In this episode, we've been arguing for the power of the situation. We saw that channel
factors are a really good way to bridge intention and action, just that the situation is a really
powerful predictor of human behavior. But it doesn't stop there. It's not like, "Science
teaches us that you have to look at the situation in order to predict human behavior."
That's the cool thing about science. You can take what we've learned in the lab, what we know
in these highly controlled situations, and flip it around. We can use what we know about
the situation in predicting behavior to manipulating the situation to shape human behavior.
That's exactly right. We talked about this idea of channel factors. As you said, what
are the elements of the situation, the circumstance, the context? What are the trigger points that
are necessary in order to elicit the behavior that we're looking for? One of the most important
elements, I think, that we can do here is to clear those channels, in a sense. How do
you get out of the way? How do you—in order to bridge intention and action, what can you
do to make that as easy as possible for the person that you're trying to change the mind of?
Yep. This is a simple example, but I write a lot of e-mails in my work, and it's difficult,
yes, to put yourself in the situation of the person that's receiving it. How do I clear
all the nonsense out of their way? The nonsense would be the things that I'm interested in.
Don't put the things that you're interested in, put the things that they're interested
in. Start with some context. Tell them how the situation will benefit them, and then
finish, with one sentence, a very clear ask from them, "What is the next physical action
that I would like you to take in order to move this forward?" And, don't send it five
minutes before they're going to clock off. Don't send it when their workload is at their highest.
Send it at a time that is conducive for them to do the next thing that you want them to do.
That's exactly it. You touched on a couple of things. One is making it as easy as possible
for them to do what you want them to do; the other is empathy. We know, Matt, this is—
right from the beginning, we've been talking about how difficult it is to put yourself in the
shoes of others; to see things from their perspective. But the extent to which you can
do that, to be able to take the—okay, I'm a CEO of this particular company. I have this
going on and this going on. Now what can I possibly do to see the world through their
eyes: to make my goals their goals; to say that these are the things they're after; these
are the things that I'm after. Now how do I make those align as closely as possible?
The extent to which you can do that is the extent to which you're going to be successful.
Now one of the areas that you can use this really well, I think, is in—which Lee Ross
mentioned—is in donations: donating your organs, donating blood, donating to particular
charities for various things. Another is in filling out petitions. If you want someone
to get on board with something, to do it, to jump on the bandwagon along with everyone
else, how do you do that? What are the things that you can do for them? Again, putting yourself
in the shoes of the person who's filling this out.
There was a really nice one I saw the other day. It filled in everything for you. Everything
was all written. All you had to do was enter your name, your postal code, and click send.
Now just by making it that easy for the person, the numbers just climb as a result, instead
of they had to fill up a 30-page form and actually do something on their own, and you're
relying on the citizenship of the person and their goodwill, these very personality factors.
Then they're not going to do it. If you make the situation easy, then they will.
Yes. Filling out the forms is a good one. You can design entire systems like this.
There's a light flickering in a hallway near my office, and in order to get that fixed I have to find
a computer to go online to find the website that I need to log a maintenance request or
something like that. But I visited a hospital recently, and you can imagine how busy people
are, doctors running around trying to help people. If they see a light flickering in
the hallway, all they have to do is go to a whiteboard in the middle of the space, take
out the pen and then write, "Light flickering in hallway five." Then somebody else takes
that and puts that into the system, in this thing. In the hospital, that light gets fixed.
In my office, it's been like that for months; it's not going to happen. I'm never going
to do it because the distance between my intention—what I want to do is fix that light—and the things
I have to do in order to get somebody in the room to fix it, is massive.
That's right. This is extremely important when it comes to really critical types of
domains, like health or military or police—safety-critical domains. If you're working in a nuclear
power plant and you have to fill out a 30-page report to say that something is dangerous,
yea, that's not good, is it? I mean, I've looked a fair bit into this what's called
close call or near-miss databases and what makes them successful or not. The thing that
seems to make them successful is the ease with which you make it for the user.
In a hospital case, again, if you have to fill out a five-page report on the nature
of the incident and everything else, people just aren't going to do it. That matters if
you're going to leave scissors in a patient or a sponge nearby that's from the previous
operation. Yes, that's not great, but if you can take out your phone and text, "Sponge
almost left," boom, send, gone, and it's taken care of at that point, people are going to use it.
The easier you make it for them, the more likely it is.
We heard about a bunch of these cases from Nisbett and Ross in the previous episode [correction: segment].
When it came to organ donation, opting out, people stick with the default
options. If they don't have to do anything, they won't do anything and they tend to stick
with that. Drawing a map from point A to point B, making it clear if you're holding a party
and you want people to come, the easier you make it for people to get there, the better it is.
Tell them what bus to get on; what will they need to do; what will it cost; what should
they bring; all of these things. If they're lined up, then people will turn up and enjoy themselves.
That's right. This is one of the hottest or most lucrative areas, I think, in cognitive
psychology, cognitive science, social psychology, I suppose, behavioral economics, They're all
melding together these days, but there are a bunch of teams.
Ross and Nisbett mentioned this group of academics who were helping the Obama campaign. Yep,
that's very successful. There's another in the UK called the Behavioural Insights Team.
There's a group out of Chicago, I think, called—based by Richard Thaler on—the Nudge group, which
you hear a fair bit about. All these are working on the same idea of making it as easy as possible
for you to do one thing, to bridge intention and action, to make these channel factors
as easy as possible, to isolate the bits of the context that are going to make the
behaviors happen that you're looking for.
Yep, but I don't think we're there yet. I mean, we promised people in opening this course
that we'd give them the tools to change the world, and we have. We're up to episode 11.
We started off with a more realistic expectation about how the mind actually works.
We shattered some illusions, and we've gone through a bunch of cognitive mechanisms for the bases
of our beliefs. Now we've gone from predicting behavior to shaping behavior.
But if we want people to go out there, to poke the world, to leave their mark, we need
to make it more concrete. We need to show them these channel factors in action, and
how they can go out and make it work. That's what we're going to do next episode in 'Change the World'.