Made to Stick (37 page)

A few years ago, Robert Cialdini:
Cialdini wrote his article for psychology professors, but it’s excellent advice for all teachers. See Robert B. Cialdini, “What’s the Best Secret Device for Engaging Student Interest? The Answer Is in the Title,”
Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology
24 (2005): 22–29.

McKee says
,
“Curiosity”:
Robert McKee,
Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting
(New York: ReganBooks, 1997). McKee also has good insight into the difference between gimmicky surprise and surprise that leads to resolution in movies: “We can always shock filmgoers by cutting to something it doesn’t expect to see or away from something it expects
to continue.” But he says that “true surprise” happens when a legitimate gap is suddenly revealed between what we expect and what actually happens. The legitimacy comes from a rush of insight, revealing some truth that was previously hidden.

In 1994, George Loewenstein:
George Loewenstein, “The Psychology of Curiosity: A Review and Reinterpretation,”
Psychological Bulletin
116 (1994): 75–98. This is a brilliant article that reviews decades of psychological research.

serious parking problem:
The parking study is by Charles F. Gettys, Rebecca M. Pliske, Carol Manning, and Jeff T. Casey, “An Evaluation of Human Act Generation Performance,”
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes
39 (1987): 23–51.

Heretofore, television has done:
The Roone Arledge story is from his autobiography,
Roone: A Memoir
(New York: HarperCollins, 2003). The quote from the memo is.

In the rubble of Tokyo:
The Sony history is from John Nathan,
Sony: The Private Life
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999).

“If people
like
curiosity”:
Loewenstein, “Psychology of Curiosity,” 86.

“Business Buzzword Generator”:
The buzzword generator was invented by W. Davis Folsom at the University of South Carolina-Aiken. See
http://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/0072537892/student_view0/business_jargon_exercise.html
.

Concreteness helps us avoid these problems:
The advantages of concrete ideas show up across psychology. Concrete ideas are more memorable. Perhaps the most interesting summary of this evidence is from a book by David Rubin, a cognitive psychologist at Duke University who has spent years trying to understand how aspects of culture—epic sagas, ballads, and children’s rhymes—propagate from person to person and generation to generation. His book
Memory in Oral Traditions
is a masterful summary of work across the humanities and psychology. Concrete elements are the most likely to survive transmission from one person to another because they are the easiest to understand and remember. See David C. Rubin,
Memory in Oral Traditions: The Cognitive Psychology of Epic, Ballads, and Counting-Out Rhymes
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).

Concrete ideas are also more understandable. In education research, Mark Sadoski, Ernest Goetz, and colleagues have published a number of
interesting papers illustrating that concrete ideas are more understandable, memorable, and, as a side benefit, more interesting. See Mark Sadoski, Ernest T. Goetz, and Maximo Rodriguez, “Engaging Texts: Effects of Concreteness on Comprehensibility, Interest, and Recall in Four Text Types,”
Journal of Educational Psychology
92 (2000): 85–95.

Yale researcher Eric Havelock:
E. A. Havelock,
Preface to Plato
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1963).

Two professors from Georgia State University:
Carol W. Springer and A. Faye Borthick, “Business Simulation to Stage Critical Thinking in Introductory Accounting: Rationale, Design, and Implementation,”
Issues in Accounting Education
19 (2004): 277–303.

Brown Eyes, Blue Eyes:
The description of Jane Elliott’s antiprejudice simulation is taken from a PBS
Frontline
documentary, “A Class Divided.” It’s one of the most frequently requested programs in the station’s history, winning an Emmy for Outstanding Informational, Cultural, or Historical Programming in 1985. It can be seen on the Web at
www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/ shows/divided/etc/view.html
.

Studies conducted ten and twenty years later:
Phil Zimbardo,
Psychology and Life
, 12th ed. (Glenview, Ill.: Scott, Foresman, 1985), 634.

A researcher named Beth Bechky:
B. A. Bechky, “Crossing Occupational

Boundaries: Communication and Learning on a Production Floor,” Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 1999.

