentlemen, today I will introduce you to a revolutionary new way which will transform your life, bring you health, wealth and happiness, forever conquer your fears and, and….

I’m sure you’ve heard it all before. Promises, promises. Yada yada bla-bla. A day doesn’t go by when we are not bombarded with messages like this, usually delivered implicitly with the central message being: you can change any aspect of your life and behaviour, if only you adopt the willpower / mindset / determination / younameit to do so.

Any of us who have solemnly committed to New Year’s resolutions in the past have been up this hill many a time. Yet, as has been found, very few of these great and laudable intentions even make it past February.[1]

Today we turn our gaze onto a topic that is key to both personal and organisational effectiveness at multiple levels, namely behaviour change. It may be of interest to all change management professionals, HR mavens, Strategy Gurus, Comms Specialists, C-suiters and Entrepreneurs… in short anyone whose job depends on getting others to, in some way, change or adapt their behaviours.

Change Management or HR are not bad places to start. Some of us may have been in meetings, read articles or ploughed through powerpoint decks where it is assumed that, as long as this or that framework, project plan or elaborate process is agreed on and bought into, change will happen as sure as the day follows the night. Yet the hard reality of change management is that as few as a third of initiatives achieve any success at all.[2] This tells us that organisations are wasting tens of billions, in part due to a faulty understanding of what really makes us tick.

The question before us then is this: just how easy is it for any of us to change even the simplest of behaviours? We will look at this question in the light of 3 experiments – one in the moment, one in the months, and one over a lifetime.

Experiment 1: In the moment (‘Raising Awareness’)

Our first experiment is health-related and done interestingly before COVID, where a cohort of medical students were first put through a 4 hour training programme in which they were informed of the fatal dangers of viral transmission via face-touching.

A couple of weeks later they were then videotaped in a lecture theatre (bear in mind that the participants knew this was happening). The experimenters wanted to know whether they were able to keep their hands out of their own faces, as they were advised to do.

This shift in behaviour, I’m sure you will agree, is really not that demanding – especially among highly conscientious medical students. How did they do in the experiment? The graphic below (from the study) tells the story:

Unfortunately it was found that their faces were touched more than your average Kardashian make-up artist – over 30 times per hour.[3]

This experiment demonstrates that in spite of ‘raising awareness’ via a 4 hour training programme as well as receiving additional information and support, the medical students somehow simply couldn’t abstain from this behaviour that almost certainly contributed to the spread of COVID, only a few years later.

Implication: ‘Raising awareness’ sounds good, but rarely changes behaviour. (Change, Comms and HR Professionals please take note!)

Experiment 2: In the months (Changing Habits)

Our next experiment is one of the cutest ever in behavioural science, and was done by Dr Phillippa Lally. Her question was very simple: how long does it take to develop a new habit in the real world?

To answer this question she enrolled approximately 100 postgrad students and made sure the project was set up to succeed, supporting them with a cash bonus and support along the way.

In addition, the bar was kept low. So behaviours to be changed included such things as ‘drinking a glass of water every day’ and ‘eating a piece of fruit every day.’ Plus, the participants bought into these goals as something they themselves wanted to achieve.

What were the results?

Well, even this challenge proved too daunting for some, with nearly 15% of the cohort dropping out entirely. Among those that did make it through, it was found that it took an average of 66 days for the new behaviour to stick (i.e. to become automatic).[4] Have a look:

Implication: changing even the simplest of behaviours can take a very long time, and even then needs a robust and relentless discipline to make it stick.

Experiment 3: Over a lifetime

We now turn to a study in the field of personality science. From time to time some of us may want to change aspects of our personality. For example, introverted types may want to become more outgoing, and those higher in neuroticism may want to experience less anxiety.[5]

In the workplace, companies may want employees to be ‘more conscientious’ or perhaps ‘more agile’. Or they may want individuals to be ‘more innovative’ or they may want their managers to ‘stop micromanaging’ and ‘give more autonomy’ to their team members.

Unbeknown to many, the behaviours described above relate to personality traits with deep genetic roots that have found not to change much across the lifespan.[6] These behaviours also play out consistently in real life – so it’s not like they can just be switched on and off at will – an assumption arguably held within HR.[7]

Anyway, let’s see what an experiment into this found.

To answer this question, the research team from the University of Arizona enrolled 800 college students in their experiment, which lasted over a year. The students selected were highly motivated to change aspects of their personality. The experiment's finding? In spite of every effort among the participants, none had any success in moving the needle. Worse, some even experienced a backfire effect where they ended up being more neurotic or introverted than if they hadn't tried to change these aspects of their personality at all![8] This is important news also to parents when trying to change any ‘tear your hair out’ behaviours exhibited by their kids.

Implication: Behaviours rooted in genetic traits are highly resistant to change. The geneticist Plomin Robert has also warned about the dangers of ‘going against the grain’ in the manner of the experiment in his excellent book Blueprint.

So – do we underestimate behaviour change?

These are just three experiments I have shared, from several dozens that I could have referenced.

Working within organisations I would say that talk about behaviour change is really easy to come by, whether in transformation initiatives, leadership development, increasing customer or employee engagement or building an innovative culture.

Unfortunately, the walk rarely seems to happen. Employee Engagement seems to have flatlined for decades , most change initiatives fail and the same old problems keep cropping up within organisations.

Desired changes in behaviour can happen but it’s important to know what one is doing – working with the grain and not against it, and taking a really focused, disciplined and widescale (social) approach. In future posts we will look at how this can be done.

But above all else, not thinking behaviour change is as easy as keeping up with a Kardashian :-)

[1] Oscarsson, Martin 2017 - New Year's resolutions: A large scale randomized controlled trial

[2] McKinsey 2015 – Changing Change Management

[3] Kwok et al 2015 – Face touching: a frequent habit that has implications for hand hygiene

[4] Lally et al 2010 - How are habits formed: Modelling habit formation in the real world

[5] Baranski et al 2021 - Who in the world is trying to change their personality traits? Volitional personality change among college students in six continents

[6] Costa et al 2019 – Personality across the Life Span; Beck & Jackson 2022 - A mega-analysis of personality prediction: Robustness and boundary conditions; Ching et al 2014 - The manifestation of traits in everyday behavior and affect: A five-culture study

[7] Fleeson and Gallagher 2009 - The Implications of Big-Five Standing for the Distribution of Trait Manifestation in Behavior: Fifteen Experience-Sampling Studies and a Meta-Analysis

[8] Baranski et al 2020 - From desire to development? A multi-sample, idiographic examination of volitional personality change

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