Behaviour as threat-avoidance and safety-seeking — notes

Lots of strands of BeS point to a safety seeking behaviour of avoiding being in the out-group, especially conformity, social norms, loss aversion (in individuals) and threat messaging.

I believe that many BeS findings can be explained by the following set of rules

• If we feel high levels of threat or fear, we do ecological safety-seeking behaviours, which is to approach choices that keep us in the in-group and avoid choices that risk us going down social pecking order or being rejected from the group entirely, also to stick to habits and avoid uncertainty

Why do I think this?

• Loss aversion has a much greater effect in the individual frame than the ‘we’ frame (BIT Tax Messaging study)
• Threat messaging works stronger than social norm messaging, which is compatible with social norm messaging working through an increased fear or threat mechanism (with the threat messaging being a more salient version of this) (multiple studies in the Sterling Nudges list, Financial section)
• Conformity to social norms are a hugely strong influencer on behaviours (Asch, 1950s). We want to be doing what everyone else is doing. Why? We are safer in the crowd, and if we don’t know something in great detail, then the crowd likely has more information about something and is therefore more likely than us to be making the correct decision
• The idea here is that conformity and following social descriptive norms is an archetypal human safety seeking behaviour
• This can explain social norms messaging, the strength of conformity, individualised loss aversion and threat messaging.
• It would be interesting to see if people who have higher levels of anxiety generally are more prone to social norms messaging and people with higher levels of wellbeing are less prone to social norms messaging (or maybe they are more-so because they are less skeptical of messaging?)
• Different but related, our threat levels are mediated, I think, through 5-HT (Serotonin) — broadly associated with avoidance behaviours. Perhaps it is also possible to prime our avoidance decision making and this could makes us more sensitive to social norms messaging. In the reverse direction, would it be possible to prime the approach / DA system to lead to less safety-seeking outcomes? (Medical choices nudges)
• Are habits a form of safety-seeking too? Trying new things and uncertainty are greater in new choices
• Does this mean that increasing wellbeing or perhaps better thought of as increasing ‘belonging’ (non-contingent on the choice at hand — e.g. religion or a loving family) is linked with breaking of habits (more wellbeing/belonging = easier to break habit) as well as susceptibility to social norms messaging (more wellbeing/belonging = lower susceptibility to social norms messaging)?