One of the things you often hear around talk of gamification is the term “Behaviour Change”. At one time, gamification experts and platform providers began to get nervous of the word gamification and started to talk about “Behavioural Science” and “Behaviour Change Platforms”. I remember writing a post somewhere about what would happen if you could not use gamification as a word and even suggested behaviour change as one of the options.
However, over the years I have realised that this is probably a bit naive and possibly arrogant. Behaviour is a complex thing and one that does not change easily, especially when you are trying to do it with nothing but shiny trinkets with a cut and paste bit of JavaScript!
What follows is a very brief overview from a non-expert. Use it as a base to start your own research into the topic!
What is a Behaviour
First things first, what is a behaviour? As it happens, this is an area of some contention in the scientific world. As I did my research, I even came across an article called “Behavioural biologists don’t agree on what constitutes behaviour” [1] in which the researchers did an analysis of 174 expert responses to the question of “what is a behaviour” and got huge variation! They proposed a somewhat cumbersome meta definition of behaviour:
behaviour is the internally coordinated responses (actions or inactions) of whole living organisms (individuals or groups) to internal and/or external stimuli, excluding responses more easily understood as developmental changes
However, I very much like the definition offered by Hobbs Campbell, Hildon & Michie [2]:
“anything a person does in response to internal or external events.”
For our purposes, we would add the following as well
“For a behaviour to occur there must be a trigger, a process and an observable response”
Those of you who have read my blog for a few years will notice that last part is very, very like my definition of a game mechanic!
The trigger could be environmental, internal, deliberate or pretty much anything that, within the context of the behaviour, could induce it. The process refers to the various mechanisms involved in the behaviour occurring. This could be voluntary or involuntary. The response is the behaviour physically occurring, it is what can be observed or at least measured in some way.
Context is key for all of this to happen, it is not random!
An Example
A simple example of a behaviour would be this. A person drinking an alcoholic drink.
Let’s break that down into trigger, process and response.
Potential Triggers: Offered a drink. Compulsion / addictionProcess: The person weighs up the pros and cons of having the alcoholic drink based on the information they have available. Is it appropriate in the current situation or environment? Is it healthy? Is it sensible? Would a nonalcoholic drink be more appropriate?Response: The person drinks or does not drink the alcoholic beverage. Read More ...
