Professional Documents
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Motivation and Behaviour Change
Motivation and Behaviour Change
If you’re interested in the process of how behaviour changes (whether in one person
or in millions), you’ll be interested in the core issue of motivation. The following
paper was written as a resource for Bright’s own staff, to inform our work, much of
which involves motivating people. Including ourselves! The paper was funded by the
Allen Lane Foundation and written by Ben Clark, a forensic psychologist whose
expertise includes working with sex offenders in prison. Examples given here
therefore include motivational work with sex offenders, Producing behaviour change
in people whose crimes are so damaging illustrates the extreme end of the spectrum.
The challenges for the rest of us seem much less daunting in comparison!
Introduction
The starting point for this study, the intuitive belief in the likely importance of
motivation to behaviour change, was centred on the every-day usage of the term.
Often, it is used in the context of whether or not someone is ‘motivated’ to ‘do
something’, and this process of movement to action and potential change is captured
by the following definition1,
“The study of motivation is the study of all those pushes and prods – biological, social
and psychological – that defeat our laziness and move us, either eagerly or reluctantly,
to action”.
WHAT IS MOTIVATION?
Before setting out to answer this question, it would be useful to clarify our
understanding of the relevant terms, i.e., ‘motivation’ and the ‘Easy Does it Process’.
Motivation: the number and types of definitions of motivation that are found in
psychology textbooks reinforce the belief that motivation is a nebulous concept. The
nature of each definition and its proposed link to behaviour usually depends on the
theoretical approach being advocated, for example a behaviourist will relate motives
to reinforcement schedules while a cognitive psychologist will prefer to explain
behaviour with reference to a person’s thinking.
1
Quote by George Miller, (1967) in Gross, R. D., (1987). Psychology: The Science of Mind and
Behaviour Edward Arnold
2
Sarafino, E. P. (1996). Principles of Behaviour Change. Hodder & Staughton.
1
and it is therefore “difficult to think of any behaviour which is not motivated in this
sense” 3.
So, it would appear that motivation is certainly very important to the performance of
behaviour and therefore to a goal of behaviour change.
That is not to say, however, that the presence of motivation is sufficient to ensure
behaviour change and sometimes it may not even be necessary at all.
Social Marketing practitioners remind us that not all of the determinants of behaviour,
and therefore of behaviour change, are within the compass of the individual. For
instance, Hastings, MacFadyen & Anderson 4state that “decades of research have
shown that the decision to take up smoking is influenced by many factors: gender;
the smoking behaviour and attitudes of young people’s friends and family; and media
portrayals of smoking”, to list a few.
Similarly, Nedra Kline Weinreich5 suggests that “you might be able to avoid the need
to convince your target audience to change its behaviour altogether if you can create
structural changes that bring about the same result”. Kline Weinreich illustrates this
view with the idea that passing a law that requires all residential pools to have
childproof safety fences would be more effective at combating drowning than
attempting to change the pool behaviour of parents and their children.
It must be borne in mind that although common themes in the literature can be
identified, which suggest that there are core elements to motivation and behaviour
change, it is entirely possible that the information I have included is not representative
of all that is known in the area.
3
Gross, R.D., (1987). Psychology: The science of mind and behaviour. Edward Arnold
4
See Hastings, G., MacFadyen, L. & Anderson, S. (2000). Whose Behaviour is it Anyway? SMQ, VI,
2, 2000 for further refs.
5
In N.K. Weinreich (1999). Hands-on Social Marketing. Sage Publishers.
6
Smith, B. (1998). What’s the Big Idea? Social Marketing Quarterly, Winter 1998
2
Theories of Motivation – the ‘why’
1. Cognitive
Cognitive approaches to motivation theories focus on the role of people’s thoughts in
relation to their behaviour.
7
Festinger, L. (1957). A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance, New York: Harper and Row.
8
e.g., Miller, W. R. (1983) Motivational Interviewing with Problem Drinkers: ii. The drinker’s check-
up as a preventative intervention. Behavioural Psychotherapy 16:251-268
9
Mann R.E. and Rollnick, S. (1996) Motivational interviewing with a sex offender who believed he
was innocent. Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy 24:127-134
10
Stott N.C.H., Rees, M., Rollnick, S., Pill, R. & Hackett, P. (1996) Professional responses to
innovation in clinical method: diabetes care and negotiation skills. Patient Education and Counselling
29:67-73
11
Tierney, D.W. & McCabe, M.P. (2001). The Validity of the Trans-Theoretical Model of Behaviour
Change to Investigate Motivation to Change Amongst Child Molesters. Clinical Psychology and
Psychotherapy, 8, 176-190.
