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HURDLE Framework


When I started immersing myself in Behavioural Science towards the end of 2020, I was fascinated and excited by the sheer number of heuristics and cognitive biases which had been researched and identified. For the first time in my career, I had the vocabulary to sell my gut-feel ideas to the most sceptical of clients AND all the tools to identify unseen opportunities to change behaviour... Ideas that could be executed with no or very little budget AND without an Art Director... I felt so liberated! 

 

Every time I received a new Tweet, listened to a new podcast or read a new online article, I enthusiastically expanded my PPT deck, describing the new bias/heuristic, capturing the research and adding applied examples...

 

Then, one day, I decided that I was ready to start applying my new-found knowledge to the projects I was working on. "I have a list of over 100 heuristics and biases to inspire me! This is going to be FUN!"

 

Two hours later, I found myself still scrolling up and down my PPT deck, reading and re-reading the EAST Framework, falling back on the MINDSHIFT framework, even trying to decipher the COM-B framework... looking for anything that would help me navigate my 100+ heuristics and biases. 

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"This can't be right," I thought to myself... This is supposed to be fun...


That's when I decided that I would make it my mission in life to develop a framework that would help others like me apply their wealth of theory to the real world. And, just to add to the challenge, the framework would have to be in the format of an acronym - to be taken seriously, of course ;)

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Challenge. Accepted!

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I found the starting point of my framework in my most recent online training - the Behavioural Economics & Psychology in Marketing Masterclass through Mindworx - which had taught me one very valuable lesson: The most important question to ask yourself when looking at a  project through a BeSci lens, is not: "What must be done to drive desired behaviour?" but rather:

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“What is standing in the way of desired behaviour?”

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​So, I decided to develop my framework to assist applied behavioural scientists in answering this ONE question.

 

I then went through my list of heuristics and cognitive biases and found that they could be split into six broad categories: History, Uncertainty, Relevance, Difficulty, Loss and Ego - HURDLE, for short.

 

Below is my first draft of the HURDLE framework - designed to help you identify and overcome these obstacles in order to formulate BehSci-informed interventions to drive desired behaviour.

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Upon the valuable advice from Chris Rawlinson over at 42Courses, I've split the cognitive biases into two categories to avoid choice overload - the famous ones most of us know, followed by the lesser-known ones...

 

You are welcome to download the editable template and update it with new biases and heurisitics as you discover them.

 

Please leave any feedback or suggestions here.   

HISTORY

H

Ask yourself:

How might people’s existing beliefs and previous experiences influence their behaviour?

UNCERTAINTY

U

Ask yourself:

Before I come up with ways to motivate people, what am I doing to reduce people’s uncertainty, anxiety and fear during the decision-making process?

RELEVANCE

R

Ask yourself:

How can I create relevance and meaning for people?

DIFFICULTY

D

Ask yourself:

How can I reduce friction for people during the decision-making process, so that they can go through the entire process on “auto-pilot”?

LOSS

L

Ask yourself:

Does my messaging take into account that people usually care less about seeking perfection and more about avoiding catastrophe?

EGO

E

Ask yourself:

How might people’s perception of themselves and others influence their behaviour?

THE COGNITIVE BIASES AND HEURISTICS YOU’VE COME TO KNOW AND LOVE

HISTORY
 

Previous Experiences

  • Self-herding

  • Action Bias

 

Existing Beliefs

  • Confirmation Bias

  • Cognitive Dissonance

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Creating New References

  • Priming

  • Availability Heuristic

UNCERTAINTY
 

Provide Context​

  • Anchoring & Adjustment

  • Fundamental Attribution Error

 

Give Social Reassurance

  • Social Norms and Social Proof

  • Unity

  • Authority Bias

 

Manage Expectations

  • Expectancy Theory and Cost Signalling

  • Veblen Goods

 

Show Value

  • Labour Illusion

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Manage Decision-making Process​

  • Default Effect

 

Address Procrastination

  • Scarcity (Immediacy / The Power of Now)

  • Goal Visibility

  • Perceived Progress

  • Goal Gradient

 

