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Introduction

Recently, the Secretary General of the United Nations, António Guterres, presented a technical note on the behavioral sciences (United Nations, 2021) and their application in different United Nations organizations to achieve the necessary changes, both at the individual and societal level, in order to meet the Sustainable Development Goals 2030 (SDG 2030 hereinafter). Recently, the American Psychological Association (APA) also explains in its report "Emerging trends for 2023: What's ahead for psychologists and the field?" how psychologists are increasingly in demand to help solve some of the biggest challenges we face as a society. The report also mentions the tendency of psychology professionals to broaden their focus and go beyond personalized and individual therapy, reinforcing even further their central role in the promotion of the psychological health of the population (APA, 2023).

These trends indicated by the APA to broaden the focus towards solving societal problems in which human behavior is key, are aligned with the United Nations technical note on the behavioral sciences (op.cit), in which practical measures are proposed to create an enabling environment for the application of the behavioral sciences in various fields: health, climate change, gender, education, prevention of extremism, and in practically all areas of its activity.

The main idea of the technical note is that the fulfillment of many of the 2030 SDGs is based on a simple, but not simplistic, premise: achieving them depends on people and organizations carrying out some specific type of behavior, and in this area psychology professionals have and will have a central role.

Thus, the call of the United Nations is clear. All professionals in the behavioral sciences are called upon to contribute through models and techniques to identify the determinants of whether or not certain behaviors are realized, analyzing the barriers and facilitators of these behaviors, as well as establishing concrete strategies to implement and evaluate the behavioral change. All of this is focused on a practical perspective, based on different models and techniques of psychology, such as those that have been developed throughout its history in areas such as prevention and health promotion.

But in addition to the United Nations, which by its nature is the most representative of the supranational institutions, many others, such as the World Health Organization, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the World Bank, and large non-governmental organizations, such as UNICEF, are creating working teams around the behavioral sciences. In the OECD study Behavioural Insights and public policy: Lessons from around the world, it is mentioned that the "organized disorder" in the application of the behavioral sciences in these organizations is a result of organic growth due to initiatives in this field, which have gradually taken root in the institutions (OECD, 2017).

Thus, the creation of new structures is becoming possible. These organizational structures, hereafter referred to as "behavioral analysis and design units" (BADUs), are aimed at identifying the determinants of people's behavior. The barriers and facilitators for them to carry out different behaviors appropriate both for the achievement of their health objectives and, at the collective level of the SDGs. They also offer a privileged setting not only for academic research, but also for professional intervention in a real environment and with the possibility of being able to carry out studies with large samples that can have a great impact on the health and well-being of citizens.

It should be noted at this point that the English concept used by many of the units analyzed is that of "behavioral insights", although we have consulted the RAE during the course of this study and do not have a univocal term or a direct translation into Spanish, so, as we have indicated above, we have called them "unidades de análisis y diseño del comportamiento" [behavioral analysis and design units], since, as we shall see below, these units are not limited to a reflection on behavioral determinants, but also have a clear vocation for intervention, and in this sense we have used the concept of "diseño del comportamiento", which in English is "behavioral design", and is well established in the scientific field.

An approach to the analysis of BADUs, but opening the scope to any type of organization, including companies, was carried out in the Behavioral Teams Around the World report (Wendel, 2019). Using a questionnaire, the authors identified a total of 595 BADUs around the world. According to the authors, these BADUs were very heterogeneous in their composition and objectives. A high percentage (55%) were consulting firms and companies that use behavioral design to improve their products and services (45%).

In the same study, the author highlights that the countries with the highest number of teams and BADUs are: United States (242), United Kingdom (82), Netherlands (31), Australia (26), India (22), and Canada (20). The authors identified 10 in the case of Spain, but did not provide further information on their nature.

However, to date, BADUs have not been analyzed in supranational public bodies, understanding the concept of supranational organization as defined by Klabbers (2009): "a form of international organization which, encompassing several states, has its own purposes and means, has autonomy in relation to the member states, especially in the pursuit of its purposes, in the formation of its structures, and in certain cases the right to issue binding rules for the states".

The aim of our study is to determine whether supranational organizations, as organizations that have a strong influence on the policies of the states that comprise them, have their own BADUs, or if not, have at least developed initiatives related to the behavioral sciences and particularly psychology, as tools for analysis and intervention in the achievement of their goals. For this purpose, we will analyze the type of composition of the potential units, their structure, the type of projects on which they work, and we will identify, as a sample of their work, some of the reports produced by these BADUs.

Finally, this study offers a reflection on what repercussions this type of behavioral analysis and intervention unit may have for the professional development of psychology, with respect to the academic training of future psychology professionals, research in the field, and at the professional level.