12
Katz, D. (1960). The functional approach to the study of attitudes. Public Opinion Quarterly, 24,
163-204
13
Snyder, M. & DeBono, K.G. (1985). Appeals to images and claims about quality: Understanding
the psychology of advertising. Journal of Persoanlity and Social Psychology, 49, 586-597
3
‘Self-Monitoring’ – refers to the extent to which people normally attend to external,
social situations as guides for their behaviour, as opposed to their own, internal states.
High self-monitors tend to be more concerned with behaving in a socially appropriate
manner and so are more likely to monitor the situation (rather than themselves) when
deciding how to behave. Low self-monitors tend to be truer to themselves rather than
try and fit in with social norms.14
In 1985, Bazzini and Shaffer supported Snyder and DeBono’s work with a study of
well-established, robust attitudes, but found that the extent to which attitude change
impacted on behaviour depended upon whether an individual was assessed as being
high or low self-monitoring15.
Low self-monitoring individuals did seem to behave in accordance with their changed
attitudes whereas high self-monitors did not. The authors point to research that
suggests that low self-monitors focus more on their natural tendencies as opposed to
being situationally focussed. They are consequently more likely to use their attitudes
to guide their behaviour, rather than looking to fit in chameleon-like, with their social
surroundings.
The following chart shows the four attributions that can result from a combination of
(perceived) internal or external causes and whether or not control is (perceived as)
being possible.
14
Gross, R.D. (1987). Psychology: The science of mind and behaviour. Edward Arnold
15
Bazzini, D.G. & Shaffer, D.R. (1995). Investigating the Social-Adjustive and Value-Expressive
Functions of Well-Grounded Attitudes: Implications for Change and for Subsequent Behaviour.
Motivation and Emotion, Vol. 19, No.4
16
Heider, F. (1958). The Psychology of Interpersonal Relationships. New York: Wiley.
17
Bradbury & Fincham, F.D. (1991). A contextual model for advancing the study of marital
relationships. In G.S.O. Fletcher & F.D. Fincham (Eds.) Cognition in close relationships. Hilsside &
NJ: Erlbaum
18
Gross, R.D. (1987). As in ‘16’.
4
Internal cause (or attribution) – behaviour is perceived as the product of the individual
(internal locus of control)
External Attribution – behaviour is perceived as the product of the situation (external
locus of control)
No Control – behaviour is perceived as being beyond the control of the individual
Control – behaviour is perceived as being within the control of the individual
Attribution explanation of ‘Ability’ – individual believes task success depends on
innate, immutable personal qualities over which he or she has no control.
Attribution explanation of ‘Effort’ – individual believes task success depends on the
effort that he or she puts into completing the task.
Attribution explanation of ‘Luck’ – individual believes task success depends upon
luck, and is therefore not within the individual’s control and dependent upon the
situation.
Attribution explanation of ‘Task Difficulty’ – individual believes that success depends
upon the nature of the situational factors impacting upon the difficulty of the task.
These factors are perceived as being within the individual’s control.
An example using the ‘task’ of composting may make the possible attributions and
their likely impact on behaviour, clearer.
Internal External
No Control Ability – the extent to which Luck – the extent to which the
would-be gardener sees elements may play a part e.g.,
themselves as naturally ‘green- getting the right mix of sunshine
fingered’ and rain
Control Effort – would-be Gardner Task Difficulty – extent to which
believes all the idioms, ‘if at first the task is complicated by
you don’t succeed…’ etc. situational factors such as size of
the garden
5
relates to the likelihood of making internal attributions to explain behaviour.
Research suggests that we, being human, make errors in attributions and tend
underestimate the influence of the social environment. Consequently, we tend to
attribute behaviour to dispositional factors rather than situational factors, a potential
‘bias’ towards seeing ourselves as in control of our environment.19 (Bearing in mind
of course, the ‘self-serving Attributional Bias’ phenomenon, which holds that people
will take responsibility for their successes whilst blaming others or the situation for
their failures!)
2. Behavioural
Major figures in the behaviourist tradition such as B.F Skinner20, believed that there
was no need to study thoughts and feelings as all behaviour could be understood by
evaluating the rewards and punishers in the organism’s environment. Although
Skinner was not the founder of Behaviourism, he made the distinction between
behaviours that are automatically triggered by environmental stimuli and behaviours
that are not linked to stimuli in this way. This is the main distinction between
‘classical’ and ‘operant’ conditioning:
Classical Conditioning
Also known as ‘Pavlovian Conditioning’, after the man whose experiments on the
salivating of dogs led to the study of the relationship between a biological response
and an associated stimulus. This relationship can be viewed as a type of knee-jerk
reaction in which the inevitability of the learnt response to the stimuli serves to
energize and direct behaviour.
