Pro-Social on Boosting: A Recap
A conversation with Philipp Lorenz-Spreen and David Grüning.
You're probably familiar with the term "nudging." It's a concept that's at the heart of design architecture; by making small changes in a person's environment - a city park, a form, a website - a design architect can subtly steer, or nudge, people towards taking certain actions over others.
When used on a commerce or social media platform, nudges are aimed primarily at making the site's company a profit. But nudges can also be used for prosocial ends - and are, indeed, the foundation of most of the design solutions in PDN's library.
There's a fundamental problem with nudging even with good intentions, though, according to Philipp Lorenz-Spreen who joined us at a Pro-Social in March; it assumes that the person doing the nudging knows better than the nudgee. Even if that's true (see: warning labels on cigarettes), nudging is at root paternalistic. Philipp explained that there's also evidence that the effect of nudges can wear off in some cases and, regardless, they lose their effectiveness the moment they're removed.
Philipp and his colleague David Grüning (full disclosure: both are PDN board members) talked to us about an alternative to nudging largely developed by one of their mentors, Ralph Hertwig. Boosting, in contrast to nudging, focuses on building competencies rather than directly changing behavior; instead of nudging people, for example, to not pick up that cigarette, a boost would help people understand why smoking is harmful. In addition to being less paternalistic (boosts ultimately let people make a conscious choice themselves) boosts should also have a lingering effect for the next time a previously boosted smoker thinks about buying a pack.
What boosts share in common with nudges is that they are lightweight and can be integrated into a person's web experience. They are not as demanding as educational classes; they rather educate in small ways, for example giving folks useful rules of thumb.
Philipp concedes there is some gray area between boosts and nudges - e.g. "education nudges". As he and David described, examples of boosting can also vary widely, from giving people tips on how to investigate sources, to engaging people in games that teach them to recognize common ploys of disinformation campaigns. David also discussed a category of "self-nudges" which can function as boosts: by giving people the ability to select and monitor how they want to be nudged (e.g. to consume less social media) they can build awareness of their own behavior.
What's compelling about Boosts to those of us at PDN is that they tap into two popular principles: Agency and Transparency. Unlike nudges, they don't hide in the shadows operating on our subconscious brains, but meet directly with our conscious, more deliberative selves - ultimately giving us choice.
As came up in the Q&A, it's that engagement of our thoughtful brain which is also a critique of Boosting; boosts require attention and effort, which are hard to wrest in online environments. If boosts also disrupt the user flow on a site then it will be even harder to convince platforms to integrate them. In breakouts some participants suggested one way to address that challenge would be to position boosts at the beginning of the user journey and to maximize their fun quotient.
Philipp and David also agreed that Boosting research is at an early stage, which means - we hope - we have lots more boosting research to look forward to in the future.
See the full interview with Philipp and David below.
About the Prosocial Design Network
The Prosocial Design Network researches and promotes prosocial design: evidence-based design practices that bring out the best in human nature online. Learn more at prosocialdesign.org.