Methodology

In order to achieve our objective, we carried out an observational study with purposive sampling, through the evaluation of the online corporate websites of a series of international organizations of which Spain is a member, based on those identified on the website of the Spanish Senate.

Procedure

The study is structured in three phases. In Phase 1, the sample of websites to be analyzed was selected. In Phase 2, an analysis of each website was carried out with a prior categorization system established by the researchers to identify, within the general website of each organization, the specific spaces or websites where the characteristics of the potential behavioral units, or related initiatives, were shown. Finally, in Phase 3, the information from the different websites was systematized into tables.

Phase 1. Sample Selection

A purposive sample was selected of international organizations of a European and global nature, of which Spain was a member at the time of the analysis. Specifically, the organizations included on the website of the Spanish Senate (link: https://senado.es), and specifically on the "international organizations" page (link: https://www.senado.es/web/conocersenado/enlaces/organismosinternacionales/index.html), were analyzed, as it was considered that this sample is representative, sufficient, and adequate for the objectives of this study. The Spanish Senate's website was chosen as the source for consultation after finding that it was the only site offering a list of all the supranational organizations to which the Kingdom of Spain belongs. It should be emphasized that despite not being included in the initial list, the website of the World Health Organization (WHO) in Europe was incorporated into our study. This decision is justified by the fact that although the WHO is a worldwide organization, it was considered relevant to analyze the website of this organization in Europe, due to the potential usefulness that the data obtained could have for psychologists in Spain.

Phase 2. Evaluation and Analysis

• For the evaluation and analysis of each of the websites, the following search protocol was carried out on the English version of each website.

  • Reading and searching for references to behaviour/behavior on the home page (main menu) of the website. If a reference was found, it was recorded. If a specific online link was found, the link was followed and it was determined whether it referred to the existence of a behavioral unit, the organization's own initiative, and/or an external collaboration with organizations specialized in behavioral design.

  • Specific search in the corresponding section of each website for "organization chart or structure" in order to identify any service, unit, or reference to behavior/behavior.

  • Specific search through the website's internal search engine for any reference to behaviour/behavior

  • Searching for the organization's name together with "behavior*" in the Google search engine and scanning the first 50 hits that were not paid posts on Google. The Google search was conducted after clearing the cookies and previous search history to avoid bias.

• The Google search was carried out by one of the researchers (LA) in December 2022, with a final update in May 2023. The results were recorded in an Excel file with a specific link to each of the organizations. Subsequently, a second researcher (MA) in June 2023 reviewed and validated the results of the categorization. When there was disagreement, the website was reviewed again by the two researchers jointly and the suitability of one or the other type of categorization was discussed.

Phase 3. Systematization of the Information Collected

Compiling and systematizing the information gathered in the first phase in four tables created ad hoc.

• The first table (Table 1) lists the supranational organizations that were included in our study.

• The second one (Table 2) describes organizations with stable behavioral analysis units.

• The third (Table 3) describes organizations without behavioral analysis and design units, but with stable initiatives or collaborations, which we consider as such when they have developed some type of intervention guide and/or recommendation for integrating the analysis of behavioral determinants in their work and reports.

• The last table (Table 4) includes supranational organizations that, whilst not having a BADU or initiatives that can be considered stable, have been found to identify some type of activity related to the analysis of behavioral determinants.

Results

Taking as a reference the organizations listed in the "International Organizations" tab of the Spanish Senate's website, the organizations listed in Table 1 were identified in Phase 1 of our study, indicating whether they have a unit or carry out initiatives related to behavioral analysis.

It should be noted that from the list of international organizations in the Spanish Senate website, when we reached the organization "European Council", we replaced this term with "European Commission". This decision was taken because the European Council is not of a technical nature but of coordination of EU public policies.

In Table 2, the following fields were compiled for each supranational organization: name of the organization, name, link, and objectives of the BADU, scope of work of application, structure of the BADU, and main published reports and a web link for further consultation.

Table 3 contains the following fields: name of the organization, initiative, objective of the initiative, and main reports published and their web link for further consultation. The initiatives and collaborations in Table 3 are considered to be of a stable nature.

Finally, Table 4 lists the objectives of the supranational organizations that do not have their own BADU and do not appear to have established stable initiatives. In some cases, some of these organizations have created a report or specific initiative, and these are included in the observations section of the table with the link.

Regarding the number of behavioral units among the organizations analyzed, the results indicate that a total of 11 (64.7%) of the 17 supranational organizations analyzed either had a specific behavioral unit (60%), or had carried out their own initiatives in the field of behavioral design or explicit collaborations with specialized external organizations (35.3%). The organizations with a behavioral unit listed in Table 2 are: the World Bank, the European Commission, WHO Europe, UNICEF, and the OECD. The organizations that had either developed specific initiatives or collaborated with organizations specialized in behavioral design are the FAO, WHO, UN Women, UN, UNDP, and UNEP. And finally, no recurrent behavioral science initiatives or collaborations were identified with the IMF, ILO, UNWTO, OSCE, NATO, or UNESCO.