Operant Conditioning
States that the individual is much more active in the process of learning and behaving,
in that behaviour is not elicited by the stimuli but emitted by the individual and is
therefore essentially voluntary. The likelihood of the behaviour being repeated
depends upon the consequences of the behaviour for the individual. Put simply,
consequences that are rewarding (‘positive reinforcers’) provide incentives to increase
behaviour while punishers provide disincentives that lead to a decrease in behaviour.
The concept of reward and punishment, and specifically the desire to gain reward and
avoid loss is fundamental to some theorists’ understanding of what motivates us to
act.21 The use of persuasion as a behaviour change tool relies on the ability of the
persuader to promote the gains to be had or benefits of the new behaviour for the
persuadee.
The idea that people will naturally tend to gravitate towards actions that have high
benefits and few costs (or ‘barriers’) are also a key principle of community-based
social marketing.22
3. Cognitive-Behavioural
19
Aronson, E., Wilson, T.D. & Ahert, R.M. (2002). Social Psychology (4th Ed.). Prentice Hall Int.
20
Skinner, B.F. (1938). The Behaviour of Organsisms, New York: Appleton – Century – Crofts.
21
Bob Stone in H. Mill’s (2000). Artful Persuasion. Amacom., and Vroom, (1964). in Gross, as in 16.
22
McKenzie-Mohr, D. & Smith, W. (1999). Fostering Sustainable Behaviour, New Society
Publishers.
6
The application of the cognitive-behavioural principle that behaviour is mediated
through cognitions and that cognitions can be changed is most commonly found in
cognitive-behavioural therapies. Such therapies also share the proposition that
behaviour change may be affected via cognitive change23.
4. Social Learning
Social learning theory as conducted notably by Bandura in the 1960’s and 1970’s,
suggests that we learn social behaviour by observing others and imitating them, and
that such ‘modelling’ is an important motivator of behaviour.
23
Dobson, K.S. & Dozois, D.J.A. (2001). Historical and Philosophical Bases of the Cognitive-
Behavioural Therapies. In K.S. Dobson (Ed.) Handbook of Cognitive-Behavioural Therapies, The
Guilford Press.
24
Mann, R.E., Webster, S.D. & Schofield, C. (1999). Approach versus Avoidance Goals in Relapse
Prevention with Sex offenders. In Supporting Research for Core 2000, Offending Behaviour
Programmes Unit, HM Prison Service.
7
Theories of Behaviour Change – the ‘how’
Kline Weinreich details the 5 most common theories used to explain health and social
behaviours in ‘Hands-on Social Marketing’, so I do not intend to do more then briefly
summarise them here. Instead, I will reproduce her synthesis of the models and will
then go into more detail about the ‘Trans-Theoretical Model of Behaviour Change’,
which I think is the most useful way to think about behaviour change (quotes indicate
text reproduced directly from Kline Weinreich).
4. Diffusion of Innovations 28
25
Strecher,V. & Rosentock, I. (1997). The Health Belief Model, in K. Glanz, F.M.Lewis & B.Rimer
(Eds). Health behaviour and Health Education: Theory, Research and Practice, 2nd Ed.
SanFransico:Jossey-Bass, 1997.
26
Ajzen, I. (1991). The Theory of Planned Behaviour, Organizational Behaviour and Human Decsiion
Processes, 50: 179-211.
27
Bandura, A. (1986). Social Foundations of Thought and Action: a Social Cognitive Theory
Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall.
28
Rogers, E. (1983). Diffusion of Innovations, 3rd Ed. New York: Free Press.
8
“Describes a particular innovation moving through a population over time.
Individuals fall into one of the following groups based on when they accept the new
idea or practice: Innovators, early adopters, early majority adopters, late majority
adopters and laggards.
Although the Diffusion of Innovations model does not directly mention self-efficacy,
factors 2-6 in particular can be seen to be part of a process of assessing whether an
individual feels confident in their own ability to perform the new behaviour.
The model is also the only one to explicitly refer to the importance of an individual’s
values and self-image in changing behaviour. This more moral aspect of behaviour
change will be considered at the end of this section.
29
Gladwell, M. (2000). The Tipping Point. Abacus
30
Prochaska, J.O. & DiClememnte, C.C. (1983). Transtheoretical therapy: Towards a more integrative
model of change. Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice 19: 276-288
31
Rollnick, Mason and Butler (2000). Health Behaviour Change. A guide for practitioners. Churchill
Livingstone.
