Most behaviour change strategies fail—here’s why Too often, interventions focus on awareness and education, assuming that more knowledge leads to action. But human behaviour is largely automatic, shaped by unconscious processes and complex systems. A new paper explores how integrating behavioural science with systems thinking can create more effective, scalable change. It introduces a structured framework—built on the Double Diamond approach—to help bridge the gap. Here’s a breakdown of their model and why it matters 👇 The authors point to 3 key issues with traditional approaches to behaviour change: 1️⃣ Traditional behaviour change approaches have focussed primarily on education and raising awareness, theorising that greater knowledge leads to changes in behaviour. Although this approach often fails to lead to sustained behaviour change 2️⃣ Much of our behaviour is driven by automatic, intuitive processes, which interventions typically overlook 3️⃣ Behavioural research is often conducted on small groups, making it difficult to scale insights to broader societal issues, where behaviour is influenced by complex, interconnected factors. The authors advocate integrating behavioural science with systems approaches to more effectively tackle complex societal issues. They make the point that “behavioural science provides insights into individual decision-making, while systems approaches offer ways of understanding, and working with, the dynamic interactions and feedback loops within complex systems." They use design thinking – specifically the Double Diamond - as a framework for bridging behavioural science and systems thinking (shown in the image below). Their model consists of four key phases: Discover, Define, Develop, and Deliver, each aligned with distinct methods from both behavioural and systems sciences. 1️⃣ Discover (Divergent Thinking – Problem Space) This phase focuses on gathering insights to understand the system and its challenges. 2️⃣ Define (Convergent Thinking – Problem Statement) At this stage, the information gathered is analysed to define the core problem. 3️⃣ Develop (Divergent Thinking – Solution Space) In this phase, potential interventions are co-designed and iteratively refined. 4️⃣ Deliver (Convergent Thinking – Intervention & Implementation) The final phase involves implementing and iterating interventions within the system. The researchers argue that this structured, yet flexible approach helps navigate complexity by balancing micro-level behavioural insights with macro-level systemic influences. FYI – this is a pre-print and hasn’t yet been peer reviewed. Source: Parkinson, J. A., Gould, A., Knowles, N., West, J., & Goodman, A. (2025). Integrating Systems Thinking and Behavioral Science. | 42 comments on LinkedIn