Behavioral Science, Gaming, and Zombies: 6 Behavioral Science Technologies to Make You Successful in the New Year and Beyond

What are your goals for the year? If you are like many, you have a few nebulous aims peppered with good intentions. Lacking in the mix, however, are the crucial ingredients of specificity, a plan, and the contingencies to help meet your goals. Like all of us, you are an “agent” who is bound by behavioral laws and prone to procrastination. Even with all the willpower you can muster, you will most likely fall short of your goals unless you use behavioral science to help you. Behavioral Science gives us strategies such as self-monitoring/management, reinforcement, motivation, and environmental arrangement to create the right conditions for success. Unlike the Greek-sculpture-esque personal trainer provided with a gym membership, most of us can’t have our own personal behavioral scientist to help us design and track our personal behavior change programs (though it would be interesting to see a BCBA wearing sweatpants and blowing into a whistle). However, we do have access to the next best thing—and it’s all thanks to technology. The following are some of those very technologies and apps that use behavioral science to help us succeed in meeting our goals for the next year and beyond! (Some of them may even help with a few of our workout goals…)

Learn a New Language

Duolingo is a popular, free online language learning program that has some pretty impressive independent research, demonstrating that 34 hours on Duolingo is equivalent to a semester of an introductory college course. You can select from 26 different languages from Spanish to Swahili. (They even introduced Klingon!) It starts by taking a simple baseline assessment of your language abilities, then introduces small, 10 minute modules that systematically introduce vocabulary and concepts. In my opinion, this program beautifully uses shaping, prompt fading, spaced repetition, and differential reinforcement. To make the program “sticky,” they have added gaming components such as levels, points, a progress bar and bonus skills. I’ve already started my Spanish program.

(more info here: http://www.fluentin3months.com/duolingo/)

Read More Books

Join an online “Goodreads Reading Challenge.” Whether you want to read one book a month or a book every week, you can set your goal, get recommendations, social network with friends and email reminders. Your reading is displayed on a progress bar to keep you on track. You can also see your friends’ progress, make comments, and provide praise and encouragement to each other. This program could use some competition and gaming elements but it’s a good start.

Get in Shape

There are so many options when it comes to technologies that help you track your fitness goals but I chose to highlight two technologies 1: Zombies Run, and 2: Fitbit.

Zombies Run– This is an app that you download on your phone and use as you walk or run. The app uses story-based gaming to immerse the runner into a post-apocalyptic world where you are being chased by zombies. You open the app, put your head phones on and press “Run.” While you are running, you hear soundtrack, a story, and instructions through radio contact. There are missions that you fulfill to find the truth, evade the zombies, and help the human race. The game tracks your movement and speed, and rewards your behavior by providing more stories, removing zombies, and giving you “supplies” to build your base. This app will provide motivation to do what it was meant to do: get your body moving! (What else would you do if you were being chased by zombies?)

Fitbit– If you haven’t already purchased a Fitbit, this may be the year to do so. They have worked out the kinks and now have many versions of this Activity Tracker. The Fitbit is a wristband that tracks your activity (and sleep) and displays your progress on the wristband. When you meet your activity goal (e.g. 10,000 steps), the wristband lights up and vibrates. You can also compete with friends and earn badges through an optional gaming component.

Noom – You might have heard Noom described as using psychology to promote weight loss, and it does just that. Behavior analysts may be familiar with the environmental changes that you can make to help you eat less and exercise more. Noom may be just the app to prompt you to finally do these things! Based in research, which is always a plus.

Improve your Posture

MacBreakZ can be your personal ergonomic assistant! It focuses on what happens to your body with extensive computer use and gives you breaks, stretches, and other tips and tricks to help you combat what sitting for hours a day does to your body.

Save and Invest Money

Acorns decreases the response effort that is usually needed for investing by taking the small change from daily purchases and investing it into “Smart Portfolios.” The app links to your bank account and when you make a small purchase (e.g. coffee for $.5.75) it takes the small change ($0.25) and puts it into your portfolio. Overtime the small change adds up and allows those without a big chunk of money and investment knowledge to start building a nest egg.

Have you used any of these technologies in a behavior change plan for yourself? What do you think of these technologies? What other behavior change technologies are out there that you like? Let us know in the comments below!