The areas of work are those pertaining to each of the organizations and range from interventions in specific areas such as the FAO that focuses its efforts on the fight against hunger, the WHO promoting health, UN Women with initiatives to prevent violence against women and girls, or the UNDP that maintains academic-scientific collaborations for the reduction of poverty.

Governmental organizations such as the Competence Centre on Behaviour Insights of the European Commission, or the OECD Observatory of Public Sector Innovation (OPSI) work in broader areas of intervention due to the nature of these types of organizations.

Regarding the structure of these units, it should be noted that the World Bank, the European Commission, WHO Europe, and UNICEF refer to having a specialized team of researchers and external collaborators, and the WHO explains that it has a "technical advisory group". However, in the case of WHO Europe and UNICEF, the total number of professionals that make up the BADU is not available. As for the previous training of the professionals working in the BADU, this information is included on the organizations' website only with the exception of UNICEF. In cases such as the WB, the EC, or WHO Europe, the biography of the workers is included, which shows that the previous training of most of the professions defined as Behavioral Scientists covers psychology, sociology, applied consumer research, economics, and marketing, but due to the structure of the information we were not able to calculate percentages of each professional group.

Discussion

Behavioral determinants analysis units and initiatives related to the role of behavioral sciences in general seem to be present in a good number of supranational organizations, but at the same time the structure of the analysis units, the theoretical frameworks on which they base their work, and the training of the professionals working in them, seem heterogeneous in the light of our analysis.

Thus, the fact that we had to categorize the information extracted into three groups- organizations with specific behavioral analysis and design units, others with initiatives and collaborations, and yet others in which, although we have found some reference to the importance of people's behavior, we cannot conclude that they have initiated any systematic work or created a specific unit-leads us to believe that there may soon be a great emergence of behavioral analysis and design units.

For example, in June 2023, the World Health Organization urged the world's governments to create behavioral determinants analysis units to help decision-makers better understand the behavioral determinants of individuals, organizations, and society in general in order to develop health campaigns with a greater impact on population health (WHO, 2023). This significant development marks a milestone that is likely to be followed by other supranational organizations and their national chapters.

In our study, the structure of the World Health Organization was surprising, in that at the global level they have an advisory group made up of professionals in psychology, public health, economics, politics, and marketing but no specific unit, while at the WHO Europe level there is a BADU. No doubt this situation can be explained by the more theoretical and conceptual approach of the WHO at the global level and the fact that at the European level structures are articulated that allow field work in specific projects such as those developed at WHO Europe.

A fact that is also relevant to point out is the case of the OECD, which despite not having a behavioral analysis and design unit, currently offers one of the most complete guides for anyone interested through its Observatory (OPSI), which details both centers and specific initiatives around the world based on "behavioral insights".

This, together with the fact that they have a specific working area on behavior in the OPSI of the OECD, made us finally decide that "de facto" there was a specific unit, understood as a group of people working systematically with a common objective and within the framework of a structure.

Although our study offers a first approach to the incorporation of behavioral sciences and specifically to the analysis of how they are being integrated into the protocols and work of supranational organizations, which had not been done to date, we believe that our study has a number of limitations that should be taken into account in future studies.

The first is the use of an observational methodology that provides more superficial information than, for example, in-depth interviews or questionnaires with those responsible for each behavioral analysis unit or leaders of the different initiatives would have provided.

Thus, for example, in an analysis such as this it is not possible to establish, beyond an approximate idea, which theoretical model or models underpin the work and reports that are realized in the organizations, both in the field of the BADUs and the various initiatives. In order to solve this problem, more in-depth studies would be needed to analyze both the documents linked to the different websites and the scientific production published by the technicians and academics who collaborate in the different organizations.

Another limitation is that we have not been able to identify specific initiatives in the organizations listed in Table 4. Nevertheless, we have collected them with the intention of continuing the observation, since some of the organizations, such as ILO, UNWTO and UNESCO, are organizations in the framework of and related to the UN. In this sense, we understand that the call of its Secretary General, António Guterres, to the use of behavioral sciences as a fundamental tool in their analysis and interventions, will favor the establishment of new stable initiatives or even BADUs in these organizations, despite the internal complexity of these organizations.

Conclusions

We believe that the main contribution of our study is to draw the attention of psychology professionals in Spain to the work in the field of behavioral sciences that is carried out in the supranational organizations to which Spain belongs, according to the website of the Senate of Spain.

