People Power – Our second behaviour change experiment

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People Power - Our second behaviour change experiment

Power Crisis in India

India currently suffers from a major shortage of electricity generation capacity, though it is the world’s fourth largest energy consumer after United States, China and Russia*. A 2012 report by the IEA estimated that nearly 25 percent of the population lacks basic access to electricity, while electrified areas suffer from rolling electricity blackouts.

McKinsey reports that the residential consumption will grow at 14% over the next 10 years, requiring India to generate power five to ten fold compared to what was generated in the last 10 years, putting a huge strain on power generation in India.

While increasing power generation faces many issues, one way we can reduce the power gap is through conservation.

 

Ineffective education-based campaigns

Many educational energy conservation campaigns and messaging like ‘Keep your AC at 24°C’, ‘Switch off appliances when not in use’, ‘Save electricity, Save money’ or ‘Be a good citizen’ or ‘Save the planet’ are being tried by different organizations and people across India, but none have proved to be successful at getting people’s to reduce their electricity consumption. Educational campaigns often don’t lead to action because they rely on an outside entity that warns you of the dire consequences of your behavior or tells you what is the ideal way of behaving.  And that often makes people defensive, because we never see ourselves as the ‘bad’ people who waste electricity. Moreover several scientific studies have proven that we humans are often not aware of our own behaviour. Its like we know that we should not overeat, but we do so quite often.

 

The 6-month long experiment

So instead of relying on traditional thinking, we implemented a study (with modifications) done in California by Schultz and colleagues. We conducted our 6 month long experiment amongst 98 households across posh residential societies in Bandra-Khar, Mumbai, India. Permission of the Secretary of each residential society was taken to conduct the experiment. We collected the households’ electricity bills before they reached each member’s house. We then calculated the average bill amount in that particular society. Lets say the average was 1022 rupees. For all above average users, we put a stamp stating that the average in that society is 1022 rupees. Next to their above average amount, we put a frownie indicating that they could do better. The bills that were below average were delivered without any intervention. The households were not informed about this experiment.

 

The results of the experiment

The units consumed by the household in the month was taken as the measurement of electricity consumption. And reduction in electricity consumption was a measure of units consumed in the month compared to units consumed in the same month last year.

Over a period of 6 months, the average reduction in unit consumption by above-average users was 1.33% compared to an average increase of 6.02% in unit consumption by non-stamped users.

1.33% reduction on a national scale can power 17,465 villages for one year.

Over this period of 6 months, we found an average of 50% of above-average users (stamp intervention group) reducing their electricity consumption, compared to an average of only 39% of non-stamped users (no intervention group) reducing their electricity consumption. The base rate for above-average users was lower before the experiment began.

 

The behavioural science behind the effectiveness of People Power

Human behaviour is contagious. We often look at how others around us are behaving and act accordingly. We go along with the crowd to avoid social exclusion. Though we may not be aware of the degree to which we’re socially influenced.

In fact we people don’t see ourselves as easily influenced by those around us. If we were to ask people what would make them change, we suppose they will rank “what others are doing” last. But when we tested what really works, following the herd has proven to be very persuasive.

In the experiment, we didn’t tell anybody what to do. We just told them what people like them were doing.

And when we check out the typical electricity bill, we see that it’s a disaster of line items. So we contextualized information in a way that was motivating for people to conserve power. The information provided by the stamp let the above average users know how much their neighbors were consuming. That set the social norm and got them to reduce their power consumption.

People Power – A simple intervention that gives people the power to make a big difference at no cost.

People Power has got featured in Fast Company, The Times of India, DNA and has 1,50,000+ views on The Logical Indian.

 

Sources:

People Power is based on the study by Schultz, P. Wesley, Jessica M. Nolan, Robert B. Cialdini, Noah J. Goldstein and Vladas Griskevicius, “The Constructive, Destructive, and Reconstructive Power of Social Norms”, Psychological Science 18 (2007): 429-34

*EIA – U.S. Energy Information Administration Report updated March 18, 2013; Wall Street Journal 2 Jan 2012 and McKinsey’s report, ‘Powering India – The road to 2017’

Calculation of 1.33% on a national scale can power 17,465 villages – [Total energy (in GWh) consumed in India = 852903 (as per Govt. of India, CEA, July 2013). 1 Gwh = 10,00,000 kwh.Total energy (in kWh) consumed in India = 852903000000. Per capita consumption of energy (in kWh) in rural India (y) = 100 (Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, Govt. of India 2012 and World Energy Outlook 2011, IEA). 1.33% of Total energy (in kWh) consumed in India (x) = 11343609900. Total rural population that can be served with 1.33% of energy savings (x/y) = 113436099. Divide the result by 5 and we get number of rural households = 22687219. According to the 2011 census of India, 68.84% of Indians, around 833.1 million people live in 640,867 different villages. So average population per village comes to 1299. Divide the above result (22687219) by 1299, we get number of villages = 17,465.]

