The Small BIG: Small Changes That Spark Big Influence (6 page)

R
eaders of our previous book,
Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive
(and there are now over half a million), will be familiar with a series of studies that two of us conducted with our colleague Vlad Griskevicius, in which we looked at how a small change to the wording on the card that hotels use to persuade guests to reuse their towels can make a big difference in whether that guest actually does so. (For those readers who aren’t familiar with that study, towel reuse rose by 26 percent when the words on the card were changed to honestly point out that the majority of previous guests do reuse their towels.)

Given that these little cards are familiar to the millions of people who regularly stay in hotels, these studies spark lots of debate and discussion when we present them in workshops and talks. Sometimes someone will ask us about other potential strategies that hotel managers might employ in an attempt to persuade guests to reuse their towels and linens. For example, could asking guests to make a small commitment before they even reach their guest room, such as at the check-in desk, have an influence on their likelihood to behave in an environmentally beneficial way?

It turns out that another team of persuasion scientists has been testing this exact idea. They found that by simply asking guests to make what seems like a small commitment when they check in to a hotel can lead to some big differences, not only in increasing towel and linen reuse but to other positive beneficial outcomes, too.

Over a one-month period, researcher Katie Baca-Motes and her colleagues arranged for guests checking in to a popular California hotel to be asked to make a commitment related to environmental protection. In some instances the commitment requested was a general one, asking guests to check a box indicating their willingness to be environmentally protective during their stay. In other instances the commitment requested was a more specific one, namely to check a box indicating their willingness to reuse their towels during their stay.

In addition to asking for either a general or a specific commitment, some guests were given a “Friends of the Earth” pin badge. As a control, these badges were also given to a number of other guests who had not been asked to make a commitment when they checked into the hotel.

Finally, another control group of guests were simply checked in in the normal fashion and were not given a pin badge or asked to make any kind of a commitment.

So what happened?

The first thing that the study looked at was the percentage of guests who were actually willing to make a commitment. That number turned out to be very high. Some 98 percent of guests in the general commitment group were willing to make a commitment, and even though the number of guests willing to make a more specific commitment was lower, it was still impressive, with 83 percent checking the box. So, at first glance, it seems that when attempting to persuade an individual to make a commitment, you might increase your chances of success by asking them to make a general rather than a more specific commitment.

Of course, this leads us to ask another question. Which commitments are more likely to be lived up to: general commitments or specific ones?

The researchers found that the guests who made a specific commitment at check-in were more likely to reuse their towels than the guests who made a general commitment (66 percent versus 61 percent). Perhaps more interestingly, those guests who did make a specific commitment to reuse their towels were also much more likely to adopt other environmentally protective behaviors consistent with their initial commitment. For example, they were more likely to turn off the lights when they left their room as well as turn down the air conditioning unit and switch off the TV as they vacated. This finding is quite counter-intuitive; after all, one could easily imagine that those who make a general commitment to protect the environment would engage in more environmentally friendly behaviors than those who simply committed to reusing towels.

What’s the
SMALL
BIG insight here? Anyone facing the challenge of persuading people to make multiple, related changes in their behaviors should be able to maximize results with a small two-step approach. Step one is to ensure that the initial commitments sought are specific ones. Step two is to make sure the environment where that commitment will be performed includes cues that act as triggers for other
related
and desirable behaviors wholly consistent with the initial specific commitment.

Let’s take an example. Imagine that as the manager of an office facility you have the challenge of not only encouraging more recycling but also reducing your general energy costs. This finding suggests that you should first ask office workers to make a specific commitment to one behavior (let’s say, to place paper in the recycling bin as they leave the office at night) and then position cues in a place that could activate related behaviors that will reduce energy costs (let’s say, place the recycling bins next to a light switch). Doing this potentially creates a “two outcomes for the price of one request” influence strategy that could be boosted further if a small card is placed next to the lights reminding workers “Don’t forget your commitment to the environment. Please turn off the lights.” This extra step is important as you will see in the next chapter.

