Friday November 3rd marked our sixth annual BIG Difference BC conference and we’re still reeling from the excitement. The lead-up to BIG Difference BC is always demanding for our planning committee. As we busily prepare presentations, send out pre-conference communications, and schedule tech tests, we often forget to take a step back and recognize how incredible this event really is. It’s quite a feat to convince almost 1600 people of the value of learning about a topic that so few had even heard about just a decade ago!
Now, looking back at this year’s conference, a little reflection makes it clear why this event is a welcome addition to many people’s calendars.
We started off the day with a warm welcome guided by Stephanie Papik. We took this time to check in with one another across computer screens and time zones. This grounding set the stage for our keynote address by Betsy Levy Paluck. Combined with a personal introduction by her former mentee Jiaying Zhao, it was enough to impress even one of the most impressive women in academia today: Betsy noted that she had “never had such a meaningful experience on a Zoom conference before”.
Stephanie Papik leads us in Circle Practice to help us set our intentions for a day of curiosity, openness, and learning.
Betsy took us on a deep dive into social norms research in her keynote presentation “Engineering Social Change Using Social Norms”. We explored new perspectives on this iconic ‘nudge’ technique and its far-reaching practical applications. As we began to think of norms less as static descriptive statements (e.g., you consume more electricity than your neighbours) and more as evolving understandings that we are constantly updating, audience members recognized how important this distinction is in the work that they do.
Coming out of the BIG Difference BC Conference, I’ve been thinking a lot about Dr. Betsy Levy Paluck’s presentation on social norms. In the world of preventive health care, we often lean into social norms to encourage people to adopt a healthy behaviour; however, she noted that people are looking for evidence of the social norm in their lived experience as well. For something like immunizations, which occur in a 1-to-1 clinical encounter, how do we make the behaviours of others visible? The “I got vaccinated” stickers we hand out are a start, but we may need to come up with some more creative ideas to make the invisible practice more visible.
Meghan Martin, Fraser Health Authority
The keynote address was followed by a series of three fascinating lightning talks. Renante Rondina shared research uncovering effective strategies for optimizing hybrid work settings, Marie Stege and Britt Titus introduced us to methods for leveraging behavioural insights using a systems approach, and Ke Wang convinced us of the value of cognitive reappraisal for protecting the mental health of essential workers.
Ke Wang, from Harvard University, gave a somber update in the morning. There is a global rise of unhappiness. Anger, stress, sadness, physical pain, and worry all are reaching a new global high. His presentation and many others were timely in providing us opportunities to expand our toolkits with counter-strategies: Reframing & Reflection. Interventions & Nudges. Individual & Systems Thinking.
Stephanie Papik, Moose Hide Campaign, BC Public Service
After a break, we turned to micro-presentations from nine different speakers representing a wide variety of backgrounds and topics. They shared snapshots of projects including understanding and countering misinformation, improving registration and response rates, tackling public health and safety challenges, understanding how people make decisions, and a webinar about upcoming BI courses. For many practitioners, BIG Difference BC is a rare chance to share their work outside of their own organization; we love being able to provide these opportunities for feedback and discussion!
I am fascinated by Celia Gaertig’s research on the impact of sharing confidence intervals while offering advice. It’s unintuitive that advice that acknowledges some level of uncertainty would be more influential than advice without that spin, but that is exactly what 12 of her studies have found! As Celia alluded to, this has implications to how governments communicate about crisis events but in general, I think it’s a great example of how behavioural science is updating our assumptions about human judgment and decision-making – hopefully informing better communications during uncertain times.
Mikayla Ford, BC Behavioural Insights Group
In the afternoon, we shifted our attention to the topic of communications. Drawing on the expertise of three experts in behavioural science (Bing Feng from TD Wealth, Nicholas Diamond from the Impact and Innovation Unit in the Government of Canada, and Dave Trudinger from the Behavioural Insights Unit in New South Wales), our panel discussion on behavioural insights and communication surfaced themes such as segmentation, operational transparency, culture change, and avoiding ‘sludge creep’. For many audience members, this was the highlight of the day. The practical takeaways from this session inspired everyone from communications professionals to academics.
Panel discussion on “Using Behavioural Insights to Improve How We Communicate”
Though admittedly primed to find the afternoon’s panel on communications interesting due to personal interest in the subject, I was nevertheless blown away by the discussion. I found that the panelists’ perspectives offered a robust view of the complexities of communications--but didn’t stop there. True to behavioural insights practitioner form, they then offered clear, digestible tips on how to address barriers to make sure we communicate with our audiences on their own terms.
Steph Wilkie, BC Behavioural Insights Group
Despite having taught communications strategies for a number of years, I had so many takeaways from this panel discussion combining behavioural insights and communications. My top three? Dave’s immersive example of considering what we hope our message leads the recipient(s) to “think, feel, and do”; Bing’s friendly reminder that message senders need to do the hard work to make it easy for message recipients; and Nick’s gentle caution that communication without trust is a dead-end.
Kirstin Appelt, UBC Decision Insights for Business & Society
The enthusiasm carried into the next segment of the agenda: the amazing afternoon lightning talks. Stina Grant opened the segment with her summary of a study to reduce the impact of phishing attempts in the BC Public Service. Karina Spoyalo, graduate of UBC’s Advanced Professional Certificate in Behavioural Insights, shared the results of her team’s capstone project which used behavioural insights to nudge hospital cafeteria patrons to choose more sustainable menu items. The afternoon lightning talks concluded with a presentation by Jay Olson on strategies to curb smartphone addictions – a topic that clearly struck a chord with many in the audience.
I especially enjoyed the afternoon lightning talks. Stina's presentation about phishing prevention -- finding that the email without the quiz was actually more effective -- was surprising to me and really shows the value of testing. Karina's hospital food study showed how "background" factors like menu selection can have a big impact in difference-in-differences designs. Jay's approach to personalized nudges found some promising results for reducing problematic phone use. I love this idea of involving people in their own nudging process.
Dave Hardisty, UBC Decision Insights for Business & Society
We were fortunate to end our day of learning in the same way that it started. Stephanie Papik guided us in closing circle practice by sharing key takeaways from the event. Of course, we couldn’t let the day end without a sneak peek at BIG Difference 2024. Then, with some final thank yous, we were ready to conclude another successful BIG Difference BC!