Behavioral science was studied, cited, and occasionally praised for years, but it was hardly ever applied in any real-world, broad context. Then there was BJ Fogg. Or more accurately, BJ Fogg was noticed by the health insurance industry.
Fogg, a Stanford University researcher who started the Behavior Design Lab, worked for years to create something that was surprisingly straightforward. His Tiny Habits approach asks participants to incorporate a new behavior into an existing routine that is purposefully tiny, almost ridiculously small. Once your morning coffee has been poured, perform a single squat. Put your phone face down once you’re in bed. It must be completed in less than thirty seconds. That’s not a recommendation. The design is that. After that small gesture, there was supposed to be a celebration: a quiet “yes,” a fist pump, something that made the brain recognize success and want to do it again.
It seems almost too easy to be significant. That’s most likely why it was successful.
It seems that health insurers, who have long been accused of being reactive rather than preventive, have taken note of what researchers were verifying. According to a 2022 National Institutes of Health study, individuals who followed Fogg’s anchor-behavior-celebration formula, known as Tiny Habits Recipes, demonstrated significant improvements in wellbeing and thankfulness in a matter of days. A month later, the effect persisted. According to the study, the methodology was easy to use, quick, and cost-free. That combination is difficult to overlook for an industry attempting to lower long-term claims by changing member behavior upstream.
The fundamental framework that Fogg created adheres to what he refers to as the recipe: “After I [Anchor Moment], I will [Tiny Behavior].” The anchor is something that happens every day, like eating lunch, hearing an alarm, or brushing your teeth. Instead of competing for space during an already busy day, the new behavior is attached to it and rides on an established routine. This is what most wellness programs seem to overlook. When it would be wiser to locate existing structures, they ask people to construct completely new ones.
It’s still not entirely clear if insurers are using this faithfully or if they are softening the approach while borrowing the vocabulary. Whether digital wellness tools, created by product teams under quarterly pressure, can genuinely honor the subtlety Fogg spent decades perfecting is a valid question. Tiny Habits’ emphasis on intrinsic motivation contributes to its effectiveness. Fogg makes it clear that people should engage in the behaviors they desire rather than those they believe they ought to. It’s not clear that an insurer’s app, which encourages users to use better metrics, is designed to respect that distinction, which is very important.
Even so, it’s difficult to ignore the underlying logic’s spread. Wellness platforms embedded in employer health plans are increasingly built around habit stacking, celebration mechanics, and behavioral anchoring — concepts that would have sounded foreign to a benefits manager ten years ago. The language has quietly made its way into the industry, much like most enduring ideas do.
Fundamentally, what Fogg constructed in a Stanford lab rejected willpower as the catalyst for change. He maintained that motivation varies. Routines don’t. Something more akin to inevitability than effort was produced when minor behaviors were linked to dependable everyday moments. It appears that American health insurers are starting to realize the potential implications for their members and perhaps even for their financial statements.
