Wayshaping: A Multiscale Framework for Behavior Change

Habitual human behaviors shape nearly every aspect of life, from personal health and relationships to organizational success, disease transmission, and ecological sustainability. However, efforts to change behavior often fail to account for the complexity and multiscale nature of habit formation, leading to interventions that struggle to produce lasting effects. A persistent challenge is the intention-action gap, the discrepancy between what we intend to do and what we do in practice – an issue that traditional models of habit formation fail to fully explain. Here, we introduce the wayshaping framework, drawing on recent advances in cognitive science to emphasize the multiscale, complex and anticipatory nature of behavior. This framework makes three key contributions that significantly reframe how we understand and approach behavior change: (1) it reconceptualizes the individual as a multilevel, multiscale collective intelligence, offering a novel perspective on the organizing and developmental dynamics underlying habit formation; (2) it reinterprets the intention-action gap as a set of interdependent coordination challenges – non-linearity, alignment, and anticipation; and (3) it outlines principled skills for navigating these challenges and shaping habits in line with our intentions. By integrating insights from embodied cognitive science, complexity theory, behavior change research, and design, the wayshaping framework reframes individual habit change as a process of multiscale realignment. It thus provides a novel, unifying theoretical foundation for interdisciplinary research that has concrete and practical value in shaping sustainable behavior change.