Changing behaviour: what can the lockdowns teach us about school cultures?
You can't change large group behaviour by one strategy, or by using one lever
How do we change behaviour? It’s at the centre of everything we try to do in the classroom: to make students choose to perform one action (e.g. complete a maths worksheet) rather than another (e.g. drawing erupting cartoon phalluses on the desk in correction fluid).
The CV-19 crisis of 2020 offers us an interesting case study. Across the world, governments of every stripe were faced with a colossal challenge: in the face of a global pandemic, how do you move entire nations to change their behaviour in order to minimise further catastrophe? I’ll focus on the UK, although similar stories unfolded elsewhere.
Initially, before each country was hit with the first big wave of the virus, there was a very low level of concern from many people and their governments. Why should we change our behaviour? There didn’t seem to be much point. We’d seen other viruses before: SARS, swine flu, bird flu etc- and in those examples the impact to the average person was probably quite limited in countries like the UK, because your chances of having been affected directly was very low.
Another issue is that for many people, the kind of behaviour we were being asked to change seemed so trivial. Take hand washing, or respiratory hygiene. One of the reasons that we’ve made so many advances in viral health has been simple mechanical behavioural habits like hand washing after visiting the toilet, routine washing on a daily basis, cleaning schedules at home and in commercial premises, sanitation, plumbing, building design, and so on.
In fact, it can get to the point that, for the average person, we forget why we do such things, and start to see them as cosmetic and social functions: we don’t want to smell and so on. Of course, there are always those for whom such things are more than niceties: the chronically ill, those with suppressed immunities, health care professionals, sanitation workers etc., those for whom there was a clear and present danger, that only high levels of hygiene could combat.
But everyone else? Viruses are a good example of a risk that is poorly grasped because they are invisible to us and their effects can seem so remote. Infection and incubation can take a while to lead to symptoms, if at all. We all know how differently people adhere to cleanliness routines. A trip on any tube, bus or rush hour train can confirm the breadth and complexity of how closely each person understands intimate hygiene. Levels also vary between groups: men and women, for example, have well-documented differences in adherence to social demands about cleanliness,[1] which is probably explained by different social attitudes towards hygiene by gender.
And then something happens to change the status quo; in this case, a global pandemic of a virus with no vaccine, with high transmissibility and a significant fatality rate, steeped in unknowns. The advice for societies at large was eventually very similar to previous outbreaks: social isolation to prevent cross contamination, renewed and substantially improved personal hygiene, particularly hands; suppressing large groups, preventing all but essential travel, and so on. And at its height, lockdowns and the almost complete cessation of everyday life.
So, we suddenly had a global experiment in what motivates people, who is motivated, and when. Governments all over the world scrambled to change behaviour profoundly, at a scale rarely seen outside of wartime, in some of the most deeply ingrained areas of our behaviour, habits, cultures and identities. And not just for short periods of time or small targeted groups, but almost everyone, almost everywhere, for a sustained period of time.
Governments everywhere were suddenly telling their citizens to change their customs and habits enormously, suddenly, through press, TV, daily briefings, posters and adverts. It was a mass-marketing campaign with a multi-billion-dollar budget.
So, what happened? Well, to a large extent, the results weren’t that surprising.
· Some people didn’t need to change their behaviour because they were already doing the right thing, e.g. ICU nurses. If anything, they doubled down, led by professional domain expertise, existing habits and institutional edict.
· Some people took heed immediately and made the fastest behavioural changes. These would typically be people inspired by altruism, concern for others, concern for their own health, people who already believed hygiene was important, the fearful or paranoid, or those who were the most compliant and conformist to social norms.
· The next group changed their behaviour somewhat but did so reluctantly. For some, they believed the threat was more remote. Others had the sense that the virus wouldn’t affect them personally, only others. For some, the understanding that it predominantly affected other age groups meant that their initial motivation was low. For others yet, it was the sense that this was just another flu epidemic, and how bad was the flu really? For some it was mistrust of the authorities. For others it was laziness. For some it was being too busy to focus, or too concerned with other areas of their lives. For some, it was fatalism or weltschmertz. And so on.
· The last group were the hardliners. These were the people who wouldn’t change their behaviours despite any number of health campaigns, press briefings, public information campaigns, requests, nudges or persuasion. They either didn’t believe there was a threat, believed the threat didn’t touch them, or were incapable or unwilling to amend their habits for the benefit of others. Some believed internet hoaxes that spun lies about the origin or nature of the hoax. Some were too motivated by opportunity to do so; some followed demagogues, politicians and fanatical leaders who soothed their fears with comforting lies. These people couldn’t be persuaded by argument, reason asking; they only responded to legal or economic threats: penalties, fines, incarceration or some other practical consequences.
And some defied even these systematic warnings.
The point is that whenever behavioural change is required in any group, expect the following:
· Some people will happily embrace the change, and simply need to be asked instructed to do so
· Some people need to have the change explained to them, and perhaps some assistance with making the changes, but will do so readily once these criteria are met
· Some people need the reasons explained over and over, will wait to see if other people are doing it, and will revert easily back to old habits unless constant reminders are given
· Some people will change with great reluctance, and need to know that short term negative and positive consequences will result from participating or not with their social norms
· Some people will only respond in the face of certain sanction
· Some people will still not respond to the stimulus, even in the face of that sanction, even when the case is made repeatedly, and assistance is offered to do so.
This is another way of saying that people are people, and not everyone is the same. People often respond differently to the exact same stimulus. Obvious perhaps, but a truism whose simplicity is often overlooked in programmes of behavioural change. You can’t simply present stimulus [x] to group [y] and expect uniform response [z]. If you gave a menu to twenty diners don’t expect them all to order the Caesar salad.
Imagine the list, above, mapped onto the classroom:
· Some students will do what you before you’ve finished asking. They already know the kind of behaviour you want, they can do it, and they’re happy to do it.
· Some students already have a good idea about what they should be doing, and just need a minor nudge to remind them, or to activate the behaviours. Or they know but find it a little tricky and need you to teach them a little how to do it.
· Some children will be prepared to try do what you want, but you may need to explain what that means in great detail or support them to do so in many ways.
· Some children will really struggle to do what you want even if you explain it well and they are capable of doing so and will need some form of constant behaviour feedback or consequential system to motivate them even more explicitly.
· Some children will refuse to do what you want no matter what the consequence or quality of instruction, or their ability to do it.
The summary of this is that people choose to behave for lots of different reasons, and in order to motivate them to behave in a certain way it is necessary to consider a magazine of approaches, or a repertoire of strategies to do so, rather than expect one simple approach to work equally on all students.
[1] Hygiene and Cleanliness in the U.S., Jackson, C, Newall, Mallory, Ipsos 2018, https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/news-polls/Hygiene-and-Cleanliness