Reviewer: Reiko Bovee
I want to challenge you all about what you think you know.
Many of you are here
because you're really interested in making change.
You're thinking about making change
in lots of places and lots of ways.
But what you don't know is
that your greatest adversary is not that change is hard to make;
your greatest adversary is common sense.
(Laughter)
I know that's kind of a shocker.
You think that you're a human being, and you know the way the world works,
but I'm here to burst that bubble.
Let's look at a couple of efforts to make change.
One of the things people have been working on for decades
is trying to reduce littering,
trying to get us to put our trash and our waste in appropriate places.
So we here we have two campaigns.
One that says,
"This is the amount of rubbish
that's been left around this bus stop since Monday."
That's a really common strategy for trying to encourage people to stop wasting.
If we show people how big the problem is, they'll stop doing it.
The other strategy is poster B, and it says,
"See what this Olympic runner is doing?
She cares about our town, Preston, and she's throwing away her waste."
I want each of you to look at these two ads, A and B,
and think to yourself:
Which one has the biggest chance of making a change and reducing littering?
Just keep that in your mind.
We'll get back to it at the end, and we'll see how good you are.
I promised you
that I would talk to you about common sense
and why it's your greatest adversary.
There really are three kind of big ways that common sense leads us astray.
The first is that we think
if we're going to change people's behavior,
they just need education:
if we just give them some information, then they'll change their behavior.
What's missing in this equation is that people don't know.
And if we just fill in the gaps, then we can get them to do what we want.
Let's think about one thing that people are talking about a lot right now,
which is energy conservation.
April opened today by telling you
that buildings are responsible for 40% of our energy consumption,
40% of our greenhouse gas emissions.
So if we want to make an impact on climate change,
we need to think about buildings.
So some social scientists were thinking,
"How do we get homeowners to reduce their energy consumption?"
They sent auditors out to look at people's homes.
One of the things they were looking for,
and reporting back on, and giving people information about,
is these little gaps in and around your doors and windows.
If you live in an old house like the house I grew up in,
you might have these little cracks.
They're letting in cold air,
and that's making you have to turn your furnace up.
So if we just tell people how many cracks there are,
how many windows need help, people will weatherstrip, right?
If you give people information, 20%,
20% of people will weatherstrip.
But really we're going to spend money and send people to homes and investigate,
and we're only going to get
one out of five people to change their behavior?
We can do better than that.
We have to know that how you present information makes a difference.
One of the big things that makes a difference
is making information tangible.
If you take all of those little cracks around all of those doors and windows,
and you say, "How big is that? ...
The gap in your house is as big as a basketball,"
people then magically now understand how important is to fill them.
When they just think they have 16 windows and cracks,
they don't see it as important.
But when you make it more tangible and say,
"You have a hole in your house the size of a basketball,"
people say,
"Oh, maybe weatherstripping those doors would really make a difference."
Making information tangible makes a difference.
The folks in this study did more than just making information tangible,
and they also personalized information in those homeowners,
and they interacted with them. [How you present information matters]
Putting up posters that people might or might not see
is never as effective as talking to other people.
Social interaction is one of the most important tools
that we can use for making change.
There are other things, though, that help us when education fails us,
when just giving out information is not enough.
Sorry, I skipped that. Back up there.
When you give people all three of these things,
60% of them weatherstripped.
That's a three-fold increase in how big the change is.
So how you present the information triples the effectiveness of your effort,
and knowing that makes a difference.
There are other things, other things about how we present information.
One of them is that human beings are loss averse.
We fundamentally hate to lose anything.
If you tell people what they're losing,
they'll engage in the behavior that you want,
just because you've told them what they're losing.
It doesn't matter how big or small that is,
but hearing that you're losing
is more likely to change behavior than hearing what you're gaining.
This is the Denver water campaign,
and they're trying to encourage people
to engage in more water conservation practices.
A lot of people don't understand the importance of fixing leaks,
or fixing a running toilet,
because you just hear a little drip, drip, drip.
Big deal, it's just a little drip.
But when you add up all those drips,
over a few months or a year, you're wasting gallons,
and telling people that they are losing gallons of water
motivates people to change in a new way.
So framing loss can make a difference.
The other thing that social scientists know is
that you actually have to think about various audiences.
Different audiences need different information.
