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Determinants of behaviour and their efficacy as targets of behavioural change interventions

Nature Reviews Psychology (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

Unprecedented social, environmental, political and economic challenges — such as pandemics and epidemics, environmental degradation and community violence — require taking stock of how to promote behaviours that benefit individuals and society at large. In this Review, we synthesize multidisciplinary meta-analyses of the individual and social-structural determinants of behaviour (for example, beliefs and norms, respectively) and the efficacy of behavioural change interventions that target them. We find that, across domains, interventions designed to change individual determinants can be ordered by increasing impact as those targeting knowledge, general skills, general attitudes, beliefs, emotions, behavioural skills, behavioural attitudes and habits. Interventions designed to change social-structural determinants can be ordered by increasing impact as legal and administrative sanctions; programmes that increase institutional trustworthiness; interventions to change injunctive norms; monitors and reminders; descriptive norm interventions; material incentives; social support provision; and policies that increase access to a particular behaviour. We find similar patterns for health and environmental behavioural change specifically. Thus, policymakers should focus on interventions that enable individuals to circumvent obstacles to enacting desirable behaviours rather than targeting salient but ineffective determinants of behaviour such as knowledge and beliefs.

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Fig. 1: Effect size range in meta-analyses of behaviour change.
Fig. 2: Models of behavioural change intervention efficacy.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank M. Leung for assistance in checking effect sizes and references. The research was funded by National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants R01MH132415, R01 AI147487, DP1 DA048570, R01 MH114847 and NSF 2031972 to D.A., and by the Annenberg Foundation Endowment to the Division of Communication Science at the Annenberg Public Policy Center.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Dolores Albarracín & Javier A. Granados Samayoa

  2. Annenberg School of Communication, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Dolores Albarracín & Bita Fayaz-Farkhad

  3. Annenberg Public Policy Center, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Dolores Albarracín & Javier A. Granados Samayoa

  4. Department of Community and Family Health, School of Nursing, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Dolores Albarracín

  5. Department of Health Care Management, Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Dolores Albarracín

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Contributions

All authors researched data for the article and extracted effect sizes. All authors contributed substantially to discussion of the content. D.A. wrote the main sections of the article and all authors contributed to the first draft and all revisions. All authors reviewed and/or edited the manuscript before submission.

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Correspondence to Dolores Albarracín.

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Nature Reviews Psychology thanks Taciano Milfont, Richard Petty and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Albarracín, D., Fayaz-Farkhad, B. & Granados Samayoa, J.A. Determinants of behaviour and their efficacy as targets of behavioural change interventions. Nat Rev Psychol (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-024-00305-0

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