Vaccine Nudging Tested

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST:  (from Kowledge@Wharton) 

Wharton’s Mitesh Patel speaks with Wharton Business Daily on SiriusXM about how text-based nudges increase vaccination rates.

The best way to get patients to take their vaccinations is to send text message reminders that a shot has been “reserved” for them at their upcoming doctor’s appointment, according to a study from Wharton and Penn Medicine.

Personalized messages using the word “reserved” was enough to boost vaccination rates by 11% in the mega-study of more than 47,000 patients.

“It turns out one of the most simple, straightforward messages worked the best. Instead of telling people that the vaccine was available for them, we said it was ‘reserved for you,’” said Mitesh Patel, professor of health care management at Wharton and former director of the Penn Medicine Nudge Unit, which is the world’s first behavioral design team embedded in a health care system. He is also national lead for behavioral insights at Ascension Health.

Patel joined scientists from Penn, Harvard, Yale, and several other universities to collaborate with Penn Medicine and Geisinger Health on the mega-study. The researchers developed 19 different text messaging protocols to discover which ones were most effective at nudging participants to get their shots. The messages ran the gamut — from jokes to short videos to allowing participants to dedicate their shots with a loved one’s initials — but nothing worked as well as the reservation reminder.

Although the study was designed to boost uptake of the flu vaccine, the researchers said the method can be easily adapted to encourage COVID-19 vaccinations.

During the 2019–2020 flu season, less than half the U.S. population took the influenza vaccine and an estimated 35,000 people died from the virus. By comparison, COVID-19 has killed more than 635,000 Americans since it first appeared early last year. About 74% of Americans eligible for the vaccine have taken at least one dose, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“The most important takeaway is that the way that we communicate the vaccine to people is going to have a huge impact on whether or not they’re going to be motivated to get it, and that really subtle changes can have a big impact,” Patel said during an interview with Wharton Business Daily on SiriusXM. (Listen to the podcast above.) “Now that we have the evidence on what works and what doesn’t, we can actually leverage this to help motivate more people to get vaccinated quickly.”  ... ' 

Changing Someone's Mind

(Click though to Podcast for complete article) 

Changing Someone’s Mind: A Powerful New Approach

Jun 22, 2021 North America

Supports K@W's  Leadership Content

Nano Tools for Leaders® — a collaboration between Wharton Executive Education and Wharton’s Center for Leadership and Change Management — are fast, effective leadership tools that you can learn and start using in less than 15 minutes, with the potential to significantly impact your success as a leader and the engagement and productivity of the people you lead.

Contributor: Jonah Berger, Wharton marketing professor and author of The Catalyst: How to Change Anyone’s Mind.

The Goal:

To change minds, organizations, industries, and the world — stop trying to persuade, and instead, encourage people to persuade themselves.

Nano Tool:

No one likes to feel like someone is trying to influence them. The natural reaction to being told what to do, whether it’s to support a change initiative, accept a starting salary, or stop smoking, is to resist by pushing back. The more you allow for autonomy and allow people to participate in the process, the more effective you’ll be. Use one or a combination of four proven tactics for helping guide people to make the choice you prefer.

Provide a menu: Allow people to choose a path from a selection of your choice, giving them more say in how they’ll get where you are hoping they’ll go. Advertising agencies do this when presenting work to clients. Instead of offering one idea, which the client could then spend the rest of the meeting poking holes in, they offer two or three. This “bounded choice” provides autonomy and the greater likelihood one of the ideas will be chosen.

Ask, don’t tell: Statements like “junk food makes you fat” and “smoking causes cancer” don’t change minds. Asking questions instead shifts the listener’s role, much like providing a menu does. Rather than counterarguing or thinking about all the reasons they disagree with a statement, they’re occupied with the task of answering the question (voicing their opinion about the issue — which most people are more than happy to do). Questions also increase buy-in. Because the answer they give is theirs, it’s more likely to drive them to action. Think about how “Do you think junk food is good for you?” would work better than the statement.   .... '

Considering Powers of Persuasion

The below was published in Foreign Policy magazine.Is also in Schneier's blog here, which should have its own stream of comments.  Consider implications for advertising.  And the interaction of persuasive influence and behavior. 

The Peril of Persuasion in the Big Tech Age

Persuasion is essential to society and democracy, but we need new rules governing how companies can harness it.  By BRUCE SCHNEIER, ALICIA WANLESS 

Persuasion is as old as our species. Both democracy and the market economy depend on it. Politicians persuade citizens to vote for them, or to support different policy positions. Businesses persuade consumers to buy their products or services. We all persuade our friends to accept our choice of restaurant, movie, and so on. It’s essential to society; we couldn’t get large groups of people to work together without it. But as with many things, technology is fundamentally changing the nature of persuasion. And society needs to adapt its rules of persuasion or suffer the consequences.

