Psychology – Page 8 – Behavioural Design

Sometimes it pays to make things complicated

Published November 11, 2013 by Anand Damani

Simplicity in design is one of the most sought after deliverables. After all, look at the products created by Apple. The products are so simple and intuitive that my friends 4-year-old son began touching and moving his fingers over his TV screen, getting frustrated over why nothing would happen. But here’s a scenario where just the opposite seems to be working. We’re talking about Diesel’s store design.

If you have walked into any of the Diesel stores you are likely to feel that you have walked into a party. Latest house/hip-hop music. A television playing a football match. No helpful signs pointing to men’s or women’s sections. No staff members in sight. Being confronted by 35 different types of blue jeans with strange names.

While clothing retailers like Zara have standardized and simplified the layout of their stores in an effort to put customers at ease, Diesel’s approach is based on the unconventional premise that the best customer is a disoriented one.

Says Warren St. John of New York Times, “Indeed, it is at just the moment when a potential Diesel customer reaches a kind of shopping vertigo that members of the company’s intimidatingly with-it staff make their move. Acting as salesmen-in-shining-armor, they rescue — or prey upon, depending on one’s point of view — wayward shoppers.”

”We’re conscious of the fact that, outwardly, we have an intimidating environment,” said Niall Maher, Diesel’s director of retail operations. ”We didn’t design our stores to be user-friendly because we want you to interact with our people. You can’t understand Diesel without talking to someone.”

For a behavioural designer, serving customers means relieving them of frustration, of confusion, of a sense of helplessness. Make them feel in control and empowered. But to the Diesel’s sales staff, this is an opportunity to present themselves as rescuers, ready to offer assistance, to provide just the answers customers will be led to believe they had been seeking.

Douglas Rushkoff, a media critic who has written about Diesel advertising campaigns, says the company’s store design is a new take on an old trick. In the 1950’s, the shopping mall designer Victor Gruen realized that when shoppers were distracted by confusing mall layouts and grandiose visual stimuli, they seemed more prone to impulse buying.

”They realized the best way to get people to buy stuff is not to facilitate their shopping but to disorient them,” Mr. Rushkoff said. ”Diesel shoppers say, ‘I’m not hip enough to get this,’ and then in comes the hip salesperson. What makes them hip is that they know how to navigate the space.”

We think Diesel gets away with making things complicated because their clothes are popular and considered fashionable. And wandering through the store is part of the experience. But would the same technique work for other retailers?

Keeping an open mind is not easy

Published October 28, 2013October 28, 2013 by Anand Damani

At some point in life we all have been advised to keep an open mind. Though we’re aware of its benefits, we often find ourselves having to make a conscious effort in doing so. We were wondering if we were the only ones who had to make such conscious efforts. So we got digging on it and chanced upon this interesting story.

During the last week of September 1973, Egyptian and Syrian armies began massing near the Israeli border. Artillery had been moved into offensive positions. Syrians concentrated their ant-aircraft missiles at the border. From the hills of Jerusalem, people could see black exhaust generated by thousands of tanks and the smoke was getting closer. Anwar Sadat, then the president of Egypt boldly declared that the destruction of Israel was worth the sacrifice of one million Egyptian soldiers.

Meanwhile in Israel, major general Eli Zeira, director of Aman, the Israeli military intelligence agency, dismissed the possibility of an Egyptian invasion. He believed that the Egyptian military build-up was a bluff, intended to shore up Sadat’s domestic support. On the morning of October 6, when Gold Meir, the prime minister of Israel convened a meeting with top military officials to assess the situation. Zeira told her they would not dare to attack, of that he was certain.

In the early afternoon of October 6, Egyptian and Syrian armies launched the attack on Israeli positions in the Golan Heights and Sinai Peninsula. Israeli army was taken by ‘surprise’. Egyptians tanks steamed across Sinai and captured key locations. Situation was direr in the Golan Heights. Israelis suffered heavy casualties. But the tide shifted by October 8 with newly arrived Israeli reinforcements. After intense fighting for days, the invasion was repelled. But it turned out that Israel’s military superiority was not a guarantee of safety as the country had almost been destroyed by an intelligence failure.

Why was the intelligence community so resistant to the idea of an attack? The answer pointed to Mossad and Aman’s influential theory of Arab strategy that they called ha-Konseptzia (the Concept). The Concept held that Egypt and Syria wouldn’t consider attacking Israel until 1975, at which point they would have an adequate number of fighter planes and pilots. The Concept also placed great faith in the Bar-Lev line, a series of defensive positions along the Suez Canal.