Bonus: Check out one of the most famous experiments in studying conformity under group pressure – the Solomon Ash experiment here.

The science behind Facebook’s experiment

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Priming influences us subconsciously

Read about Facebook’s experiment? The one in which they manipulated which posts showed up on the news feeds of 6,89,003 Facebook users. For one week, some users saw fewer posts with negative emotional words than usual, while others saw fewer posts with positive ones. People were more likely to use positive words in Facebook posts if they had been exposed to fewer negative posts throughout the week, and vice versa. Read about it here.

Love it or hate it, here’s the science behind the experiment.

Our behaviour is often influenced by sub-conscious cues. Priming shows that people’s behaviour may be altered if they are first exposed to certain sights, words or sensations. In other words, people behave differently if they have been ‘primed’ by certain cues beforehand. Priming seems to act outside of conscious awareness, which means it is different from simply remembering things.

Here are few other fascinating priming-related researches. Social psychologist John Bargh et al got participants in the first group to unscramble five words like ‘he it hides finds instantly’. For this group the random words were just to keep them busy, but for the second group, the sentences had lots of words, which were stereotypically associated with old people – old, lonely, grey, careful, wise, stubborn, courteous, etc. Then the two groups of people were made to walk a 9.75-metre strip. Those who’d been fed old-related words took a full second longer to cover the distance, than those who hadn’t.

Those primed were reminded about the idea of being old. Because we have habitual ways of thinking about old people – this idea got activated subconsciously and they acted in line with these stereotypes without even realizing it.

But we can improve people’s performance by just the same method. In another research, Asian-American participants were invited to take a test. Before they did, some were primed with the words that would activate stereotypes about Asian people, namely superiority at maths. This was done by flashing words on a screen for less than a tenth of a second: too quick to be perceived consciously, but slow enough for the subconscious to register.

Asian-Americans who had been primed with the stereotype got almost twice as many of the questions right as the other group. When researchers saw the data closely they found that after bring subliminally primed with an Asian-American stereotype, Asian-Americans attempted more questions. As if the stereotype made them try harder – a habit of persistence.

In another research asking participants to make a sentence out of scrambled words such as fit, lean, active, athletic made them significantly more likely to use the stairs, instead of lifts.

Says Jeremy Dean of www.psyblog.co.uk, “Everyday we are bombarded with subtle and not so subtle cues of how to behave. We process these automatically and subconsciously, and over time these impulses emerge as our habits, which we start performing without conscious thought.”

Feel like sipping some cocktail by the beach?

 

Sources: John Barg, M. Chen, L. Burrows – Automaticity of social behavior: Direct effects of trait construct and stereotype activation action – Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 71, no. 2 (1996): 230

M. Shih, N. Ambady, J.A. Richeson, K. Fujita, H.M. Gray – Stereotype performance boosts: the impact of self-relevance and the manner of stereotype activation – Journal of Personality and Social Pyschology 83, no.3 (2002): 638

Wryobeck and Chen (2003) Using priming techniques to facilitate health behaviours. Clinical Psychologist 7:105–108.

Think you can predict your own behaviour?

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Think you can predict your own behaviour?

Your answer is most probably a yes, right? You may even be saying how stupid it would be, if I couldn’t even predict my own behavior. But as with most posts on behavior, you may be surprised to know the difference between intention and behavior.

One of the studies by Ji and Wood titled ‘Purchase and consumption habits: Not necessarily what you intend’ tested if participants could predict their own consumption of fast food, how much they watched TV news, and how often they took the bus over a week. Each person was asked how much he or she intended to carry out each of these three behaviors over the coming week (intention). They were also asked how often they had performed each behavior in the past (habit). Importantly, over the next 7 days their actual behavior was recorded.

The results showed that when the habits were weak, the intentions tended to predict behavior. So if you didn’t watch TV news that much, your intention for the coming week, was likely to be accurate (whether the intention was to watch more, less or the same). So far we seem to be right in predicting our own behavior.

Here’s the interesting part. When the habits were strong, the intentions tended to predict behavior less. So if you were in the habit of visiting fast food restaurants, it didn’t matter much whether you intended to cut down or not. Chances are that your habit would continue irrespective of your intention.

It gets worse. Participants, who had the strongest habits and were the most confident in their predictions, were the least successful at predicting their behavior. Ouch. So much for our perception of self-control.

Says Jeremy Dean, author of popular blog www.psyblog.co.uk, “When we perform an action repeatedly, its familiarity seems to bleed back into our judgments about their behavior. We end up feeling we have more control over precisely the behaviors that, in reality we have the least control over.”