Democratic societies, in particular, are in dire need of a frank conversation about the role persuasion plays in them and how technologies are enabling powerful interests to target audiences. In a society where public opinion is a ruling force, there is always a risk of it being mobilized for ill purposes—such as provoking fear to encourage one group to hate another in a bid to win office, or targeting personal vulnerabilities to push products that might not benefit the consumer.... " 

Crafting Persuasion

Written by some of my former colleagues,  looks to be quite good.    There is some useful content at the link, as well as pointers to buying the book.  This is useful even if you do have formal training in communications.

Handbook to Change Minds and Influence Behavior - Crafting Persuasion
Former Senior “P&G Plus” Executive Co-Authors A Must-Read Book – Crafting Persuasion

Every leader realizes the importance of an effective communication strategy. But, how do you consistently succeed in telling the story of your brand or organization? It takes a model and a guidebook written by authors who have spent decades learning the art and science of creating powerful stories for some of the world's best marketing organizations. Crafting Persuasion describes the ABCDE model (audience, behavior, content, delivery and evaluation) in a step by step guide that is as important to storytelling as the 4 P's (price, product, promotion and place) are to marketing. It is a model that works in any setting. 

Whether you are an engineer running a start-up or an NGO trying to sway public opinion or a CEO evaluating a marketing plan, or a government officer charged with communicating a critical message or policy, this book is for you. The strategic principles of Crafting Persuasion have been taught over the past decade at the U.S. State Department and other leading organizations. It is designed for those who have the responsibility to persuade an audience, but never had any formal training on how to do this. It is filled with real-world examples from the business and non-profit worlds, along with an enlightening companion website (www.craftingpersuasion.com). So, regardless of your communication challenge, Crafting Persuasion will show you how to create a communication strategy to win over audiences and reach your personal and professional goals.  .... " 

Robots Persuasive?

An area we looked at in some detail.    Depends in part what we mean by 'robot'.  A physical representation of a person  or a screen image image.

Researchers explore what makes robots 'persuasive' to humans
by University of Toronto

The jelly bean experiment: PhD candidate Shane Saunderson conducted an exploratory study of persuasion strategies to observe which method would most influence a human’s decision. Credit: Shane Saunderson

A new study by researchers at the University of Toronto's Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering explores how robots persuade and build trust with humans. The research could guide the development of artificial intelligence (AI) in the next generation of socially assistive robots to aid in health care and other fields.

"My research aims to uncover behaviours and approaches that cause robots to be more persuasive to people," says Shane Saunderson, a Ph.D. candidate in the department of mechanical and industrial engineering. "That can manifest as body language, or verbal strategies to approach people."  ... "

Nudge Behavioral Economist Gets Nobel

In the BBC, this has gotten criticism because it can be seen as manipulative.  Who has decided what nudges we need?   And to what extent?  This has always reminded me of work by BJ Fogg on Persuasive techniques, but Thaler chose a better buzzword.

'Nudge' economist Richard Thaler wins Nobel Prize
US economist Richard Thaler, one of the founding fathers of behavioural economics, has won this year's Nobel Prize for Economics.

Prof Thaler, of Chicago Booth business school, co-wrote the global best seller Nudge, which looked at how people make bad or irrational choices.

Judges said he had demonstrated how "nudging" - a term he coined - may help people to exercise better self-control.   .... " 

Intelligence Analysis

New Book of Of interest.  How are these kinds of structure embedded into AI?

Intelligence Analysis as Discovery of Evidence, Hypotheses, and Arguments: Connecting the Dots
by Gheorghe Tecuci, David A. Schum, Dorin Marcu, Mihai Boicu 

This unique book on intelligence analysis covers several vital but often overlooked topics. It teaches the evidential and inferential issues involved in "connecting the dots" to draw defensible and persuasive conclusions from masses of evidence: from observations we make, or questions we ask, we generate alternative hypotheses as explanations or answers; we make use of our hypotheses to generate new lines of inquiry and discover new evidence; and we test the hypotheses with the discovered evidence. 

To facilitate understanding of these issues and enable the performance of complex analyses, the book introduces an intelligent analytical tool, called Disciple-CD. Readers will practice with Disciple-CD and learn how to formulate hypotheses; develop arguments that reduce complex hypotheses to simpler ones; collect evidence to evaluate the simplest hypotheses; and assess the relevance and the believability of evidence, which combine in complex ways to determine its inferential force and the probabilities of the hypotheses. .... " 

More Persuasive Presentations

A Checklist for More Persuasive Presentations,  by Dorie Clark

Fundamental, but also short and well put HBR piece.  Include the Who, What,When, Why clearly. Know your audience.   Include a story.  Just starting some teaching and this can also have a place there.  So often have heard a really fundamental point left out of what should be said.  So much better to leave some other things out, if you can't get to the fundamentals.  I have seen attempts at bombast and clever visuals completely leave out the important parts of the point.

