In Pursuit of Digital Badges

 

What's the appeal of digital badges? I used to think that only a crazy person would be motivated to exercise just to move some electrons around on their smartphone screen. My phone would notify me that a new challenge was available each month, and I would routinely ignore it. I felt no pain or consternation about this -- in fact, I never gave it a second thought, or never notice the challenge at all. But for the past few months it seems that I'm among those who increase their activity level just because their iPhone tells them to (my latest badges shown above). Why does this seemingly stupid behavior-change strategy work, and why did it start working for me when it didn't help me before?

First, it's important to know that rewards do motivate behavior. In a previous post on behaviorism I provided some background on how this works by training the Intuitive Mind. Two Minds Theory posits that the final stage before a behavior is produced by the Intuitive Mind (after processing inputs from within and outside the brain) involves a risk-benefit calculation: In the original theory diagram this is called a "strategic evaluation of alternatives." Having been rewarded for a behavior in the past will tend to increase its priority ranking on the Intuitive Mind's implicit list of alternatives, and will make the mind more likely to initiate that behavior. The benefit of rewards is well-known to anyone who has ever tried to implement a sticker chart for their children, or anyone who has ever been motivated to work harder for a raise or a promotion at work.

Second, the neurobiology of rewards is that they release the neurotransmitter dopamine in the ventral tegmental area of the lower brain. Areas of the brain that respond to rewards are also mostly subcortical areas like the nucleus accumbens and striatum, which I have elsewhere described as crucial to the Intuitive Mind's activity of selecting and initiating behaviors. The influence of rewards on our behavior happens mostly outside of consciousness, which fits perfectly with my experience of being motivated by digital badges: I don't consciously choose to exercise in order to gain a badge (that still seems stupid to me), yet I notice after the fact that I seem to be doing so! My experience here is a more virtuous manifestation of the same reward-behavior loop that can become dysfunctional in cases of opioid use disorder. Automatic links between rewards and behavior function to keep me exercising, so that I'm essentially a "badge addict." I exercise more without really meaning to. Again, this fits with my experience: My activity level has been increasing since I noticed the badges, but without any specific decision to do that on my part.

Third, the creators of digital badges are psychologically savvy, and they have made some design choices that increase their reward potential. For instance, the badges on my screen are attractive, with an enamel-like coloration that makes them seem solid despite their ephemeral nature. They spin in a three-dimensional way when I tap them, which provides some level of interactivity. And on the metallic-looking back of each badge is stamped my name and the date I achieved the goal, which creates a level of personalization. Each of these characteristics increases the chance that my brain will perceive the little icon on my screen as being worth a burst of dopamine from the ventral tegmental area.

A question that I haven't yet answered is why the badges seem to be working for me now, when they never did before. I have written previously about improving my exercise habits in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, because the costs of not exercising suddenly seemed to outweigh the costs of doing so. That's an issue of perceptions, which means my change in behavior relied at least in part on some input from the Narrative Mind. But the Intuitive Mind is the one that's responsible for actually getting me to go exercise, and it's more likely to do what's habitual than to consult my Narrative Mind for its latest views about the world. Research across different types of health behavior suggests that initial changes in behavior are likely due to some type of cost-benefit analysis. But after a behavior is established as a habit, a different set of variables becomes important. Habits are much more strongly driven by the kind of Intuitive-Mind considerations that digital badges capitalize on, and they don't rely so much on conscious input. In fact, many days I now find myself getting ready to exercise without thinking about it too much. (When I do stop to think about it, I still kind of wish that I wasn't). That's the power of the Intuitive Mind. By themselves, digital badges were too weak a reward to get me out the door and running. But after that pattern of behavior is established, the small reward provided by a badge seems to be helpful in maintaining it.

If you're reading this thinking that "exercising more than I meant to" is a good problem to have, you're right. But just trade out the word "drinking" for "exercising" in that sentence, and you will see that the basic principle of behavior change is identical to what happens in more problematic cases. If you want to develop an unintentional-exercise habit, you should know that it will probably take a while. Some recent research suggests more than 2 months of regularly engaging in a behavior is needed for it to become a habit, and the folks at Alcoholics Anonymous have a long track record of behavior change with their habit-forming rule of "90 meetings in 90 days."  Prochaska's stages-of-change model suggests that it might take as long as 6 months for a new behavior to become a habit. For me this seems about right: I started to increase the frequency of exercise in April or May, and I noticed the badges' effect on my behavior somewhere around November. For me, digital badges aren't really a tool for behavior change. But they have proven to be a surprisingly effective tool for maintenance of a new behavior over time.