9
The model also describes the behavioural and cognitive processes that assist people in
considering or actually changing their behaviour, and it can be seen that people at
different stages use different processes or strategies to achieve change.
The model has helped practitioners, initially mainly from a clinical background, to
understand behaviour change as a dynamic process rather than an event and to better
evaluate why treatment programmes have not worked. For example, Ryder32 states
that while the majority of treatment programmes in the addictions field are geared
towards people ready to take action, the majority of people with alcohol and drug
related problems are in the ‘contemplation’ stage. He suggests that, rather than
assuming that a client is ready to take action, practitioners have to assume that the
client first needs to contemplate behaviour change. In other words, we should tailor
the behaviour change intervention to the identified stage of the client (see Table 1 on
next page).
Analysis of Table 3
The integration of the constructs of the Trans-Theoretical Model of Behaviour
Change seen in the table was designed for use with child offenders and some elements
were adapted from McMurran’s33 description of interventions with offenders with
alcohol and drug problems. As discussed earlier, the ‘problem behaviour’ in these
cases is likely to be perceived differently by the individual and wider society.
32
Ryder, D. (1999). Deciding to Change: Enhancing Client Motivation to Change Behaviour.
Behaviour Change, Vol 16, No. 3, 165-174
33
McMurran, M. (2000). Offenders with Drink and Drug Problems. In C.R.Hollin (Ed.) Handbook of
Offender Assessment and Treatment, John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
34
Adapted from Tierney, D.W &McCabe, M.P. (2001) The Validity of the Trans-theoretical Model of
Behaviour Change to Investigate Motivation to Change Among Child Molesters. Clinical Psychology
and Psychotherapy, 8, 176-190.
10
Maintenance: Lifestyle change As in action
Of new behaviour Relapse Prevention
To feel inspired (a state like all cognitions and feelings that must be inferred from
behaviour or else must be gleaned from subjective self-report) may be a pre-cursor of
feeling motivated to act, for example images of poverty in the developing world
inspiring an individual to sponsor a child. Or it may be the useful by-product of
motivated behaviour (a successful dieter feeling inspired to help others lose weight).
But it is of little benefit to behaviour change unless it is transformed into tangible,
goal directed behaviour. In both cases, the potential utility of the ‘feelings’ element
of inspiration is most likely to be realised as action if there are easily achievable steps
that a person can take to seize the moment and ‘do something’. The question remains
how to inspire and how best to channel that inspiration. In other words, to convert
inspiration to motivation.
“To achieve behaviour change, a target audience must possess the following traits:
Believe that it is at risk for the problem and that the consequences are severe
Believe that the proposed behaviour will lower its risk or prevent the problem
Believe that the advantages of performing the behaviour (benefits) outweigh
the disadvantages (costs)
Intend to perform the behaviour
Possess the skills to perform the behaviour
Believe that it can perform the behaviour (self-efficacy)
Believe that the performance of the behaviour is consistent with its self-image
Perceive greater social pressure to perform the behaviour than not to perform
it (social norms)
Experience fewer barriers to perform a behaviour than not to perform it
35
N. K. WeinReich (1999). As in 5.
11
‘Top Ten Factors for smoother behaviour change
I recommend the following as the most important factors for EDI to consider in
relation to individuals’ processes of being motivated to behave in more socially
beneficial ways:
The ten tips are not necessarily in chronological order because people do not
necessarily alter their behaviour in a stepwise fashion; self-efficacy is multi-faceted
and can play a part at every stage of the behaviour change process. If an individual
thinks that they are unable to achieve much of anything, they may not attend to
awareness raising information about the new behaviour in the first place. Neither are
the tips completely distinct from one another; the barriers to change may be identified
as part of weighing up the costs and benefits of change.
Nonetheless, the model does help illustrate the ‘Stages of Change’ premise that
people can increase their knowledge and change their behaviour incrementally.
Moral Motivation
A complex factor in the process of behaviour change is the extent to which an
individual’s self-image contributes to their adoption of a new behaviour. We have
discussed the fact that certain attitudes may drive behaviour and McKenzie Mohr36
advocates helping people to view themselves as ‘environmentally concerned’ with the
belief that they will then be more likely to act in accordance with this view of
themselves. A meta-analysis of 67 studies into consumer re-cycling behaviour37
supported the belief that consumer commitment to behaviour is the one of the best
predictors of performance of that behaviour.