Microsoft too, is Emphasizing Voice

Voice is also much beyond just commands.  It is that, and conversation, augmentation, memory, learning, expectation, value building, persuasion and more ...

Microsoft's Future Involves A Lot of Talking
by  Jonathan Vanian in Fortune: 

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella explains why talking is the future of computer interactions.

In the future, people won’t have to waste time fidgeting with their smartphones as they try to order pizza from an app. They’ll just have to talk to the device, and little software helpers will do all the work for them.

At least, that’s the way Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella sees it. Nadella outlined his vision of the future of human and computer interaction during Microsoft’s annual developer conference in San Francisco on Wednesday.  ... " 

Persuasion in Marketing

Eric Barker:   Have been following up his writing and linking in Barking up the Wrong Tree:  The latest take:  NYPD Hostage Negotiators On How To Persuade People: 4 New Secrets.    His blog has lots of interesting social and psych pieces of broad relevance.   And of course marketing is strategic persuasion, and advertising is operational persuasion.  So there has relevance well beyond hostage negotiation.  Recommended.

Difficulty of Persuasion

Seth Godin on the difficulty of persuasion.  This is a really fundamental thing in all of business. Stories and targeting worldviews.

Health Games Research

The gamification of persuasion to improve health has been around for a long time.  Initially as part of game platforms, then later as part of wearable systems.  People create their own games when shown  data about behavior, and that trend can be enhanced with good data and its presentation.   Here  pointers to work underway.  See also:  Center for Digital Games Research.

Walgreens to Promote Behavior with Wearables

In  Evan Schuman's column in Computer World.  Contains an interesting detailed analysis of behavior.

" ... Walgreens wants to use wearables to give instant discounts for exercising  ... Walgreens will track the level of exercise and issue automatic credits when customers check out. .... "

A kind of gamification?  With real dollar rewards?   How could this be further designed to include more game dynamics?

Designing Persuasive Robots

In the ACM, in abstract form.  With emphasis on persuasive.   How persuasive?   The interactions between us and our machines has progressed for some time now.  But should be considerably different for interactions with devices that can also adapt their physical world.  Challenges are ahead.

Persuasive Technology

A long time favorite topic.  How can technology persuade?    Special Report from the MIT technology review.

Persuasive technologies surround us, and they’re growing smarter. How do these technologies work? And why? ... By Nanette Byrnes 

The idea that computers, mobile phones, websites, and other technologies could be designed to influence people’s behavior and even attitudes dates back to the early 1990s, when Stanford researcher B. J. Fogg coined the term “persuasive computing” (later broadened to “persuasive technology”). But today many companies have taken that one step further: using technologies that measure customer behavior to design products that are not just persuasive but specifically aimed at forging new habits. ... "  

Behavioral Analysis and Motivation

I was reminded of the work of Professor BJ Fogg at Stanford, which we used in a number of projects His site describing his work on human behavioral Analysis and motivation.  Worth a look.  More at his tag below, even hints at project work with us.

Storytelling, Context and Persuasion

All data tells a story, in a context, and suggests a future.

" ...  In a world increasingly saturated with data and information, visualizations are a potent way to break through the clutter, tell your story, and persuade people to action. Raw statistics by themselves are fine. But showing in context, whether with a simple chart or more creatively in an interactive form, is the future of sharing information, and needs to be embedded in the thinking of all communications professionals.

Combining data - which can be dry - with real creativity - which isn't something humans, even creative ones, can simply turn on and off - can be challenging. Yet we live in a stream-powered mobile world that is increasingly visual, inspiring demands from media to achieve equal parts style and substance for news. This explains why unique and truly compelling visualizations are an underused, yet devastatingly effective tactic. They are equal parts rare and in demand. They beg to be shared. They are a catalyst for conversation, awareness, and action. .... ".

Persuading and Looking Smart

I like the notion of a "Re-engineered Engineer', and try to look smart.  And that I can persuade.  While being friendly.  But we all wonder, are we succeeding?   Here is where I got the idea: 

Dave Hill - The Re-Engineered Engineer
Professional Speaker, Trainer, Author, & Speech Coach
Re-Engineer Your Communication Strategies – How to Persuade and Look... ardmoremedia.com
FRIENDLY PERSUASION Get people to buy into your concepts and take action. Make sure your ‘call to action’ is clear and achievable. Whether you are an engineer, leader or executive, you are i...

Four Words of Persuasion

More from Roger Dooley:    " ... Want to double your success in persuading people to do as you ask? Four simple words, and even other phrases with the same meaning, have been shown to double the success rate in dozens of studies worldwide.  ... " 

Simple Model of Persuasion

In Neuroscience Marketing: " ... The Persuasion Slide™. In short, it’s a simple model for persuasion that encompasses a variety of conscious and non-conscious factors. ... " .  By Roger Dooley. Comment on it there.  Simple idea, logical, worth thinking about.