Psychology – Page 10 – Behavioural Design

Words can work like drugs

Published April 17, 2013December 24, 2012 by Anand Damani

Words can work like drugs

Words have been known to have the power to affect behaviour change when used appropriately. As Rudyard Kipling said, “Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.”

Here’s an interesting case that illustrates this point. Richard Wiseman, an experimental psychologist and author wanted to find out if it was possible to increase donations by creating the perfect charity box. He created four charity boxes. Each identical in shape and size, and all advertised the same charity – National Literacy Trust. He placed each box at one of the four randomly selected tills at the Borders bookstore, UK. Each carried a message that psychologists believed would be effective:

‘Please give generously’

‘Every penny helps’

‘Every pound helps’

‘You can make a difference’

Which one do you think collected the most amount of cash?

‘Every penny helps’ worked best, containing 62% of all contributions. ‘You can make a difference’ was at second place, ‘Please give generously’ at third and ‘Every pound helps’ was last at fourth place.

Why did this happen? According to work done by psychologist Robert Cialdini from Arizona State University, many people are concerned that putting a very small amount of money will make them look mean, so end up giving nothing at all. ‘Every penny helps’ legitimizes, and therefore encourages, the smallest of contributions. In contrast ‘Every pound helps’ had the reverse effect.

Meanwhile I thought I’d end the year with a tweet I read recently – ‘Do not worry about the past & the future. This moment needs your attention, this is where your life exists.’

Wish you Merry Christmas and a rocking 2013.

Illustration by Mayur Tekchandaney

Should playgrounds be made more child-friendly?

Published April 17, 2013December 17, 2012 by Anand Damani

Dr. Sandster and her co-researcher Leif Kennair from Norwegian University of Science and Technology think that offering children opportunities for thrilling experiences through ‘risky play’ helps to ensure they grow up as normal, well-balanced adults. ‘Risky play’ provides kids with a safer situation to learn about dangers than real life. For example, playing at heights can provide kids with the motor skills and perceptual competencies to better navigate heights as they mature. Instead of short climbing walls, there should be towering monkey bars. Instead of plastic crawl tubes, there should be tall, steep slides. And balance beams. And rope swings.

They say the rationale is that the more we shield children from potential scrapes and sprained ankles, the more unprepared they’ll be for real risk as adults, and the less aware they’ll be of their surroundings.

Kids need places to work out their fears, they say, and challenging playgrounds can provide the perfect opportunity for such growth. They argue that modern society has an exaggerated focus on child safety, at the expense of kids’ needs to figure out their personal limits. (You can read the original article here.)

We’re all for children being exposed to a controlled degree of risk, not for the sake of being risky, but because its fun, challenging and makes them learn and grow. But at the same time we must ensure that our playgrounds don’t become risky because of being designed and maintained poorly.

Illustration by Mayur Teckchandaney

If you’re good at math, consider yourself blessed

Published May 16, 2016November 26, 2012 by Anand Damani

I struggled all my studying years with MATH (Mental Abuse to Humans). I was so bad at math that I had even developed a method of memorizing patterns to solve problems, so that I could apply them in case a similar question came up in the exam paper. If you were and are good at math, I have very high regards for you, because most of the human race is simply bad at it.

Consider these two promotions. One is a flat ‘33% off’ on the MRP. The other is 33% more quantity of the product free. In short – ‘33% extra free’. Are both similar? Which one seems more attractive to you?

If both are similar in terms of a proposition to you, but you still prefer ‘33% extra free’, you’re in the majority. In a study, Akshay Rao, the General Mills Chair in Marketing at the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management, asked undergraduate students to evaluate two deals on loose coffee beans — one with 33% more beans for free, the other at 33% off the price. All the participants chose ‘33% extra free’, inspite of ‘33% off’ being a quantitatively bigger and better offer favouring the customer. (33% off = 50% extra free)

The reason why we opt for ‘33% extra free’ is not just that we suck at math, but we are also infatuated with the idea of getting something for free. It seems as if the power of ‘free’ makes us worse at math.

Now, how you take advantage of this will depend on whether you are a consumer or a marketer.

Illustration by Mayur Tekchandaney

My ideas are better than yours

Published April 17, 2013September 17, 2012 by Anand Damani

Lets be honest, each one of us believes that our ideas are the best. We fall in love with our own ideas so deeply that most of the times we’re open to any solution, as long as it’s ours. Dan Ariely, author of Predictably Irrational and The Upside of Irrationality calls it ‘The Not-Invented-Here bias’.

‘The Not-Invented-Here Bias’ is basically this: ‘If I (or we) didn’t invent it, then it’s not worth much.’

One may argue that it is good to be attached to our ideas as it could motivate us and create a higher level of commitment. But it comes with its side effects. One example is of Thomas Edison, the inventor of the lightbulb. He fell hard for direct current (DC) electricity. At that point in time Nikola Tesla developed alternating current (AC) electricity under the supervision of Edison, but Edison dismissed Tesla’s ideas as ‘splendid, but utterly impractical’. Despite all of Edison’s efforts to foil it, AC eventually prevailed.

Sony is another example. Sony invented the transistor radio, the Walkman, the Trinitron Tube and many other successful inventions. But after a series of successful ones, Sony engineers began suffering from ‘The Not-Invented-Here Bias’. If something wasn’t invented at Sony, the engineers wanted nothing to do with it. iPod and Xbox were ‘outside’ ideas and therefore not considered as good as Sony’s ideas. We all know the consequences.

