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Episode 14: The Big Reason People Are Only Open To Their Own “Group-Think” Ideas: Self-Regulatory Fit and Persuasion


I want to walk you through a rather complicated paper that I think is pretty important; it’s called “Bringing the Frame Into Focus: The Influence of Regulatory Fit on Processing Fluency and Persuasion”.  It’s by Lee and Aaker from 2004.

The focus of the paper was the importance of what they call “regulatory fit”. Now this is not a term I would have invented, I personally think it’s clunky and doesn’t actually explain the concept, but I didn’t invent it, so I don’t get to name it.

The person who did invent it was researcher E. Tory Higgins in the late 1990’s. The regulatory fit theory examines the motivation of people (what they want), and how they go about achieving that goal (how do I get what I want?).

And just like there are liberal and conservative solutions to the same problems, regulatory fit theory says that people “orient” themselves when they solve a problem to either prevention, or promotion.

Unlike politics, people don’t always go with prevention, or always go promotion; it depends on the situation and the problem.

Promotion strategies, also known as “promotion focus” emphasize the pursuit of gains, or at least avoiding non-gains. Promotion focus is based on “aspirations towards ideals.”

Prevention strategies, also known as “prevention focus” try to accomplish the same goal, but from a different mindset. Prevention tries to reduce losses, or pursue non-losses. It often is invoked during the fulfillment of obligations.

Let me give you an example. Let’s analyze a road trip from Washington D.C. to Chicago from two different situations. The goal for both is the same, drive from the nation’s capital to Chicago.

In one group is a newlywed couple from Sweden taking a holiday in the United States for the summer. In the second group are two people who work for a Heating and Air Conditioning (HVAC) company. They have to make a series of repairs for their commercial clients, and therefore have been sent on this driving route from Washington D.C. to Chicago.

Both groups have the same trip, same stops, same time. So, in theory, their approach might be the same, but if you look at the situation from a regulatory fit theory analysis, you get different results.

The fun Swedish couple are probably using a promotion strategy. They want to have fun! They want to maximize their time on the trip and see as many cool things as possible. They want to take risks and climb mountains and drive on the Blue Ridge Highway (as this author can attest is very cool). They want to see Gettysburg and stay at weird hotels along the way. They have aspirations. They want to maximize gains.

The HVAC repair folks are probably using a prevention strategy. They just want the trip to go smoothly, and their clients to be happy. They don’t want hiccups, they don’t want flat tires, and they don’t want anything bad to happen. They want to minimize losses.

In both cases it’s the same trip, and both times people want the trip to go as well as possible; but they are oriented in different directions.

The same can hold true in a variety of political contexts. Right now, as I type this, immigration in the US is a huge issue. It’s a “hot-button issue” as they say. Generally, liberals in the US in the form of the Democratic party orient themselves in a promotion strategy on immigration. They are looking to maximize gains and talk about the benefits immigration can bring; more small business, greater cultural diversity, and higher economic growth for most (personal note from the economist writer, immigration is a net positive economically for the United States, but is a negative for some groups, mainly non-college educated white males).

Conservatives in the form mainly as the Republican party take a prevention strategy on immigration. They talk more in terms of a prevention orientation to reduce loss, such as reducing drug imports, stopping terrorist threats, reducing job losses, and not overcrowding the social safety net.

The reason the study that I mentioned earlier, “Bringing Frame Into Focus”, is important is that it dives into the effects orientation can have on how much a person likes a certain solution. The hypothesis they wanted to test was: do people treat solutions that are framed in the direction of their viewpoint more favorably? Does a better problem “fit” (either promotion or prevention) lead to a higher rating of the quality of that solution?

We’ve had a lot of talk recently about the “ideas bubble”. If you’re conservative you only follow conservative people on Twitter, and only get your news from conservative news sources. And if you’re liberal you are only friends with other liberals and only get your news from liberal sources. The effect being that both sides are shouting past each other because there is no sharing of ideas.

Many see this as a problem. I don’t want to frame it as positive or negative but it certainly is a “thing” that exists now. I feel confident in saying that the vast majority of Americans feel more polarized and split into factions, especially politically, than they have in the past.

I think this paper gives a big clue into why this is happening on an individual level. Why it is happening now is a much bigger conversation about trust in social institutions and technology, and a whole host of other topics I won’t get into now. But to have a good mechanism for why people like to be so tribal in their solutions is important.