The Concept turned out to be completely wrong, because Egyptians were relied on their surface-to-air missiles to counter Israeli air forces, they didn’t need air planes. The Bar-lev line positions were mostly piled desert sand, moved by Egyptian military with pressured water cannons. But the Concept was deeply ingrained in the thinking of the Israeli intelligence.

As the psychologist Uri Bar-Joseph noted in his study of the Israeli intelligence failure, “The need for cognitive closure prompted leading analysts, especially Eli Zeira, to freeze on conventional wisdom that an attack was unlikely and to be impervious to information suggesting that it was actually imminent.”

It feels good to be certain. Confidence is comforting. The brain can analyze a problem from different angles, but that makes us insecure. Says Jonah Lehrer, author of Proust was a Neuroscientist and How we Decide, “When we analyze, we get into a indecisive disagreement within ourselves. Certainty imposes consensus on this inner cacophony. That’s why being sure is such a relief.”

But the way to counteract this bias for certainty is to encourage inner dissonance. We can take steps to prevent ourselves from shutting down our minds’ arguments too soon. Or we can create decision-making environments that help us better entertain competing hypotheses and keep our mind open atleast for sometime.

How we get fooled by a feeling

Published December 9, 2014August 26, 2013 by Anand Damani

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.

Get over your fear of making a mistake

Published August 5, 2013 by Anand Damani

Remember making a mistake at work or at home and the feeling attached with it. The word ‘mistake’ itself scares most of us. And that’s because unfortunately right from our childhood our focus has been on being smart, rather than putting our best effort. As a result we’ve learned to see mistakes as stupidity rather than building blocks of knowledge. However reality is just the opposite.

In her famous experiment in New York city schools, Carol Dweck, a psychologist at Stanford, gave more than four hundred 5^th standard students a relatively easy nonverbal puzzle. Post test, researchers revealed the scores to the students and praised them. Half the students were praised for their intelligence. The researcher said, “You must be smart at this”. Other half were praised for their effort. “You must have worked really hard.”

Then the students were allowed to choose from two different subsequent tests. The first one was described as more difficult. The students were told that they would learn a lot from it. The other option was easy, like the previous test. Of the group that were praised for effort, 90% chose the harder test. Amongst the group that was praised for intelligence, most chose the easy test.

This fear of failing actually inhibits learning, as seen by his next set of experiments. She gave all the students an even harder test, originally written for 8^th standard students. Kids praised for effort, got very involved. Many remarked, “This is my favorite test.” Kids praised for intelligence, were easily discouraged. Mistakes were seen as a sign of failure. After the test, students had to choose between looking at the papers of those who did worse than them or better than them. Kids praised for intelligence, almost always chose to bolster their self-esteem by comparing themselves to those who did worse. Kids praised for effort were more interested in those who scored more than them. They wanted to understand their mistakes, learn from their errors and figure how to do better.

In the third final round of testing with the same level of ease as the initial test, kids praised for effort raised their average score by 30%, while the smart group’s average score dropped by 20%. Praised for effort kids were willing to challenge themselves, even it meant failing at first, ending up performing at a much higher level. While for praised for intelligence kids, the experience of failure was discouraging that they regressed.

Jonah Lehrer, editor, blogger and author says, “This doesn’t apply to only 5^th standard students, but to everyone. Unless you experience unpleasant symptoms of being wrong, your brain will never revise its models. Before your neurons can succeed, they must repeated fail. There are no shortcuts for this painstaking process.”

We believe that’s how intuition gets developed amongst experts. Hours and hours of practice and lots of mistakes corrected. Any guess who in the Indian cricket team spends more time in the nets than the rest?

The middle path to getting picked up

Published December 9, 2014May 20, 2013 by Anand Damani

There a lot of biases that affect the way we make choices. We of course go about our daily routine completely unaware of them. Here’s one such interesting example, called the ‘Centre Stage effect’ – our preferential bias towards items located in the middle.

Paul Rodway, Experimental Psychologist from University of Chester and his colleagues showed 100 participants a questionnaire consisting of 17 questions, wherein each question featured five different pictures of the same type of item (e.g. five scenic views). Each set of five pictures was arranged in a horizontal row and the task for participants, depending on the question, was either to pick their most preferred or least preferred item. Central items were selected approximately 23 per cent of the time. The selection rate for items in other locations averaged below 20 per cent. By contrast, no position bias was found when selecting their least favoured items.

A second study was similar to the first, but this time each array of five items was arranged vertically – once again there was a bias for the central item. A third study used real objects – five pairs of identical white socks – pinned in a vertical array on a large piece of cardboard. Again, participants were asked to pick out their preferred option and again they showed a bias for the middle choice.

