Lead me not into temptation. For, I know the way!
So, 2020 is off to a great start? Definitely, for me.
If you know me, you know I am about as regular with my exercise habits as a certain social media company is with removing political ads from its platform. That is, we both know it is the right thing to do, and yet, we don’t do it.
But not in 2020.
I have finally put my behavioral science background to good use and figured out the sweet spot. Thanks to my interventions, now I go to the gym 3 times a week without fail, and that is a glorious 300% increase over the (very low) base I had previously.
So, what’s the science?
Well, turns out reading all that academic literature for my Masters helped! In what is now a famous paper, Katherine Milkman, Julia Minson, and Kevin Volpp introduced the world to the concept of Temptation Bundling. [1] Through a field experiment, the researchers measured the impact of bundling a want, or an instant gratification experience, with a should, or a valuable but delayed gratification experience.
Examples of want experiences would be playing a game, binge-watching a favourite show, or eating something you like. A should experience would be all those activities you would benefit from doing but don’t — or in other words, all your new year resolutions: exercising, reading, not wasting time on social media.
The study used “listening to tempting audiobooks” as a want experience and “exercising” as a should experience. In the experiment, participants are randomly assigned to one of 3 groups: a full treatment group, which provided access to tempting audiobooks, but only in the gym; an intermediate treatment group, which involved encouraging participants to restrict enjoying audio books to the gym only; and a control group, with no audiobooks.
At the end of the experiment period, participants in the full treatment and intermediate treatment groups had visited the gym on average 51% and 29% more than those in the control group, respectively. The effect did wear off with time, but surprisingly, a whopping 61% were willing to pay for gym-only access to audiobooks.
References
- Milkman, K. L., Minson, J. A., & Volpp, K. G. (2013). Holding the Hunger Games hostage at the gym: An evaluation of temptation bundling. Management science, 60(2), 283-299.
- Rogers, T., Milkman, K. L., & Volpp, K. G. (2014). Commitment devices: using initiatives to change behavior. JaMa, 311(20), 2065-2066.
- Worldwide trends in insufficient physical activity from 2001 to 2016: a pooled analysis of 358 population-based surveys with 1·9 million participants
About the Author
Preeti Kotamarthi
Preeti Kotamarthi has built and led Behavioral Science teams at two of the largest tech companies in Southeast Asia and India. She established the Behavioral Science practice at Grab, helping product and design teams understand customer behavior to create better user experiences. Currently, she heads Behavioral Science and User Research at Swiggy, where she continues to blend data, design, and human insights—drawing inspiration from spending a lot of time with Indian consumers. With a Masters in Behavioral Science from the London School of Economics and an MBA in Marketing from FMS Delhi, Preeti brings over 12 years of experience in consumer products, from co-founding a rural startup in India to shaping behavioral design in tech. Her passion lies in making behavioral science a core part of the product development process. When she’s not uncovering human insights at work, she’s likely busy applying behavioral lessons on her two-year-old.
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I was blown away with their application and translation of behavioral science into practice. They took a very complex ecosystem and created a series of interventions using an innovative mix of the latest research and creative client co-creation. I was so impressed at the final product they created, which was hugely comprehensive despite the large scope of the client being of the world's most far-reaching and best known consumer brands. I'm excited to see what we can create together in the future.
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