All people behave and try to shape behaviour of others, while few have studied behavioural science and have direct knowledge of insights on what is effective in shaping behaviour. This project seeks to understand to what extent their assumptions about behavioural change are aligned with those in science (Project 1) and what may explain possible misalignment with the science.

To assess how behavioural assumptions are aligned with science the project will administer a survey amongst representative samples in the three countries studied, the Netherlands, the U.S. and China. The survey has multiple choice questions for each of the core behavioural mechanisms and interventions we have developed memos for (see project 1). And the survey questions test whether people’s own ideas are or are not in line with what is known through empirical research.

A second part of this project tries to assess what cognitive processes may influence behavioural assumptions people develop and may create behavioural biases where people’s assumptions run counter to available science. To do so it draws on insights from psychology and behavioural economics what potential biases there can be including a normative bias (closely related to moral cohesion), a case bias, a punitive bias, and hindsight bias. To test these biases it carries out a series of experiments where subjects are presented with scientific knowledge about behavioural interventions and mechanisms, while also triggering these sources of bias to see whether these affect whether test subjects make effective use of scientific knowledge when tasked to make a decision to reduce misconduct.

The project will produce a series of papers that show to what extent behavioural assumptions align with scientific knowledge and papers that explain what behavioural biases people have that keep them from thinking about behaviour in line with available science.