The 727 must seat 131 passengers:
Jim Collins and Jerry I. Porras,
Built to
Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies
(New York: HarperBusiness, 1994), 93.

The Ferraris Go to Disney World:
The Stone-Yamashita work with HP is based on Victoria Chang and Chip Heath, “Stone-Yamashita and PBS: A Case at the Graduate School of Business,” Stanford University Graduate School of Business case study SM119 (2004).

Kaplan and Go Computers:
This example is from a great book by Jerry Kaplan:
Start-Up: A Silicon Valley Adventure
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1995). It’s one of the best accounts we’ve read about the day-to-day uncertainty and struggle of being an entrepreneur and building a company. And it’s very funny.

My audience seemed tense:
Ibid., 25–26.

Their investment valued:
Kaplan’s company, later named Go Computers, ultimately failed because the technology of its time wasn’t sufficient to support pen-based computers. Nonetheless, the idea of pen-based computing was so sticky—the “pocketable radio” of its generation—that several other
firms in addition to Kaplan’s arose and attracted venture capital dollars (and skilled engineering talent) to pursue the technology.

Diarrhea is one of the leading killers:
Message 1 of the Oral Rehydration Therapy Clinic is from PSI, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit organization that is doing innovative work on health for low-income populations. See
www.psi.org/our_programs/products/ors.html
.

“Do you know”:
Message 2 of the Oral Rehydration Therapy Clinic is by James Grant, who, during his time at UNICEF, made changes that have been credited with saving the lives of more than 25 million children. Vaccination rates increased, for example, from 20 percent to 80 percent. This remarkable story is told in David Bornstein,
How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). See for the quote.

“Saddleback Sam”
Rick Warren,
The Purpose-Driven Church
(Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1995): 169. Warren’s book explains the organizing principles of one of the largest and fastest-growing churches in the country.

“simply didn’t have the demeanor”:
Daniel Q. Haney, “News That Ulcers Are Caused by Bacteria Travels Slowly to MDs,”
Buffalo News
, February 11, 1996.

“It tasted like swamp water”:
Manveet Kaur, “Doctor Who Discovered ‘Ulcer Bugs,’”
New Straits Times
, August 13, 2002, 6.

an important theme in modern medicine:
Laura Beil, “A New Look at Old Ills: Research Finds Some Chronic Diseases May Be Infectious,”
The Record
(Northern New Jersey), March 24, 1997.

But if we’re skeptical about:
Naturally sticky ideas are a great source of insight about the process of persuasion, and researchers who study persuasion in psychology would benefit from studying them. Traditional studies of persuasion in psychology have sidestepped the issue of credibility by creating a bunch of arguments, having people rate them for credibility, then using the ones that are rated as having high or low credibility. With the exception of a number of studies on the impact of authority, researchers have avoided trying to understand what makes messages credible. Yet rumors and urban legends regularly evolve features that ascribe credibility to bizarre claims. The “testable credentials” idea that we discuss in the chapter, for example, has been a feature of dozens of urban legends, yet it has not been discussed by the research literature on persuasion.

133
Around 1999, an e-mail message:
The flesh-eating banana legend is discussed at
www.snopes.com/medical/disease/bananas.asp
.

Pam Laffin, the Antiauthority:
The story of Pam Laffin is described in Bella English, “Sharing a Life Gone Up in Smoke,”
Boston Globe
, September 20, 1998.

“I started smoking to look older”:
From the website of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
www.cdc.gov/tobacco/christy/myth1.htm
.

The Doe Fund sent a driver:
We thank Spencer Robertson for this example.

“acquire a good deal”:
Jan Harold Brunvand,
The Vanishing Hitchhiker:
American Urban Legends and Their Meanings
(New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1981), 7. This book is largely responsible for creating the urban legends craze in the United States. For years, folklorists had been writing articles about the folklore of modern people, but this book by Brunvand was accessible enough that everyone started hearing about urban legends—and they were
shocked
to hear that different versions of their local stories were being told by everyone else in the nation.

