Hvorfor gør de ikke hvad vi siger? Indsigter fra anvendt adfærdsforskning

Good dental practice is as much about behaviour as technical treatments and expertise. Most importantly, successful dental practice requires trivial compliance from patients that yet are often obstructed in complex ways by patients themselves. In this article we sketch the classical approach to behaviour change and argue that interventions should be rooted in proper diagnoses of non-compliance, rather in the rationality based assumptions of this framework. We then argue by illustration for the relevancy of behavioural sciences in dental practice as well as identify three specific experimental insights from these that may easily be applied and tested. These three examples concern the role of habits in flossing regularly, how to reduce no-shows in patient treatments by introducing proper commitment devices, and how experiments on retrospective pain experience may relate to retention.