SECTION 3
Embedded Files
Using behavioral science to strengthen
testing
There are some concrete steps you should complete, before you even get to testing.
Here’s what you should have already done:
Identify the goals of your campaign
Identify the audience(s) you need to engage in order for change to happen
Identify what the success outcomes of your campaign are (e.g., certain behavioral or perspective changes and actions in your audience)
Create some initial draft messages appropriate for your different audiences
During the last step of creating your messages, we want to offer some tips on how using behavioral science framings can strengthen your messages. Behavioral science is the study of human behavior and how we make decisions. It provides useful insights that your campaign teams can rely on to improve how your audience responds to your messaging.
Next are key behavioral science concepts you can use to guide your testing. For instance, you might want to test messages where one version uses social norms framing (when you reference how the majority of a group acts in positive perceptions or behaviors, thus signaling the behavior as “appropriate” for an indecisive audience) versus another version where you use your “business as usual” messaging approach without framing.
Or you could test messages where one uses loss-aversion framing (when you frame something like national progress actively being lost without the desired action) and the other uses gain framing (when you frame national progress being gained as the result of the desired action). Get some inspiration from our examples on the next page.
Social norms
As social beings, we tend to follow behaviors that are largely acceptable or desired in our society. The goal of social norms is to show that the majority of a certain group of people are doing the desired behaviour; this could then motivate your audience to adopt this behavior because it becomes more “acceptable”.
Social norms can backfire if it highlights the wrong behaviour, so only use this when there is an overwhelming majority, e.g. 60% of women doing Action X (which suggests 40% don’t!). It is also useful to highlight personal stories and testimonials and bring them to life with colour and photos.
For example, if you want to deploy a message campaign based on social norms to reduce gender-based violence, you can consider such a message: “7 out of 10 people in your city report to the nearest police station whenever they experience gender-based violence”. Such a message shows that the reporting of gender-based violence within the city is a typical behavior which should be encouraged. However, make sure these numbers are well-researched and not invented if you want to keep your audience’s trust.
Simplification
The easier something is for people to do or understand, the more likely they are to do them. People can only process, absorb, and recall a limited amount of information at any given time. So it’s very important to make messages easy for them. As a CSO, you can simplify your messages in the following ways:
Remove jargon and reduce text;
Give very specific instructions, not requests e.g. ‘Call 999’ instead of ‘Please Ring’;
Break actions into steps using numbers, bullet points or checklists;
Use colours, images, bold or larger fonts to highlight key phrases.
Framing
If you highlight the benefits of an action or the consequences of inaction, you can strongly influence the decisions of your audience. People are more likely to avoid losses than seek gains; emphasising what they could lose by inaction is often a more powerful motivator than telling recipients what they will gain by acting. However, it is important for you to test out a gain-framed versus a loss-framed message to see which gives the best results before rolling out a campaign.
For example, if you want to frame a message to combat gender-based violence, you can consider variations on the following two messages:
If you report gender-based violence today, you help in saving a life (gain-framed).
If you fail to report gender-based violence today, you are responsible for the harm
caused to the victim (loss-framed).
For more behavioral science concepts useful in messaging and communication, you can look here.
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