These findings build on past researches showing that observers tended to overestimate the performance of quiz show contestants located in central positions.

I wonder whether this phenomenon has to do with our beliefs linking importance or prestige with being centrally located. If we look at sports podiums on which winners get facilitated, Gold being the most prestigious award, is placed in the middle. In office meetings you are most likely to find the top boss sitting in the middle of the boardroom table. The bride and groom at wedding receptions always sit in the middle overlooking the hall.

This ‘middle’ bias has implications on consumer’s shopping behaviour. If a brand has 5 variants, with the same MRP, the one with the maximum margin should be placed in the middle. If your brand competes with others on retail shelves, ensure its placed bang in the middle, as long as consumers can view all options at one go. But no guarantee about you getting picked up if you stand in the middle of your friends at the night club. Well, you could try.

Brainstorms actually stifle creativity

Published October 25, 2023April 1, 2013 by Anand Damani

Back in 1940s, advertising executive Alex Osborn argued that it was possible to enhance creativity by putting a group of people in a room and have them follow a simple set of rules, like coming up with as many thoughts as possible, encouraging wild and exaggerated ideas, not criticizing or evaluating anyone’s comments. Not surprisingly it became a hit. Over the years, organizations around the world have encouraged their employees to tackle key problems using this approach, commonly known as brainstorming.

But the scientists aren’t convinced. (Nor am I). Brian Mullen from the University of Kent at Canterbury and his colleagues analyzed twenty studies that tested efficacy of group brainstorming and discovered that in the vast majority of experiments, participants working on their own produced a higher quantity and quality of ideas than those working in groups.

The reason, group brainstorming fails, is because of a phenomenon called ‘social loafing’. Simply put it is diffusion of responsibility. When people work on their own, their success or failure is entirely due to their own abilities and hard work. If they do well, the glory is theirs. If they fail, they carry the can. However, add people to the situation and everyone stops trying so hard, safe in the knowledge that, though they will not receive personal praise if the group does well, they can always blame others if it performs badly.

Years of brainstorming may have inadvertently been stifling, not stimulating, creative juices. So have faith in yourself, work alone, regroup to discuss your ideas with your team and kick ass.

Does porn increase or decrease rape?

Published October 25, 2023January 21, 2013 by Anand Damani

Pornography is illegal in India and is seen by most as something that is detrimental to society. Many people outside our country, like in the US (where pornography is legal) too believe it is detrimental to social order, contributing to the degradation of women and leading to rape and sexual assault or other sex related crimes. But there are others who argue the other way, saying that pornography is an expression of fantasy that provides pleasure and can act as a positive displacement activity for sexual aggression.

This debate as well as the increasing coverage of rapes in Indian media got us to research whether or not pornography led to sex related crimes and rapes. Here’s what we found:

Tons of research has been done on this. Quoting few of them here. Findings of Goldstein and Kant, 1973 found that rapists were more likely than non-rapists US prisoners, to have been punished for looking at pornography while a youngster. These two also found that strict, religious upbringing to be highly correlated with sexual offences. A 1984 Canadian study by McKay & Dolff for the Department of Justice of Canada reported, “There is no systematic evidence that suggests that increases in specific forms of deviant behaviour, reflected in crime tend statistics, eg. rape, are causally related to pornography.” Diamond and Uchiyama, 1999, studied the situation in Japan – as explicit materials were readily available, the incidence of rape had dramatically decreased over the past few decades. Studies from Croatia by Landripet, Stulhofer & Diamond done in 2006 and of US and China done by Diamond also showed significant decreases in rape as pornography became increasingly available.

Reason sighted for this ‘Porn up, Rape down’ phenomenon is that, erotic inclinations to rape, flash, other sexually offensive behaviour, etc might have been used in real life encounters as a means of resolving a lustful inclination. The ready availability of pornography in contrast, may have facilitated a more convenient and more socially tolerable solution of masturbation.

Whether you agree to the above or not, here’s something to think about – when we express our opinion on pornography we think about its effect on others, not on ourselves. While we may not think that pornography is harmful or capable of inciting sexual offenses, we think it might have such an effect on others.

Source: Pornography, public acceptance and sex related crime: A review by Milton Diamond in International Journal of Law and Psychiatry

Should playgrounds be made more child-friendly?

Published October 25, 2023December 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.

If you’re good at math, consider yourself blessed

Published October 25, 2023November 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.

My ideas are better than yours

Published October 25, 2023September 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.

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