To date, we have not provided a panoramic picture of the various BADUs and initiatives related to the analysis of the determinants of human behavior for the achievement of organizational objectives at this level, and we consider our study to be a first step that should be followed up with more precise, domain-specific studies.

It is also relevant that beyond being just another area of work, the involvement of the behavioral sciences in these organizations is having and will have a significant impact on the policies of member states, and for example, the work in behavioral sciences is one of the fundamental pillars for the UN (UN, 2021).

In our opinion, it is plausible to think that the leadership of organizations such as the United Nations-which, as we have indicated, has already publicly positioned itself through a technical note on the necessity of incorporating the study of behavioral sciences into its projects worldwide-is key. This highlights the need to emphasize scientific methodology in decision making and, in particular, in the improvement of judgments and the avoidance of bias to be contemplated both in public institutions and in the business world (Kahneman, Sibony, & Sunstein, 2021).

We believe that the UN's positions will be the norm in its satellite organizations worldwide, and that precisely for this reason they represent a challenge, but also an opportunity for psychology professionals and future graduates in Spain. An example of the above is that the WHO in its position of June 2023 urges the creation of BADUs among its organizations and member states (WHO, 2023).

Some of the questions raised by our study are related to establishing the extent to which these types of initiatives are contemplated in current curricula, both undergraduate and postgraduate, with, for example, the analysis of interventions carried out in these organizations and the study of the models, methodologies, and techniques that organizations such as the UN and the European Commission itself use in their behavioral interventions.

These theoretical models have not been included in this study, precisely because the organizations do not make them explicit in all cases, and because it would have been necessary to carry out an analysis beyond the scope of this work, which would have involved an in-depth analysis of the different reports and the scientific production of their authors, and despite this, in some cases the theoretical models proposed are adaptations, if not ad-hoc creations on the part of the organizations. Undoubtedly, there is an important field of study to systematize these models, without necessarily proposing their homogenization, but it is essential to analyze their common proposals and their relationship with models that have been established for years in the field of, for example, health promotion.

This would help to establish training curricula in our universities and professional associations to enable students and professionals of psychology to acquire the necessary technical skills, and for the representation of Spanish psychology in these types of organizations to be greater through a greater participation in the job offers of these organizations in the field of behavioral sciences.

Some specific questions that should be resolved in other studies and in the work of psychological associations would be: What specific training should be offered to future psychologists, as experts in human behavior, in order for them to be integrated to a greater extent in this type of units? Would some training be necessary to promote interdisciplinary work with experts from other disciplines, while maintaining the professional identity of our own field? Could we then contribute models and techniques that mostly come from the field of psychology, adapting ourselves to the real needs of solving problems faced by these organizations and society as a whole? In which commissions and working groups should this type of dedication be included: the existing ones or should we create cross-cutting areas such as "behavioral analysis and design for population intervention" (as the APA seems to suggest in its analysis of trends for 2023)?

In fact, as we have mentioned, the APA (2023) reflects the tendency of psychology professionals to broaden their focus and go beyond personalized therapy, further reinforcing the psychological health of the entire population, which is precisely the main object of the work in the supranational organizations analyzed in our study, and may be a job opportunity for many psychology graduates.

Perhaps the differential element in relation to what has been done in public health, community health, and other areas of psychology, is that now the context and scope of these interventions is changing, and that large supranational organizations, such as the ones analyzed, are beginning to place the deserved value on different types of models and behavioral design techniques developed in our discipline, which, now more than ever, in the recent history of our profession, can contribute to improving the health and quality of life of citizens at a global level, an objective that is inherent to our professional work as psychologists.

References

APA. (2023). Psychologists are rebranding the field, expanding the one-to-one therapy approach. Monitor on Psychology, 54(1). Retrieved 26th June 2023. Available at: https://www.apa.org/monitor/2023/01/trends-rebranding-psychology

Kahneman, D., Sibony, O., & Sunstein, C. R. (2021). Ruido: Un fallo en el juicio humano [Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment]. Barcelona: Penguin Random House

Klabbers, J. (2009). An Introduction to International Institutional Law (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press

OECD (2017), Behavioural Insights and Public Policy: Lessons from Around the World, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264270480-en

United Nations. (2021). UN Secretary-General’s Guidance Note on Behavioural Science [Guidance Note]. United Nations. https://www.un.org/en/content/behaviouralscience/

Wendel, S. (2019). Behavioral Teams Around the World (p. 12). Morningstar, Inc. https://www.behavioralteams.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Behavioral-Teams-Around-the-World_4Oct2020.pdf

WHO. (2023). New global resolution calls for establishment of behavioural science units or teams. https://www.who.int/europe/news/item/20-06-2023-new-global-resolution-calls-for-establishment-of-behavioural-science-units-or-teams

Author notes

Correspondence: marmayones@uoc.edu

Conflict of interest declaration

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