Glossary
Pros and cons
What is the pros and cons technique?
Pros and cons prompts a person to identify and compare reasons for and against changing a behavior. It is also described as decisional balance.
Scope and distinctions
The technique makes competing reasons explicit. The exercise need not produce a decision in favor of change.
Pros and cons example
Suppose someone is considering cycling to work twice a week. Their own hypothetical list might look like this:
- Reasons for cycling: they enjoy riding and would spend less on bus fares on those days.
- Reasons against cycling: the available route takes longer, one junction worries them, and their workplace has no secure bicycle parking.
The next step is to assign importance, not merely count reasons. One serious parking concern may outweigh two advantages. The person can also compare the consequences of keeping the current commute: continuing to pay fares, but retaining a familiar journey and arrival time.
The list might lead to cycling, keeping the existing commute, or investigating a different route and parking option before deciding. The exercise makes the person’s tradeoffs visible; it does not supply the answer in advance.
Why it matters
The original BCT Taxonomy v1 definitions specify this as technique 9.2. Writing the reasons down makes the tradeoffs easier to inspect. It can also show that a proposed change is a poor fit, which is a useful result rather than a failed exercise.