This is a campaign poster from here at CSU,
and it's one of several that was created by students
to help reduce high-risk alcohol use.
Students who are heavy users of alcohol, they want different information.
They're not interested in what all CSU students are doing.
The only reference group, the only people that are important, that matter, to them,
are what other drinkers are doing.
And so their poster says
71% of CSU freshmen who drink, drink once a week or less,
because that's the norm.
But the students who are more average, lighter drinkers,
they're interested in how much the whole student body drinks.
This data from the same survey
says that 71% of the entire student body drinks.
You all laughed when you read the poster.
I love this poster.
My students love this poster.
There are students in the room - anybody have this poster in your home?
Yes! Thank you!
I have not given out this poster for free since 2009.
(Laughter)
But you can thank the students who created it.
The message here is that you have to give a message
that is appealing to the audience, to the people that you're talking to,
that resonates with them,
and that also gives them the information
that they, in particular, are interested in hearing about.
So we have two different posters.
One for heavy users and one for light users
with slightly different information.
The difference for heavy drinkers between 77% and 71%
maybe sounds like a tiny bit of difference to you
It's a big difference to them.
It's the difference
between the campaign being believable and influencing their behavior,
and the campaign being unbelievable and having no effect.
It's 6%, but it's the difference between believability and unbelievability.
So knowing your audience is a key factor in making change.
There are some other things, ways,
that common sense leads us astray.
This is my personal favorite.
We think, kind of generally, that if you want to change behavior,
you've got to change people's attitudes.
I talk about energy conservation often in my research,
and people say to me,
"How am I going to get people to believe in climate change?
I can't get people to conserve energy
if they don't believe that we're killing the planet."
And I say to them,
"You don't, you really don't,
have to change anybody's attitude about climate change."
And people just don't believe me.
To them I say,
"You don't have to change attitudes to change behavior."
And people always say,
"Then what do you do?
If you don't change attitudes, what do you do?"
Let's start with what the environmental sociologists
have found over and over again in dozens of studies.
Attitudes follow behavior.
If you survey people
about whether their attitudes are pro-environmental or not,
it will not predict whether or not they engage in conservation behaviors,
it will not predict whether or not they conserve water,
it will not predict whether or not they recycle.
Attitudes follow behavior; they do not predict it.
So stop trying to change it.
When people engage in the behaviors you want,
you'll be able to measure the attitudes you expect.
But before that, you need to do something else.
How many of you were asked by your parents
to turn off the light when you leave the room?
Raise your hands.
Turn off the light when you leave the rooms.
Okay, this is an effective strategy.
Almost everyone in the audience had their arm up.
That's because your parents do know
that setting expectations works.
They just don't that it works for all kinds of things.
Much bigger things than turning off the light in your room when you leave it.
So, don't change attitudes; set behavioral expectations.
This is a poster of high school students
at Rocky Mountain High School.
Little placards they put over the lights in all of the rooms in their high school,
reminding teachers and students to turn off the lights.
And that's what people do.
When I interviewed people at this school,
new teachers to that school said,
"I know that this school cares about energy conservation,
because I see this everywhere.
It not only reminds me to engage in conservation behavior,
but it also tells me that people in this place care about this issue,
and that encourages me to think about it in my daily life."
If we're not going to change people's behavior
by changing their attitude,
how do we deal with a tough issue like climate change?
Building green buildings like this one,
convincing cities and school districts and other public organizations
that they should adopt green building standards
can be a highly politically contentious issue.
Citizens say, "Let's not waste money on stuff that we don't need,
that's not going to do any good."
How do we deal with that?
We don't deal with that by changing anybody's attitudes.
We deal with it by understanding what people's underlying values are.
What is it that people really care about?
This is a knowable thing.
You can ask people and they will tell you what really matters to them.
The environmentalists care about green buildings
for all of these reasons.
They care about building green buildings foremost
because they see it as saving the planet.
They also care about it
because they think green buildings produce better learning environments for students.
They also care about building green buildings
because they know that it saves resources
like electricity and natural gas.
And they care about it,
because, of course, doing all of those things, saves money,
but that's kind of secondary.
There's a whole other set of people
that identify specifically not as environmentalists.
They can bind to green building too,
but we have to understand what their underlying value is,
and their core value is frugality.
And the value of frugality is just not wasting.
