How to Really Change Behaviors, According to Psychology

Behavior change strategies are important components of nearly every established form of therapy.
Different techniques have different targets: thoughts, emotions, even your environment.
An important first step is to pick the right technique.

Suppose you want to eat healthier, exercise more, or avoid getting in arguments with your partner. Each of these requires behavior change, but changing behavior can be challenging. An important first step is to pick the right technique.

Behavior change strategies are important components of nearly every established form of therapy—such as cognitive behavioral therapy, person-centered therapy, and solution-focused therapy— and some behavior change strategies appear across different types of therapies.

But which one should you choose, exactly?

Today, we’re sharing a simple taxonomy of behavior change strategies that we think should be better known, because it’s so useful.

The strategies aren’t mutually exclusive. You can (and, arguably, should!) try combining several of them if you’re aiming to change the way you behave on a daily basis.

How to change behaviors according to psychology

The framework here, along with many of the ideas and terms contained herein, comes from James Prochaska, John Norcross, and Carlo DiClemente’s book Changing For Good, which we’d strongly recommend reading.

For your benefit, we’ve modified and expanded their useful list of behavior change strategies somewhat, using findings from other aspects of our research.

Strategy 1: Consciousness-Raising

This strategy is the most common therapeutic approach to behavior change. Despite its rather airy-sounding name, consciousness-raising is also one of the simplest and most straightforward behavior change strategies. Its premise: Increase your level of knowledge and awareness around the issue in question so that you’re better equipped to make good decisions about it. This strategy can involve arriving at deep revelations about yourself during therapy sessions or something as simple as learning more about the principles of sleep hygiene to improve sleep quality.

Possible forms of consciousness-raising:

Developing new interpretations of your thoughts, feelings, or behavior with a therapist’s help
Learning more about how to navigate the world (e.g., financial info, info about how to seek mental health treatment, etc.)
Revelations about the consequences of your behaviors or beliefs (e.g., realizing that you take your problems out on people, and that this behavior undermines your personal relationships)
Picking up technical information that may be useful in pursuing a behavior goal (e.g., how to best implement a specific sleep hygiene plan) .

Strategy 2: Social Liberation

In many cases, the circumstances of daily life— the types of environment you operate in and the behaviors considered acceptable in those environments—can help or hinder efforts to change your behavior. Consider, for example, how difficult it would be to quit smoking if you spent all of your time in places where many people around you were smoking regularly.

The social liberation strategy aims to facilitate positive behavior change by changing the social environment, to make such changes easier. On a personal level this can mean thinking carefully about who is a good influence to spend time around (and who brings out a worse version of yourself) and in what social settings to seek out or avoid. At a society-wide level this approach may focus on altering the legal/ regulatory frameworks that govern public behavior. In the case of smoking in the United States, social liberation has taken the form of indoor smoking bans and restrictions on where people can smoke outside.

Forms of social liberation at a society-wide level include:

Top-down public health policy interventions (e.g., smoking ban laws)
Efforts to change social mores (e.g., implementing educational programs that promote trans-inclusivity, helping to change societal attitudes towards trans people).

Forms of social liberation at a personal level include:

Specifically choosing environments that support a behavior change (e.g., avoiding bars, if you want to drink less)
Joining supportive communities and actively participating in groups that share your goals (e.g., joining a book club, if you want to read more)
Curating your media consumption to reflect the values and changes you want to see in yourself (e.g., following social media accounts that critically evaluate the news, if you want to be more engaged with current affairs).

Strategy 3: Emotional Arousal

The emotional arousal strategy is a cousin to consciousness-raising. Instead of working by providing useful information, it aims to aid behavior change by creating emotional momentum in the direction of the desired new behavior.

Typically, this strategy works by evoking a strong emotional experience related to the problem at hand. One very common method for producing this effect is through media—”scared straight” instructional programs that dramatize the negative consequences of certain behaviors are a common example. (This specific emotional arousal tactic has been known to backfire and produce more drug usage among youth.) This strategy can take less contrived forms, too; real-life personal experiences can emotionally highlight the need to change your behavior more effectively than virtually anything else.

Possible forms of emotional arousal:

Psychodrama (guided drama and role-playing to work through issues, often involving re-enacting and exploring past situations from the client’s life or future situations they might find challenging)
Grieving (e.g. allowing yourself to feel the full pain of loss of a loved one and to express the emotion you feel)
An intense emotional experience that motivates change (e.g. losing a friendship over a past behavior)
Reflecting on why you deeply care about making this behavior change.

