New publication: Alignment between lay and scientific understanding of compliance
5 January 2026
Scientific evidence about compliance is frequently used in policies to increase people's compliance. But how do people themselves think about compliance? What do they themselves think shapes better behavior, and to what extent does that align with what science shows?
A new article by C-Lab members Benjamin van Rooij, Malouke Kuiper and Chris Reinders Folmer studies this question. It finds that collectively, people's lay understanding of what shapes compliant behavior showed substantial alignment with a scientific understanding. What's more, their lay understanding of these processes informs which policies they prefer to shape better behavior. People's lay understanding thus may provide a stepping stone for scientifically informed policies—as well as an important reservoir of experiential knowledge that the science of behavior change can tap into.
Citation
Reinders Folmer, C. P., Kuiper, M. E., & van Rooij, B. (2026). The People versus Behavioral Science: Alignment between lay and scientific understanding of compliance. PloS one, 21(1), e0338675.