When you think about the things you might do on a weekly basis in the same context – visiting a restaurant or meeting up with friends – it feels as if these decisions are highly intentional. But the research suggests that we have less intentional, conscious control over these types of behaviors than we would like to think. That’s why our intentions fall weak in the face of habits, and need Behavioural Design to change them, rather than campaigns aimed at increasing motivation.

Source: M.F. Ji and W. Wood titled ‘Purchase and consumption habits: Not necessarily what you intend’ – Journal of Consumer Psychology 17, no. 4 (2007): 261

Ads aimed at changing behaviour are a waste of money

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What an ad. Funny. Entertaining. Beautifully scripted. Well directed. Brilliantly acted. Excellent choice of music. Award-winning. And totally ineffective.

The ad not only acknowledges that bullying happens, but it also reinforces that bullying will continue to happen. Just that those who get bullied will get their revenge, even though its after 30 years.

Leave alone the fact that it got the psychology completely wrong, how exactly are such ad campaigns that get produced in hundreds every year in every country supposed to work? In this case, do the ad makers expect the bullies to remember (at the time of bullying) that their targets may seek revenge after 30 years and therefore not indulge in bullying now?

Or another example of an award winning ad seen by millions of people around the world – Smoking Kid. How many people do you think have quit smoking after viewing this ad?

Ever wondered why we hear so much talk around us, but see little change happening? So many promises, agendas, quotes, speeches, videos, ads, so much inspiration (gas) which seems powerful and emotional in the spur of the moment, but eventually leads to nothing. It’s because mere awareness rarely leads to action. We’re ruled by something that’s far more powerful than the inspirational or entertaining or factual messages we’re exposed to – habits.

But billions of money still gets spent on messaging and education to change behavior – not just by the government but also by the private sector. Such communication may succeed in creating an illusion of efficacy by changing attitude/intention, but has proven to be a highly ineffective way of changing behavior – whether of consumer, shopper, employee or public behavior. Truly, old habits die hard.

In the UK, for example, in the 1970s and 80s, the government spent millions on ads educating people to wear seat belts on TV, radio and billboards. Streff and Geller estimated that by the end of the 80s, 80-90% of British people saw these ads 8-9 times each. One would assume that showing people being launched head-first through their windscreens would make people respond. Turned out that most of the people weren’t responding, until in 1983 when the law changed along with strict policing, that most people started wearing them.

In India too, billions are wasted on behaviour-change advertising, whether it’s the ‘Swatch Bharat’ campaign or ‘Save fuel, save money’ campaign or tax payment campaigns. Regards public behavior the government has the option of making certain behaviors compulsory and punishable by law. But even when it is compulsory by law, we in India find ways of overcoming them for several reasons. For example we don’t wear helmets, seat belts, break traffic signals, sit on top of running trains, evade taxes, etc. Advertising isn’t making any difference.

The private sector does not have such legal recourse. So companies use awareness and education to change behavior, which meets with the similar ineffective outcomes. Take for example billions being spent on advertising to get Indians to change behavior and adopt products like mutual funds, breakfast cereal, mouthwash, etc. Or take the example of Colgate wanting Indians to brush at night. How many hundreds of crores and number of years do you think Colgate will take to get Indians to brush at night if it relies on advertising? While advertising is a time and money draining solution, Behavioural Design is about simple, scalable, small tweaks/nudges that make a big difference to big problems. Eg. Bleep – horn reduction system and so many other examples you would find on this blog.

It’s time for CEOs, marketers and policy makers to shed their old habit of relying on ineffective solutions like advertising and awareness-based campaigns and adopt Behavioural Design to change behavior effectively. It‘s the scientific way to change human behaviour.

Source for UK numbers – F.M. Streff and E.S. Geller – Strategies for motivating safety belt use: The application of applied behavior analysis – Health Education Research 1, no. 1 (1986): 47-59

Fairness is interpreted differently around the world – Part II

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Fairness is interpreted differently around the world - Part II

Here’s the second in the series on how fairness is interpreted differently by people around the world.

Joseph Henrich conducted a money-splitting experiment amongst UCLA students. He decided to use $160 for the experiment, which translated to 2.3 days worth of work. The rules – a student was given the money and was supposed to share a part with another undisclosed untraceable student. But if this student rejected the offer, both would walk away with nothing.

The most common split offered by students to another was 50/50, which the receiving partner always accepted. The participants said, “If I offered less than half, my partner wouldn’t accept the offer.” When asked if the recipients would accept an 80/20 offer – all of the partners scoffed, “that would be unfair”.

Then Henrich took the experiment to one of the most remote places on earth in the Peruvian Amazon – the Machiguenga tribe – that live in small villages, each family being self-sufficient, making its own tools and gathering its own food. Using a sum of 20 Peruvian soles that came to 2.3 days worth of work, Henrich conducted the same money-splitting experiment.