To those who do see this polarization as a problem and want to try and fix it, let me give you this advice. A friend of mine specializes in racial inequality and gave me an interesting thought. We all have unconscious racial biases (check out https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/selectatest.html to take a test for yourself and see). She told me that having racial biases is okay on a personal level because we all are a little racist.  What’s important is that we recognize in what ways we have racial biases, and then work and act to negate those instincts. The important work that you can do to stop racism is not to stop the negative biases that exist because those are often already imprinted into us through society at a young age. Our brains automatically make “us” and “them” categorizations. Only the passage of time can defeat that by redefining the “us” as all humans, or at least not seeing “us” and “them” on the basis of race. Rather, the work you can do in this moment is understand the racist biases you have, be honest with yourself and with others, and then work to not make decisions based on those feelings. Understand, accept, and account for them. It’s sharing that understanding that will actually work towards ending racism, not pretending that the feelings don’t exist.

In the same vein, if you want to help stop the polarization it’s important is to understand, accept, and account for your self-regulatory orientation biases. To understand which way you are facing, and if the message you inherently “feel” bad or good about is logical, or just a feeling. Only by spreading that understanding, acceptance, and accounting for your orientation bias can the polarization be stopped. The brain will always win…

And that’s why framing is so important. We’ve talked about framing a lot, and this is another example that works qualitatively. The bias in how ideas are presented is fascinating because it is so antithetical to how we perceive ourselves. When we talk about number framing for example, it’s very interesting, and unconscious, but it’s sort of a mind trick. Look at this nifty magic trick I can do to make you act a certain way.

But we take our core believes very seriously. The idea that I could manipulate what strategy you think would best enact your core beliefs based solely on how I presented my ideas, how I “framed” my ideas, is scary! And insanely useful to people out there who work in the marketing field. Again, it’s because of this orientation and fit theory. Ideas presented in a way that are in the same orientation you are in will “feel” like a better fit, and therefore you’ll be more receptive to them.

So what did Lee and Aaker find in their research? It’s time to walk through it now.

Their first experiment had small groups of 5-10 people presented with ads for Welch’s Grape Juice. After the ads people rated a few questions on a 7-point scale including their attitudes towards the brand, with 7 being highest and 1 being the lowest.

People were split into a 2×2 condition. The first split was to get either a promotion condition, or a prevention condition.

The promotion condition had language in the ad such as “growing evidence suggests that diets rich in Vitamin C and Iron lead to higher energy levels,” and other gain maximizing language.

The ad in the prevention condition had language such as “growing evidence suggests that diets rich in antioxidants may reduce the risk of some cancers and heart disease”, and other language to minimize loss (of life due to a heart attack or cancer).

The second split in addition to the promotion vs prevention condition was the framing condition. People were even given a tagline for example of “prevent clogged arteries!” in the gain frame, and “don’t miss out on preventing clogged arteries”, in the loss frame.

As you can see, there was a nice split. Those who were prompted with a promotional regulatory focus had a better response when presented with opportunity for gain, and those who were prompted with a prevention regulatory focus had a better response when presented with the reduction of loss.

Both methods were effective, but how the message was framed changed based on the orientation.

Interesting stuff, but there’s lots more. Experiment 2 and 3 were similar as Experiment 1, but they included a perception of risk.

There again was an ad about mononucleosis (mono) this time, a relatively common but not fun disease. Exposure risk was manipulated by conveying that one could get mono from either frequent, or infrequent behaviors.

People in the “high risk” condition were told that they would be at high risk of getting mono from kissing, any kind of sexual activity, or sharing a toothbrush, razor, water, or soda, etc…

People in the “low risk” condition were told they were at high risk of getting mono if they got a tattoo, used needles, had a blood transfusion, or multiple sexual partners at the same time, etc…

The ads were then framed either in a gain condition or a loss condition. The gain frame ads said “enjoy life!”, and “know that you are free from mononuclousis.” The loss frame said things like “don’t miss out on enjoying life”, etc…

Results? Appeals that are low in risk are more effective when presented in a gain or promotion frame. Appeals that are high in risk are more effective when presented in a prevention or loss frame.

And this makes sense. When the risk of loss is low, like the newlywed couple, whose worse outcome is they have a “meh” vacation, we humans look to maximize gain. It’s a great biological adaptation strategy. Go take risks and maximize your potential rewards now while it’s safe. We naturally turn to a promotion orientation.

When the risk of loss is high, like the HVAC repair team, whose worst outcome is that they destroy millions of dollars in business and get fired and foreclose on their house, the great biological adaptation strategy is “be safe”. Minimize your losses; just get out alive. We naturally turn to a prevention orientation strategy.

This explains so many of our political framings as well. As I said earlier, immigration is a net positive for many groups of Americans. They adopt a promotion orientation.

But especially for those populations who experience immigration as a much larger threat to their livelihood, their community, and their career opportunities (again strongest among non-college educated white males), they take a prevention orientation. They are worried about losing their job to outside competition. They have a much higher fear of loss.