But before we get ahead of ourselves let’s find out what happened to those hotel guests who were given one of those pin badges. As you might expect, guests who made a little (check mark) commitment and who were also given a badge were even more likely to reuse their towels than those who had just made the commitment. They were also the most likely to engage in other environmentally protective behaviors while staying in the hotel, suggesting that these little badges provided two important features. They served both as a reminder to the individual of their commitment and as a signal to others of their commitment. The impact of this small badge serves as a useful reminder that it is not enough for charities to simply encourage people to make a donation to their cause. It is also vital that they provide some form of public sign—for example, a lapel badge, a window card, or a bumper sticker—that signals their commitment.

But what about those hotel guests who had a pin badge thrust on them
without
having first made a little commitment to the environment? They were the least likely of all to reuse their towels—even less likely, in fact, than the guests who weren’t part of the study at all.

This is consistent with previous research that has repeatedly shown that for a commitment to stand the best chance of being lived up to, it needs to be
owned
by the person making that commitment. There was certainly no sense of ownership in the case of hotel guests who had pin badges pushed upon them. Quite the opposite.

In fact there are two other aspects that are also crucial ingredients to the likelihood of a commitment made being fulfilled: how action-oriented that commitment is and how publicly it is made by the person or group committing to it. When hotel staff thrust badges onto guests, they were eliminating the opportunity for guests to take an action themselves, and in doing so removed any element of choice over guests’ public commitments. It was this two-sided error that contributed to the disastrous results measured.

Of course, it is rare for a business to want to influence only p
eople
outside their organization, such as customers and clients. Invariably some of their challenges will concern persuading people on the inside—their employees and associates—to change their behaviors too.

This was certainly the case with the hotel in this study whose housekeeping staff would often replace towels even if guests had indicated that they wished to reuse them. But perhaps the best strategy to persuade housekeeping staff to comply with appropriate towel replacement is the same that was used to persuade guests to comply with appropriate towel reuse—specifically, that the hotel manager should first seek a small voluntary commitment, such as asking housekeeping staff how important they believe it is for hotel staff to listen to guests’ wishes. Once this has been done, the manager could then suggest that one way housekeeping staff can demonstrate that they are listening would be to rehang towels when a guest indicates their desire to reuse them. Of course the hotel manager should avoid mandating that housekeeping staff wear “We listen to our guests” badges and instead offer them the chance to voluntarily wear them.

Who knows, if they do, they might even turn the lights off as they leave.

Y
ou do your best to recycle whenever you can, right? Maybe the company you work for has a pro-environmental policy that encourages staff to use less paper and to recycle as much of it as possible. It certainly wouldn’t be alone. Increasing numbers of organizations and communities are recognizing the benefits of recycling as a way to conserve natural resources.

But could certain strategies designed to persuade people to recycle actually be
counterproductive
, leading to an
increase
rather than a
decrease
in the use of resources? Persuasion researchers think that this kind of backfire effect can occur under certain conditions. That has important implications not just for your office’s environmental policy but for your wider influence attempts, too.

Influence rarely occurs in a vacuum, and one possible implication of focusing attention on a single specific behavior is that it might lead to unintended, even counterproductive behaviors down the line. You can probably think of examples from your personal life. Spending an extra ten minutes on the treadmill to feel a little fitter might also persuade you that you have earned the right to that tasty muffin to accompany your morning coffee. Selecting the healthy salad at lunch might “buy” you the right to a dessert, or at least entitle you to take the elevator instead of the stairs when returning to your desk after lunch.

Behavioral scientists Jesse Catlin and Yitong Wang wondered if this “licensing” effect—essentially, when engaging in one positive behavior licenses you to slack off on another positive behavior—might also occur when it comes to encouraging people to behave in environmentally responsible ways. For example, could providing recycling facilities in an attempt to encourage people to recycle and dispose of paper towels more responsibly actually cause people to use even
more
resources than they would if recycling facilities weren’t available?

In order to test this idea, the researchers designed two studies. In the first study, participants were told that they would be evaluating a new brand of scissors. Part of the evaluation process required them to rate how good the scissors were at cutting out shapes (such as triangles and squares) from a stack of approximately 200 sheets of plain white paper. Half the participants tested the scissors in a room where there weren’t any recycling facilities, only a trash can. The other half completed the task in a room where recycling facilities were available in addition to a regular trash can. The participants were purposely not given any specific instructions about the sizes of the shapes or the amount of paper that they should use in the task. Instead they were simply told to dispose of any scraps in the receptacle(s) provided. Then they completed a “green attitude” questionnaire that asked them about their beliefs and attitudes toward the environment.