Strategy 4: Self-Re-evaluation

Sometimes the key to changing your behavior is to consider what kind of person your current behavior makes you, what kind of person you’d like to be, and how adopting new behaviors might help you achieve that goal. The process of frank emotional reflection on your current state and how it differs from your preferences is the crux of the self-re-evaluation strategy.

As DiClemente puts it in Changing For Good, this process often entails asking yourself a series of difficult questions:

How do you perceive yourself as a gambler, a drinker, or a sedentary person? How do you see yourself if you change your behavior? What will be the cost of that change, in time, energy, pleasure, stress, or image? What, overall, are the pros and cons of trying to overcome your problem?

Possible forms of self-re-evaluation:

Value clarification (e.g. putting your priorities in a new order based on what you deeply value.
Future visualization (e.g. “What will I be like after I make this change?”)
Pros vs. cons analysis
Exploring desired identities (e.g., “What sort of person do I want to be? What would it look like if I started being that person today?”)

Strategy 5: Commitment

Ultimately, in many contexts, the one with the most influence over changing your own behavior is you. This fact can make behavior change attempts seem daunting, but it also creates an opening that can actually help you push yourself to reshape your ways. The commitment strategy involves announcing your intentions to the public or to members of your social circle. By doing so, you commit your social credibility to achieving your goal, thereby creating a powerful incentive to follow through and avoid the shame of public failure. New Year’s resolutions are a common commitment strategy example.

Possible forms of commitment:

Resolutions
Posting your intentions on social media
Publicly tracking behavior change performance (e.g. social fitness apps)
Frequently discussing behavior change efforts with friends/colleagues.

Strategy 6: Countering

The countering strategy works on a very simple premise: When the urge to engage in an unhealthy behavior strikes, substitute a healthier behavior. Countering strategies are popular among dieters; think of tactically opting for a healthy fruit snack when a potato chip craving strikes. Another famous example: Smokers often try to aid their efforts to quit by popping a mint or a piece of gum whenever they find themselves longing for a cigarette.

Possible forms of countering:

Relaxation tactics used to reduce stress and physical tension, which can help diminish the urge for unhealthy behaviors (e.g., deep breathing exercises, meditation, or progressive muscle relaxation)
Systematic desensitization, to gradually reduce anxiety or fear, making you less likely to resort to unhealthy behaviors as a coping mechanism
Substitution (as described above).

Strategy 7: Environment Control

The environment control strategy is similar to the social liberation strategy in that it involves altering your environment to make behavior change easier. In this case, though, the strategy focuses on changing the environments that you yourself directly control, such as your home or your workspace. The most common and obvious type of environment control tactic is removing unhealthy temptations—such as junk food, tobacco, or alcohol—from your home. But environment control tactics can take more positive forms, too, such as a reminder placed in your workspace to go straight to the gym after work instead of going home.

Possible forms of environment control:

Removing risks from your own environment
Making your environment more conducive to new behavior
Equipping your environment with supplies for a new behavior.

Strategy 8: Rewards

This strategy is one of the simplest and most intuitive of the bunch but can also be effective. Rewarding good behavior is a time-tested method for supporting efforts to change habits. Commonplace examples abound, such as rewarding oneself with a fun trip after hitting a big goal, enticing yourself to exercise by limiting your TV-watching time to when you’re on an exercise bike.

Possible forms of rewards:

Reward for achieving a milestone
Reward for beginning individual instances of behavior practices
Self-praise for adherence to a new behavior.

Strategy 9: Helping Relationships

Although you can’t control the behavior of your friends and family members, they can be an invaluable source of assistance. If you let your close, trusted confidantes in on your efforts, they can often help you achieve your goals.

Possible forms of helping relationships:

Asking people for logistical help (e.g., partnering for accountability in a study schedule, sharing resources for learning a new language)
Asking for moral support in the form of encouragement or compassion.
Asking for constructive feedback regarding your progress or ways you could improve your behavior.

Consider trying out combinations of these nine strategies and seeing which ones work best for you. Or, if your desired behavior change relates to a mental health challenge, consider contacting a licensed practitioner (such as a cognitive-behavioral therapist) to help you choose the behavior change strategies most likely to help you..