By making a claim tangible:
There is a running debate in the psychology literature on the impact that vivid details have on memory and credibility. In our view, the evidence is confusing because researchers have not been careful about distinguishing details that support or distract from a
core
message. People inevitably focus on and remember vivid details. When the vivid details support the core message, it is more memorable and convincing, but irrelevant vivid details can also distract people from the core and make a message less memorable and convincing (thus the concern, in educational psychology, about “seductive details”). A good summary of the issues can be found in Ernest T. Goetz and Mark Sadoski, “Commentary: The Perils of Seduction: Distracting Details or Incomprehensible Abstractions?”
Reading Research Quarterly
30 (1995), 500–11.

In 1986, Jonathan Shedler and Melvin Manis:
Jonathan Shedler and Melvin Manis, “Can the Availability Heuristic Explain Vividness Effects?”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
51 (1986), 26–36.

“If, say, a soccer team”:
The Covey example is from an excerpt from his book reprinted in
Fortune
, November 29, 2004, 162.

A SHARK A DEER:
We thank Tim O’Hara for the idea for the comparison in Message 2 of the Shark Attack Hysteria Clinic.

Edible Fabrics:
William McDonough, 2003 Conradin Von Gugelberg Memorial Lecture on the Environment, Stanford University, February 11, 2003;
www.gsb.stanford.edu/news/headlines/2003_vongugelberg.shtml
. See
also Andrew Curry, “Green Machine,”
U.S. News & World Report
, August 5, 2002, 36.

“The Emotional Tank”:
“Emotional Tank” is from Jim Thompson,
The Double-Goal Coach: Positive Coaching Tools for Honoring the Game and Developing Winners in Sports and Life
(New York: HarperCollins, 2003). The exercise is described. This book is a must-read for anyone who coaches kids’ sports.

But in the United States:
The statistics in the Our Intuition Is Flawed Clinic about various causes of death are from the 2001 Statistical Abstract of the United States.

A few weeks before the NBA:
The NBA rookie orientation is described in a great article by Michelle Kaufman, “Making a Play for Players,”
Miami Herald
, October 5, 2003.

At the NFL’s orientation:
See Grant Wahl and L. Jon Wertheim, “Paternity Ward,”
Sports Illustrated
, May 4, 1998, 62.

In 2004, some researchers at Carnegie Mellon:
Deborah A. Small, George Loewenstein, and Paul Slovic, “Can Insight Breed Callousness? The Impact of Learning About the Identifiable Victim Effect on Sympathy,” working paper, University of Pennsylvania, 2005.

This chapter tackles the emotional component:
This chapter focuses on the power of emotions to make people
care
, but research suggests that emotional ideas are also more
memorable
. Emotions increase memory for an event’s “gist or center.” Memory researchers talk about “weapon focus”—people who have been robbed or who have witnessed crimes often remember the perpetrator’s gun or knife with great clarity but remember little else (Reisberg and Heuer, below). People remember the central emotional theme of an event and other things that are closely related in space or causal structure. Thus, highlighting the emotional content of an idea may be one way to focus people on a core message. See Daniel Reisberg and Friderike Heuer, “Memory for Emotional Events” in
Memory and Emotion
, ed. Daniel Reisberg and Paula Hertel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).

Mark Sadoski and colleagues have found that emotional aspects of texts are rated as more important (Sadoski, Goetz, and Kangiser, 1988) and are recalled much better (Sadoski and Quest, 1990). Interestingly, the latter article is among several research studies that have found that things are more emotional
when they are easy to visualize. Making things concrete not only helps make them understandable, it makes them emotional and helps people care. Mark Sadoski and Z. Quest, “Reader Recall and Long-term Recall for Journalistic Text: The Roles of Imagery, Affect, and Importance,”
Reading Research Quarterly
25 (1990), 256–72. Mark Sadoski, Ernest T. Goetz, and Suzanne Kangiser, “Imagination in Story Response: Relationships Between Imagery, Affect, and Structural Importance,”
Reading Research Quarterly
23 (1988), 320–36.