The results were quite simply staggering. Participants who evaluated the pair of scissors when recycling facilities were available used
nearly three times
more paper than the group who didn’t have recycling facilities. Interestingly, this increase in the use of resources occurred regardless of how positive the participants’ “green attitudes” were, as measured in the post-study questionnaire.

So this first study demonstrated a clear case of licensing; the presence of paper-recycling facilities caused people to actually use more—not less—paper. One potential criticism of studies like these is that because they are conducted in a laboratory setting, the results may not reflect what happens in the real world. So Catlin and Wang transported their studies out of the university lab and set them up…in a men’s restroom!

Before starting out on this change of venue, they first collected data on the amount of paper hand towels used in the men’s restroom for a period of 15 days to work out the average amount of paper towels typically used each day. Once this had been done they then introduced a large recycling bin near the sinks with signs indicating that the restrooms were participating in a paper hand towel recycling program, and that any used hand towels placed in the bin would be recycled. For the next 15 days, they then simply measured the amount of paper hand towels used.

Consistent with their laboratory studies, paper towel usage increased after the introduction of the recycling bin by an average of half a paper towel per person. At first glance this small increase doesn’t seem that big a deal. However, given that the restroom was typically used over a hundred times each work day, the increase in usage was substantial: It totaled about 12,500 paper hand towels annually for this one restroom alone. The presence of recycling facilities led to an increase, not a decrease, in the use of resources. And in a big way!

So what’s going on? One possible explanation involves guilt. That is, if people experience a feeling of guilt when consuming and disposing of products, they may feel that by recycling them they can reduce any negative feelings associated with overconsumption. Of course that subsequent reduction in negative feeling might now license them to consume even more because their overconsumption will be mitigated by recycling.

Or perhaps the availability of the recycling option serves as a simple justification cue. Maybe people are saying to themselves “Hey if it can be recycled then it probably doesn’t matter if I use a little bit more.”

Regardless of the psychological mechanism that is providing people with this license, one implication is immediately clear. When seeking to persuade people to behave in environmentally desirable ways, providing facilities that make it easy for people to do so, while vital, may simply not be enough to achieve the desired outcome—particularly in situations where there is little or no cost to the user of the resource that is being consumed. This was certainly the case in the paper recycling studies, and it might be the case when it comes to influencing your colleagues and coworkers in the office, too.

An example is in order. Imagine for a few moments that you have been “lucky” enough to be volunteered as the new Green Champion in your office, and you now have the not-so-enviable challenge of persuading your coworkers to use a little less paper, recycle the paper they do use, and adopt some other environmentally friendly practices like turning out the lights when they leave the building. Imagine further that arrangements have been made for facilities such as recycling boxes to be strategically placed around the building and for energy-efficient bulbs to be installed in the light fixtures. Knowing that these facilities, while essential, might also have the unintended consequence of licensing your colleagues to use more rather than less resources, you recognize the need to make some additional small steps to mitigate any potential licensing effects. So what might they be?

Well, the first step might be to add a sign at recycling points and light switches, pointing out that while recycling is beneficial to the environment, using fewer resources in the first place is even more beneficial. Doing so would be consistent with emerging research that has shown that while the benefits of recycling are often highly salient to people, the cost of recycling is much less so.

Another potential step would be to take an insight from the commitment and consistency principle and highlight the commitments and promises that individuals may have previously made toward environmental protection. Better still, you might seek small commitments from people prior to starting the program. Recall from chapter 9 the studies carried out in hotels, in which asking guests to sign a pledge when they checked into the hotel not only led to an increase in towel and linen reuse, but also caused guests to be more likely to turn off the lights and TV when they left their rooms. That’s an example of a “positive spillover” effect.

A well-established first-order law of behavior-change programs is to “make change easy for people.” Studies like these add a caveat: providing facilities that make change easy for people, while crucial, won’t always be enough. The effective influencer will also consider potential licensing effects and include small steps to eliminate them that lead to big successes with their strategies.