36
McKenzie-Mohr and William Smith (1999). Fostering Sustainable Behaviour. New Society
Publishers
37
Hornik, Cherian, Madansky & Narayana (1995). Article on community based social marketing
website, ‘www.toolsofchange.com’
38
Brekke, K.A., Kverndokk, S. & Nyborg, K. (2002) An economic model of moral motivation.
Journal of Public Economics, in press.
12
dissonance, an increase in dissonance between preferred self-image and actual
behaviour is a route to moving behaviour towards the ideal. However, Brekke et al.
warn that public policy can have an unintentionally negative effect on the morally
ideal contribution to voluntary work or recycling behaviour for example. Their
‘economic model of moral motivation’ predicts that economic incentives may have an
adverse effect on contributions because they can reduce people’s intrinsic motivation
to the right thing.
The logical progression of self-image as agent of change for the good is the
phenomenon of altruism, if there truly is such a thing. If all else falters, we can rely
on a little of this continuing to prosper (in spite of it being contra to the evolutionary
imperative of survival of the fittest as the books remind you).
Conclusion
As away of pulling together, and illustrating, these different theories of motivation
and behaviour change, it would be interesting to see how they could inform a specific
campaign.
We are going to use the theme of water as the basis on which to apply the theory.
Water has a number of advantages as a theme. For example, it has cross-cause appeal
and is applicable to each of the levels of activity; individual, community and global.
Although there are a number of different objectives that a water campaign could work
towards, for ease of understanding and applicability of the theory, there will be only
one objective of this behaviour change campaign:
‘To increase the amount of water that young people drink on a daily basis’
Questions:
- What are we offering people?
- Who is our audience?
- Does a health benefit matter?
Answers:
- We are offering young people a readily achievable, healthy alternative to their
normal behaviour
- Our target audience are children under 16, with an affiliated audience of parents,
older friends and other ‘significant others’.
- Objectively from a health perspective, the possible benefits are important to the
individual and wider society.
13
Answer: Firstly, We need to increase the amount of tap water that young people
drink, as it is accessible and free (at least to them). Secondly, we need to increase the
frequency that young people buy a bottle of water in a shop, rather than a can or bottle
of fizzy drink (they will hopefully then go onto recycle the bottle when finished, but
that is another story).
We could also concentrate on decreasing competing behaviours such as buying fizzy
drinks, but we shall stick with ‘approach goals’ that young people can do as opposed
to focussing on what they can’t for the moment.
The Stages of Change model prompts us to ask:
Question: Who is ready to change?
Answer: We can find out where to target our campaign via focus groups, surveys and
other research.
Finally, in order to hone our campaign, we need to look at the characteristic
differences between 2 groups with regards to the behaviour of drinking water from the
tap at home or buying water on a regular basis from stores i.e., those who do drink
and those who don’t.
This is known as the ‘Doer-Non-doer’ analysis39, and helps to determine what the
behaviour we are looking at is dependent on – is it knowledge about the importance of
water to health that’s important, the perception that bottled water is an expensive
luxury, or attitudes about the safety of water in the home, or some outside structure
such as the water supply being especially ‘hard’ and therefore unpleasant to drink?
Or other factors, such as social norms?
Assuming that the behaviour is dependent on knowledge, amongst other things, we
could follow the ‘top ten tips’ and link each with an objective for that stage as well as
a possible component of a campaign strategy (see table 5).
39
From Bill Smith’s paper, What’s the Big Idea? (see ‘6’).
14
Table 5 – The relevance of the theory to a campaign to drink more water
Tip for Change Objectives Examples of Campaign
Components
There are other points to bear in mind when devising a campaign to encourage
behaviour change, particularly with young people, such as making it fun and
interactive where possible e.g., with a website. However, the above table gives a taste
of how the design of a campaign strategy (without really touching on how the media
would best be used) could be informed by the most important points in the literature
on motivation and behaviour change.
Summary
15
We have also reviewed a number of different theories of motivation and related
theories of behaviour change, some of which have been incorporated into strategies
focussed at an individual or community level, such as motivational interviewing and
social marketing.
What the proliferation of theories suggest, and this is a belief borne out by many of
the introductory chapters on motivation and behaviour change found in textbooks, is
that behaviour is notoriously difficult to change and that no one approach guarantees
success.
However, before we despair and down our behaviour change tools, it is worth
remembering that people do change their behaviour and for many different reasons.
By using strategies that have been shown to increase the chances of change, our
approach will become more rigorous and we will be better able to evaluate where we
are and where we want to be at each stage of the process.
Ben Clark
16