Provide Financial Context

  • Compromise Effect

  • Attractiveness Effect

  • Similarity Effect

  • Trade-off Contrast

  • Extremeness Avoidance

  • Extremeness Avoidance with Polarisation

RELEVANCE
 

Personal Relevance

  • Cocktail Party Effect

  • Bystander Effect

  • Personalisation

  • Mood Bias

  • Fresh Start Effect

  • Halo Effect

  • Representative Bias

  • Distinctiveness Bias

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Time Relevance

  • Peak-End Rule

  • Present Bias

  • Reward Scheduling

  • Hyperbolic Discounting

 

Financial Relevance

  • Mental Accounting

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Address Inertia

  • Status Quo Bias

  • Active Choice

  • Picture Superiority

  • Primacy and Recency Effects

  • Framing Effect

  • Question-behaviour Effect

  • Salience Effect

DIFFICULTY
 

Minimise Effort

  • Cognitive Load​

  • Decision Fatigue

  • Satisficing

  • Chunking

  • Decoy Effect 

  • Partitioning/Bracketing

  • Channel Factors

  • Cognitive Ease

  • Story Bias

 

Make effort your friend

  • Effort Justification

  • IKEA Effect

  • Decision Points

  • Temptation Bundling

LOSS
 

Perceived Abstract Losses

  • Prospect Theory

  • Loss Aversion

  • Endowment Effect

  • Fear of Regret

 

Perceived Financial Losses

  • Pain of Payment 

  • Sunk Cost Fallacy

  • Transaction Decoupling

EGO
 

How They See Themselves

  • Reciprocity Bias

  • Liking

  • Over-confidence Effect

  • Consistency Bias 

  • Dunning-Kruger Effect

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How They See Others

  • Envy

  • False Consensus Effect

  • Altruism

Any and all feedback welcome.

SOME LESSER-KNOWN COGNITIVE BIASES AND HEURISTICS TO EXPLORE

HISTORY
 

Previous Experiences​

  • Affect Bias

 

Existing Beliefs​

  • Gambler’s Fallacy

  • Hindsight Bias

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Creating New References​

  • Mere Exposure Effect

UNCERTAINTY
 

Provide Context​

  • Conjunction Fallacy

 

Give Social Reassurance​

  • In-Group Out-Group Bias

  • The Power of the Group

  • Negative Social Proof

 

Manage Expectations​

  • Ambiguity Aversion

  • Affordance Cue

  • Information Bias

  • Neglect of Probability

 

Show Value​

  • Operational Transparency

  • Concreteness Bias

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Manage Decision-making Process

  • Planning Fallacy

  • Diversification Bias

  • Precommitment

 

Address Procrastination​

  • Zeigarnik Effect

  • Scarcity Error

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RELEVANCE
 

Personal Relevance​

  • Black Swan

  • Motivation Crowding

  • Neomania / Neophilia

  • Not-invented-her Bias

  • Pratfall Effect

  • Illusory Correlation

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Time Relevance​

  • Construal Levels

  • Idleness Aversion

 

​Address Inertia​

  • Primacy and Framing Effect

  • Cherry-picking

 

More Ways to Create Meaning

  • Messenger Effect

  • Goodheart’s Law

  • Sleeper Effect

  • Hedonic Treadmill

  • Regression to Mean

  • Choice vs Evaluation

  • Deliberation vs Implemental

DIFFICULTY
 

Minimise Effort

  • Choosing vs Rejecting

  • Inductive Thinking

  • Personification Bias

  • Outcome Bias

  • Base-rate Fallacy

 

Make effort your friend​

  • Single Stage vs Multiple Stage Decisions

LOSS
 

Perceived Abstract Losses​

  • Hedonic Editing

  • Zero-risk Bias

  • Enhanced Active Choice

  • Adaptive Bias

 

Perceived Financial Losses​

  • Payment Depreciation

EGO
 

How They See Themselves​

  • Self-serving Bias

  • Illusion of Attention

  • Survivorship Bias

  • Optimism Bias

  • Subjective Validation

  • Illusion of Control

  • Illusion of Skill

  • Illusion of Superiority

  • Idiosyncratic Fit

  • Forer Effect

  • Swimmer’s Body Illusion

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How They See Others​

  • Introspection Illusion

  • Omission Bias

  • Broken Window Effect

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