Any Framework Worth Using is Worth Memorizing

“The best and most practical wisdom is elementary academic wisdom. But there is one extremely important qualification: You must think in a multidisciplinary manner. You must routinely use all the easy-to-learn concepts from the freshman course in every basic subject.”

- Charlie Munger

Behavioural frameworks like COM-B, EAST, or MINDSPACE are often pitched (not necessarily by their authors!) as one-stop shops for generating behavioural solutions. Unfortunately they are generally not adequate to the task. Framework-generated solutions tend to lack the sharpness that is characteristic of good behavioural solutions. In the wrong hands this can feel like a mechanic who, for every single car that comes in, just slaps on new tires, go-faster stripes, and a spoiler. Fine, maybe, if you come in with a flat. Worse than useless if the actual problem is a broken gearbox.

But this weakness doesn't make frameworks useless. Where they come into their own is as a pattern-matching tool.

The Power of Pattern-Matching

As you work on a project, it is extremely helpful to be able to quickly and effortlessly run through a library of behavioural concepts and see if anything connects to what you're hearing and seeing. In an interview with a front-line operator, when hearing about a problem, you can ask yourself, “Would it make sense here to try making it easy / attractive / social / timely / using messengers / incentives / norms / defaults...?" and so on, and so on.

To illustrate, let's look at an advanced example of this pattern-matching from Daniel Kahneman:

"I had one of the most satisfying eureka experiences of my career while teaching flight instructors in the Israeli Air Force about the psychology of effective training. I was telling them about an important principle of skill training: rewards for improved performance work better than punishment of mistakes. [...]

"When I finished my enthusiastic speech, one of the most seasoned instructors in the group raised his hand and made a short speech of his own [...]: “On many occasions I have praised flight cadets for clean execution of some aerobatic maneuver. The next time they try the same maneuver they usually do worse. On the other hand, I have often screamed into a cadet’s earphone for bad execution, and in general he does better upon his next try. So please don’t tell us that reward works and punishment does not, because the opposite is the case."

"This was a joyous moment of insight, when I saw in a new light a principle of statistics that I had been teaching for years. The instructor was right—but he was also completely wrong! [...] What he had observed is known as regression to the mean, which in that case was due to random fluctuations in the quality of performance. Naturally, he praised only a cadet whose performance was far better than average. But the cadet was probably just lucky on that particular attempt and therefore likely to deteriorate regardless of whether or not he was praised. Similarly, the instructor would shout into a cadet’s earphones only when the cadet’s performance was unusually bad and therefore likely to improve regardless of what the instructor did. The instructor had attached a causal interpretation to the inevitable fluctuations of a random process."

Kahneman is able to use this insight to offer the air force instructors actionable advice on how to improve the performance of their cadets, by changing their balance of reward and punishment. He puts his finger on a specific, weird thing that's going on and makes a similarly specific diagnosis by drawing from a well-furnished mental library of psychological and statistical ideas.

To do this yourself you need to be able to quickly flick through these different ideas in your own mental library: *click*, *click*, *click*. Digging through your Downloads folder for a half-forgotten PDF is no use. This means not just reading a framework, but memorizing it. And not just one framework, but all of them, or at least all of those you find insightful.

This can seem intimidating! But you will be surprised at how much you can memorize, how quickly, and how well that investment pays back over time. An hour or two of effort spread out over a few weeks is enough to permanently upgrade your solution-generating skills.

To your colleagues the end product will look like huge creativity and erudition. They will be partially correct! But for you all it will feel like is encountering a new problem or data point, going *click*, *click*, *click*, and seeing what sticks. Now with an inventory of 50+ concepts to check through, you are more like a skilled mechanic who can spot the gearbox problem, replace it, send a happy customer on their way, and leave the go-faster stripes safely in the drawer.

It is possible to apply behavioural science to this task as well: Anki and other spaced repetition apps make memorization a breeze. Many frameworks have helpful acronyms to make this even easier!

A Framework Starter Pack

Here is a list of frameworks we would recommend committing to memory, to start you off:

At Nudge Partners we use an Anki deck with these frameworks pre-loaded - get in touch if you'd like a copy. Our NudgeGPT tool can also be used to explore these frameworks (and a few more advanced ones) interactively.

Finally: expanding and curating this list yourself is a great way to broaden your range as a behavioural science practitioner. Good additions to your mental inventory may not present themselves as 'behavioural frameworks' at all. Everything from card game design seminars to industrial hazard control manuals (see the easily-repurposed hierarchy of controls below) can have something to teach - and be memorized by - the curious student of human behaviour:

This applies double when you're working in a team: the more weird and wonderful sources of inspiration you can collectively draw from, the smarter your combined solutions will be.