Why Institutions Shape Behaviour More Than Intentions

When something goes wrong in a group, our first instinct is to look for a bad actor. Sometimes we are right. But decades of social science suggest that behaviour is shaped far more by the rules, incentives and norms of a setting than by the personalities within it.

The power of the situation

Change the situation and you often change the behaviour, even with the same people. This is humbling and hopeful at once: humbling because it limits the credit we can take, hopeful because it means design can do what willpower cannot.

Ask not only who did it, but what made it easy to do.

— Jonah Frei

Designing better defaults

• Defaults: what happens when no one chooses anything?
• Friction: what is easy, and what is deliberately hard?
• Signals: what does the environment quietly reward?

If you want different behaviour, start by redesigning the situation that produces the current one.