Many Americans fail to get life-saving vaccines each year, and the availability of a vaccine for COVID-19 makes the challenge of encouraging vaccination more urgent than ever. We present a large field experiment (N = 47,306) testing 19 nudges delivered to patients via text message and designed to boost adoption of the influenza vaccine. Our findings suggest that text messages sent prior to a primary care visit can boost vaccination rates by an average of 5%. Overall, interventions performed better when they were 1) framed as reminders to get flu shots that were already reserved for the patient and 2) congruent with the sort of communications patients expected to receive from their healthcare provider (i.e., not surprising, casual, or interactive). The best-performing intervention in our study reminded patients twice to get their flu shot at their upcoming doctor’s appointment and indicated it was reserved for them. This successful script could be used as a template for campaigns to encourage the adoption of life-saving vaccines, including against COVID-19.

SummaryDespite nearly 100 years of scientific study, comparatively little attention has been given to articulating how the broader occupational and organizational context might impact work design. We seek to address this gap by discussing how aspects of the occupational and organizational context can constrain or enable the emergence of different work design features as well as influence the relationships between work design features and various outcomes. We highlight how different forms of context might impact work design and suggest that this is an important and potentially fruitful area for future work design research and theory.

This research investigates the mechanism by which the aesthetic premium placed on produce contributes to consumers’ rejection of safe, edible, yet aesthetically unattractive, fruits and vegetables, which results in both financial loss to retailers and food waste. Further, the authors identify a novel way in which the devaluation of such produce can be reduced. Five experiments demonstrate that consumers devalue unattractive produce because of altered self-perceptions: merely imagining the consumption of unattractive produce negatively affects how consumers view themselves, lowering their willingness to pay for unattractive produce relative to equivalently safe but more attractive alternatives. This discrepancy in willingness to pay for unattractive versus attractive produce can be reduced by altering the self-diagnostic signal of consumer choices and boosting consumers’ self-esteem. An experiment in the field demonstrates the effectiveness of using easily implementable in-store messaging to boost consumers’ self-esteem in ways that increase consumers’ positive self-perceptions and, subsequently, their willingness to choose unattractive produce. This research, therefore, suggests low-cost yet effective strategies retailers can use to market unattractive produce, potentially raising retailer profits while reducing food waste.

Encouraging vaccination is a pressing policy problem. To assess whether text-based reminders can encourage pharmacy vaccination and what kinds of messages work best, we conducted a megastudy. We randomly assigned 689,693 Walmart pharmacy patients to receive one of 22 different text reminders using a variety of different behavioral science principles to nudge flu vaccination or to a business-as-usual control condition that received no messages. We found that the reminder texts that we tested increased pharmacy vaccination rates by an average of 2.0 percentage points, or 6.8%, over a 3-mo follow-up period. The most-effective messages reminded patients that a flu shot was waiting for them and delivered reminders on multiple days. The top-performing intervention included two texts delivered 3 d apart and communicated to patients that a vaccine was “waiting for you.” Neither experts nor lay people anticipated that this would be the best-performing treatment, underscoring the value of simultaneously testing many different nudges in a highly powered megastudy.

Having a satisfying romantic relationship is not always feasible, particularly as one discovers less‐than‐perfect partner characteristics. It is suggested that less committed couple members are more vulnerable to negative partner characteristics than are highly committed couple members. Forty‐one dating couples individually indicated their commitment level, were randomly assigned to receive positive‐ or negative‐false feedback about the partner’s personality, and indicated their postmanipulation satisfaction and uncertainty levels. Negative partner feedback affected the satisfaction of less committed but not highly committed individuals. Feeling uncertain about the relationship mediated less committed couple members’ increased vulnerability to negative partner information. The association between uncertainty and commitment was curvilinear and stronger under conditions of relationship threat. Self‐esteem did not predict responses to threat.