Acronyms (OAT, ECT, BCT, etc) that blossom inside companies are another example. Dan Ariely says ‘though they are a shorthand to talk about an idea, they confer a kind of secret insider knowledge. They tend to increase the perceived importance of the idea, and at the same time they keep other ideas from entering the inner circle.’

But like many findings in behavioural economics, this too, can be made useful. One example of its usefulness can be demonstrated in how Pillsbury made its instant cake mixes. When instant mixes were introduced in the US years back, housewives had to simply add water to make the cake. The mixes didn’t go down too well with housewives. So Pillsbury left out the dried eggs and required women to add fresh ones, along with milk and oil, to the mix and the sales took off. For housewives, adding eggs and other ingredients, gave a sense of ownership and pride and made them feel it was made by them. I’m sure each one also felt that their cake was better than the ones made by others.

Illustration by Mayur Tekchandaney

You will never lose your mobile again

Published April 17, 2013September 3, 2012 by Anand Damani

Let me tell you how. Here’s an interesting story of an experiment conducted by my favorite guy – Richard Wiseman, an experimental psychologist, author and magician.

Sometime ago, he bought 240 wallets and filled them with the same set of cash, fake credit card, address of the owner, etc. In the first batch of 40 wallets he put the photograph of a smiling baby. In the next 40, the photograph of a cute puppy. Next 40, a happy family. Next 40, a happy elderly couple. Next 40, had a card which indicated that the owner had made a contribution to charity. In the last batch of 40 wallets, nothing additional was added. These were secretly dropped on the streets of Edinburgh away from post-boxes and dustbins.

Within one week, 52% of the total 240 wallets were returned. The percentages of wallets returned as per each batch were as follows: 6% of those that contained no additional element, 8% of those containing the charity card, 11% of those containing the photograph of elderly couple, 19% of those containing the photograph of cute puppy, 21% of those containing the photograph of happy-looking family and the winner with a huge margin – 35% of those containing the photograph of the smiling baby.

Why did that happen? Brain scanning scientists at the University of Oxford say that activity in the section of the brain directly behind the eyes (medial orbitofrontal cortex) kicked in, in 1/7^th of a second after seeing the baby’s face and that it happened as an automatic response to the image of big eyes, forehead and button nose. This part of the brain is associated with people receiving a nice reward, like a chocolate or lottery. Scientists say that this ‘baby-aww’ linkage is a deep seated mechanism, evolved over thousands of years, that causes us to get in touch with our inner parent, become happier and caring, and thus increase the likelihood of returning the wallet.

So if you want to increase the chances of your mobile being returned if lost, go click the happiest cutest baby and set its picture as your mobile wallpaper.

Illustration by Mayur Tekchandaney. Say hi to little Ettan in the illus-photo (Mayur’s elder son).

Don’t worry, just drink

Published April 17, 2013August 6, 2012 by Anand Damani

Back when I used to work at Lowe Lintas, I used to strategize for a brand called Pureit, the water purifier from Hindustan Unilever. The product was test marketed in Chennai and at that point in time, 83% of households used to boil water for drinking purposes, as the water condition in Chennai was (and is) extremely bad. Moreover doctors had always been recommending to boil water. So boiled water was considered the gold standard in drinking water.

The challenge for us was to create the market for water purification systems and more precisely, to change the behaviour of the conservative Tamilians, who had been boiling water for generations, to let go of their old ‘boiling’ habit and switch to Hindustan Lever Pureit. We had created an ad campaign for Pureit, which ultimately went on to win an EFFIE – the advertising effectiveness award, but the ad campaign started only months after the actual launch.

Here’s the interesting part and probably the most effective piece of behavioural design we had implemented – we placed Pureit water purifier at doctor’s clinics. We requested doctors in Chennai to keep Pureit in their clinics as a service to their patients. Doctors agreed and Pureit was placed in thousands of clinics, with a sticker of it being ‘As safe as boiled water’ and another sticker of the toll-free number, which people could call to find out more. This simple intervention served as a sampler, product demonstrator, trial generator, doctor endorser, people-convincer and lead generator all in one.

People believed that the doctor wouldn’t keep the purifier in his clinic, if it weren’t safe enough for his patients to drink. So they drank without worrying, and many Tamilians changed their habit of boiling water, by switching to Pureit.

Illustration by Mayur Tekchandaney

Ek haath de, doosre haath le

Published December 9, 2014July 17, 2012 by Anand Damani

The headline translates to ‘Give with one hand, take with the other’. Right from the time we were 2 years old we’ve been taught how important it is to give and share our toys with others. But little do we realize that we can benefit immensely if we use this philosophy by design, to affect persuasion in our daily lives or even in business.

Here’s an interesting experiment conducted by psychologist Dravid Strohmetz that illustrates how spontaneous favors can elicit the need to reciprocate. In the experiment, waiters of a restaurant handed over bills to their customers, with or without sweets. In the first situation, diners were given their bills without any sweets at all. Then a second group was given one sweet. This simple gesture of kindness resulted an increase in tip of a mere 3%. The third group of diners received two sweets each; and compared to the first group, they gave 14% larger tips. Not bad. However, here comes the clever bit. For the fourth group, the waiter was asked to present the bill to the customers along with one sweet each, then, just as he was about to turn away from the table, he reached into his pocket and quickly handed everyone a second sweet. In terms of sweets per customer, everyone ended up with two sweets – the same as the customers in the third group. But psychologically this was very different. The waiter had just carried out an unnecessary and nice favor, and because of that, tipping increased by 23% as a result of the need of reciprocating the favor.

Simply put, we like people who help us, and we help people we like. So if you want help, try helping others first.

Illustration by Mayur Tekchandaney

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