We shouldn't waste money, we shouldn't waste people's time,
we shouldn't waste natural resources;
we should just eliminate waste.
This idea of conserving
is what unites both of those two ends of the political spectrum
that are so likely to be fighting with each other.
If we sell green buildings because they are conservative,
because they conserve our money, our time, our resources -
and the resources can be money as well as environmental resources -
if you sell it based on conservation,
both sides, the left and the right,
the environmentalists and the people who care about frugality,
will all buy in.
But you must understand values,
and that's a fundamentally different tactic
than changing attitudes.
We have one more way that common sense tends to lead us astray.
People think that they know what motivates them.
Now you all are human beings,
and you think that because you're a human being
you're qualified to say what motivates you.
You are wrong.
(Laughter)
I know, it makes you laugh.
You actually don't know.
It's kind of an insult to think I'm a human being
and I can't be counted on to identify what motivates me.
But social scientists know this to be true.
One of the biggest things that does influence our behavior
is social norms.
Street musicians know this and take advantage of it.
It's why they put coins and money into their guitar cases,
or whatever their musical case is, on the ground.
Because we know that when other people are doing something,
other people are more likely to follow.
What the street musicians don't know,
is that seeding their case isn't really enough,
because you haven't actually seen another person doing it.
What they really should be doing is bringing their friend with them
and asking their friend to come by every five minutes and drop a dollar in:
"Anytime there's no action,
can you just walk by and drop something in?"
The number one predictor of giving money to a street musician
is walking past the musician directly behind someone who did contribute.
That's the greatest predictor:
that you saw somebody else do it.
That increases the likelihood that you will do it.
Unfortunately, social norms are a great motivator of behavior,
and they are the most understood and underestimated by human beings.
How many of you have been to a hotel and have seen the wonderful message:
"Please reuse your towel and help us save the environment"?
OK, hotels are using the least effective method
that they could possible use.
The reason they're using that is because they asked people.
They said, "Which one of these messages
will motivate you the most to change your behavior?"
People said, "If you ask me to protect the environment,
that will work.
If you tell me that other people are doing it,
I'm going to report, I don't think that's a very effective message."
The sad news is that social scientists, especially psychologists,
like to do experiments,
and when you do an experiment and expose people to different messages,
you discover that social norms have the biggest impact on behavior.
If you tell people:
"75% of the people in this hotel room reused their towels,"
you will get the biggest bang for your buck.
If you ask people to save the environment,
you will be about half as effective
as if you told people that other people are doing it.
So not only are social norms really effective,
but they're really underestimated.
Not only do human beings not know what motivates them,
they reverse the order of importance.
So, if you ask people,
you will design a campaign around their priorities
that is the least effective that it possibly could be.
Let's go back to this one.
How many of you thought A will be the most effective?
Be honest, raise your hands.
How many of you thought A?
Alright, now you know that you're wrong.
(Laughter)
How many of you thought B?
Alright, we have some social scientists in the crowd,
some people who have taken one of my classes, or someone else's.
You know that B is the most effective
because it utilizes social norms, and it also uses modeling;
it shows someone doing the behavior that you are interested in.
What's wrong with A is that it sets the inadvertent norm,
the behavior that you're not interested in having people do.
You're like, "Everybody litters."
Since social norms are the most influential,
you can create campaigns that are not only -
Does this say the wrong thing?
Why are we laughing?
Not only can you be ineffective in your campaign,
many people, including the federal government,
have created social norms campaigns
that increase the behavior that they're trying to reduce,
because they use social norms in a way that is ineffective,
because they don't know about their importance.
I started with saying that many of you are interested in creating change.
We started today by listening to Mike.
Mike encouraged all of you to think about making a meaningful life.
I want to encourage you to think about making effective change.
Make your change meaningful.
Many of you are going to go out and try to be entrepreneurs.
You might be trying to improve health,
you might be trying to change the environment;
all of these things require making change.
We can be successful.
But you will be the least successful
if you let common sense be your guide.
(Laughter)
I know, it's kind of hard news to hear.
It's the greatest kept secret of social science.
Dan encouraged us to think about what is our magic?
Really, truthfully, honestly,
I think that sociology and social science is magic.
So thank you for letting me share it with you today.
Please use it in your lives.
Thanks.
(Applause)