Ideas for the future: Fixed action patterns and breastfeeding bi 2008, the Bristol Social Marketing Centre was asked to help with IMP* for encouraging teenage breastfeeding using social marketing. Some Ideas based on Cialdini’s work are relevant here.I2 Fixed action patterns are semiautomatic behavioural sequences In animals trig• gered by outside influence. The idea of fixed action patterns was used as a metaphor by Cialdini to describe some human behaviours. Such sequences arc imprinted on our behavioural memories, and are used by us as shortcuts to save on thinking effort and time. An example might be reciprocation: our learned human instinct to return a favour with a favour. Let us have a closer look at a number of techniques based on Cialdini’s work that could be applied to encouraging breastfeeding in teenage mothers – a group with low levels of breastfeeding. The techniques described below have the potential to be powerful if breast-feeding is a semiautomatic process based on things like social copying (wanting to be liked and to fit in), rather than a cognitive choice, rationally bawd on a calculation of benefit pros and cons. However, some of these approaches are likely to be more successful than others when implemented with a target segment of teenage mothers. Read through them, thinking about the the pros and cons of each.