I have set up the ‘Unlocking Behaviour Change’ substack to discuss ideas about human behaviour and how it is studied and influenced. Each post will be a short essay that can be read in under 10 minutes, sometimes with pointers to other resources.
Why ‘Unlocking Behaviour Change’?
Professor Susan Michie and I started a community interest company called Unlocking Behaviour Change CIC to support the development of behavioural science and its application to improving people’s well-being. This series of essays is part of that mission.
The title comes from the fundamental idea underpinning the Capability, Opportunity, Motivation- Behaviour (COM-B) model: changing behaviour is akin to opening a combination lock. All the relevant capability, opportunity, and motivation features must be aligned, or the lock will not open, and the behaviour will not change.
The task for someone hoping to get themselves or other people to behave in a particular way is to figure out what features of capability, opportunity, and motivation need to be aligned and then set about making that happen.
Two short introductions to the COM-B model can be found here:
That said, the posts will be about much more than the COM-B model.
Topics to be covered
Among the first topics I plan to cover are:
Ethical behavioural science
What makes a good piece of behavioural science research?
Where does the concept of ‘free will’ fit into behavioural science?
The art and science of persuasion
Why subscribe?
I aim to write articles at least once a week. If you subscribe, you can see what is available and decide whether or not you are interested in reading it. You can also let me know what topics you would like me to cover.