The Machiguenga participants offered incredibly low sums to their partners. Most offered an 85/15 split favoring the person making the offer. And the partners nearly always accepted them. Explained Henrich, “Several individuals made it clear they would accept any money, regardless of how much the proposer (splitter) was getting. They seemed to feel it was just bad luck that they were responders and not proposers.”

Some tribe members did offer 50/50 and when Henrich interviewed them he found out each one of these people had spent considerable time living among modern Westerners and felt that 50/50 split was the fair thing to do.

In the Amazon jungle it’s finders keepers, unlike US, Japan, Indonesia or Israel for that matter. It will be fascinating to conduct this experiment in different parts of India to find out what Indians from different states, castes and cultures deem fair.

Source: Does culture matter in economic behavior? Ultimate game bargaining among the Machiguenga of the Peruvian Amazon – Amercian Economic Review 90 (2000): 973-79.

 

Behavioural Design talk at TEDxGateway, Mumbai

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Behavioural Design talk at TEDxGateway

Friends, I’m speaking at TEDxGateway on Bleep and Behavioural Design.

There are lots of interesting speakers lined up. So come over to NCPA, Mumbai on 8th Dec 2013 to listen and discuss some stimulating ideas and thinking that could change the way you view the world.

All the information is here – www.tedxgateway.com.

Hope to see some of you there.

Ecommerce will soon be bigger than you can imagine

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Ecommerce in India will soon be bigger than you can imagine

Let us tell you why we think so. Our starting assumption is that most of the shopping online in India in the future will be done via plastic card (credit or debit card) rather than cash, because of convenience. We understand that cash on delivery is convenient too, but you still got to have cash to pay, so it’s not as convenient. And paying by card is a lot different than paying by cash.

Paying by card fundamentally changes the way we spend our money. When we buy something with cash, the purchase involves an actual loss – your wallet feels lighter. Credit cards, however, make the transaction more abstract and we don’t really feel the downside of spending money. As George Loewenstein, neuroscientist at Carnegie Mellon says, “The nature of credit cards ensures that your brain is anesthetized against the pain of payment.” Brain imaging experiments suggest that paying with plastic literally inhibits the insula. Insula is the region of the brain associated with negative feelings. It’s the brain area responsible for making sure you don’t get ripped off. So when the insula is inhibited, it makes a person less sensitive to the cost of an item, making him/her more willing to buy.

Spending money by card doesn’t make you feel so bad, so you spend money easily. And buying stuff over an app is even easier with the pressing of the ‘Buy Now’ icon. Not to forget, the Internet is full of deals that make people end up buying things that they don’t even need.

How we get fooled by a feeling

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How we get fooled by a feeling

 

The debate is always on what’s better: to rely on intuition (feeling) or rely on deliberate thinking while making decisions. Fact is in some cases its better to rely on feeling and in some on deliberate thinking and the trick is to know which to choose when. This post is about learning how not to get fooled by a feeling from an experiment conducted by neuroscientist Read Montague, which demonstrates how our dopamine system leads us to lose money in the stock market.

In the simulated experiment, subjects were given $100 at the start. Players were to invest their money for twenty rounds and got to keep their earnings, if any. Interesting twist of the experiment was that Read Montague had people ‘play’ the Dow of 1929, Nasdaq of 1998, Nikkei of 1986 and S&P 500 of 1987 – what had been once real-life bubbles and crashes.

What the scientists observed from brain mapping, were signals emanating from dopamine rich areas of the brain, like ventral caudate, which was encoding the ability to learn from what-if scenarios. For example, the situation in which a player invested 10% of his total money – relatively small bet. Then he saw the market rise dramatically. What happened was his ungrateful dopamine neurons got fixated on the profits he missed. In such a situation, when the market was booming, like before the Nasdaq bubble of 1998, the players kept increasing their investments. Not to invest was to drown in the feeling of regret. The greedy brains were convinced that they’ve solved the stock market, but just when they are most convinced that it isn’t a bubble, the bubble burst. The Dow sank, the Nasdaq imploded and Nikkei collapsed. All of a sudden, those who regretted not investing more and subsequently invested more were now despairing their plummeting net worth. “When the markets head down,” says Montague, “you get the exact opposite effect. People just can’t wait to get out, because the brain doesn’t want the feeling of regret staying in. Investors dump any stock that’s declining. Panic.”

Jonah Lehrer, author of ‘How we decide’, says, “Our dopamine neurons that release the feel-good chemical, weren’t designed to deal with random oscillations of the stock market. The brain is so eager to maximize rewards that it ends up pushing its owner off a cliff. Casinos have learned to exploit this flaw of the human brain. So don’t try to perceive patterns when they don’t exist. The world is more random than you think it is. Don’t fixate on what might have been or obsess over someone else’s profits. But that’s what our emotions can’t understand.”

Now if you don’t get fooled in such circumstances, tell us how.

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