How to Design for Long-Term Behavior Change—Part 1: New Habit Formation

Hello JustinFr,

Thx for the comment. And BTW, no comment is too far out there. We are here to learn and explore, so any comments are welcome.

There are certainly research being done on changing behavior of groups. They are much harder and less suitable for design purpose, but they do exist. I might discuss some of that in a later post. Although religion is one way to change group behavior. That is not the only way. Cultural norms, societal norms, and even familial norms, exerts forces that shape our habits, such as eating 3 meals a day, slurping while eating noodles, brushing teeth, etc. Religion is only an example of sociocultural norms that shape our habits.

It is easy to conclude that Apple or Coca Cola follow the same paradigm as religion, because religion is older, but there are many cultural and social norms that are even older and more fundamental in terms of human psychology and behavior economics, like social acceptance and social rejections. Religion have used these fundamental behavior drivers to get people to identify with the group (i.e. the religion), and then leverage other social facilitations to change behavior. From a behavior perspective, I see religion, aristocracy, and government as institutions that have tried many ways to manage and shape the behavior of their "user." Through trial and error, they've basically stumble upon some fundamental principles that governs human behavior. Then subsequently, they've been use as tactics for managing their follower or citizens alike, because they worked. 

However, the fundamental principles that governs human behavior exist way before religion. Some of them even exist in social animals, such as wolf packs, apes colonies, etc, before human walk the earth.

Thank you for the comment and discussion. 

See you again next time.