Therefore, messages that are oriented in the same direction that they are already facing will be much stronger.

Donald Trump was so effective with his message because so much of the discourse his supporters were hearing from other candidates was not in the same orientation they were in. They didn’t want to hear all these messages about how great the US economy was doing after the recession, or all the great things other establishment Republicans were going to do once they were elected. They were, and are, in a prevention orientation. They were trying to minimize losses.

President Trump soared in with a prevention message, that he would “make America great again.” That he’d stop drugs and people coming over the borders. That Washington D.C. was a corrupt swamp that needed to stop hurting America. His message was really, really effective. Very few other politicians were aligned in the same regulatory orientation as Trump and it carried him to the White House.

It’s the flip side of the wave President Obama carried to the White House in 2006-2008; “Hope and Change.” Here was a very upbeat message, that if elected he can maximize the gains American already has. But it was even stronger than his rivals and did especially well with the young people in his base that were in a promotion, gain maximizing, orientation. This author’s bet is that he would not have done nearly as well had the election occurred in 2009, in the heart of the Great Recession when more people had probably politically switched to a prevention orientation on many political topics.

There are countless more examples where this applies. But why is it so strong?

The theory is that people have an underlying perception about what message “feels right”. I quote the authors:

“When a message frame is consistent versus inconsistent with the way in which individuals naturally think about issues that involve positive versus negative outcomes, the message becomes easier to process. This ease of processing is subsequently transferred to more favorable attitudes”.

Connor Diemand Yauman, researched this idea that when people feel that information is easy to process then they process it differently (fluency) than when they feel that the information is difficult to process (disfluency).

It’s a brilliant idea so I want to make sure you caught it. When a message is in the same orientation you are in, the message literally becomes easier to process. The brain doesn’t have to spend time and energy and resources figuring out why this information doesn’t align with what I’m already thinking. It all makes perfect sense in the world, and the brain speeds it along. It’s familiar. And when things are familiar, they are processed faster, which makes them “feel” better, and more correct.

We’ve already covered a few studies in which recognition leads to more positive receptions. You process it fast, it feels good, and it fits with your self story. The orientation regulatory bias is that your brain simply says, okay, cool, that sounds right. I agree with that. And you move on.

You like messages you don’t have to think about. You like messages that fit and make sense to your self-story.

The smart researchers decided to test this theory! Because here we don’t simply spout ideas about why the world is the way we think it is… WE BACK IT UP WITH DATA! They wanted to test if indeed faster processing of a message (which they call “processing fluency”) when the message was aligned with their regulatory orientation.

The researchers used the same setup as Experiment 1, with the Welch’s grape juice. However, this time they did so on a computer, with words that flashed on the screen that they had to write down. It’s called a perception test and is pretty common. Because the words only flash briefly (we’re talking 50 milliseconds), the idea is that if you process some words faster than others, you’ll be able to perceive and write down more of those words. Simple enough right?

There were lots of random words that flashed, and then 8 target words. Four were promotion focused (enjoy, active, energy, vitamins), and four were prevention focused (disease, arteries, cancer, and clogged).

Remember the promotion group was told juice would give them more energy, and the prevention focus told they would reduce the risk of disease.

Results?

You can see that in the promotion control group far more words associated with promotion were perceived, and in the prevention, far more prevention words were perceived. This is clear evidence that supports the hypothesis that faster processing of a message occurs when the framing was in the same orientation as person.

The research paper quotes: “In sum, results from Experiments 4A and 4B provide evidence that participants experimented greater processing fluency when message frame was compatible with regulatory focus.”

In Experiment 5, they asked for how effective the message was. And I’ll let the paper’s authors sum this Experiment up quickly for you (you’ve already been through so much):

“[I]n high regulatory fit conditions, more support reasons came to mind, and heightened effectiveness was perceived by participants. However, it was the perceived effectiveness that appeared to directly impact brand attitudes, thereby shedding light on the specific nature of the processing fluency mechanism.”

So to tie it all together then:

“Our results demonstrate that enhanced processing fluency associated with higher eagerness and higher vigilance under regulatory fit conditions leads to more favorable attitudes. Thus, the current research shows that processing fluency may contribute to the “feeling right” experience that is transferred to subsequent evaluations of the product.”

What they are saying here is what I’ve already explained. The processing fluency, aka, the ease in which a message that is oriented in the same way your regulatory orientation already is contributes to the “feeling right” experience. Because it “feels right”, you rate that product, or that message as more favorable.

Obviously this has loads of marketing potential. But it’s very important to know which orientation your audience is, or your message won’t land. That’s why it’s so easy to tell people what they want to hear. Selling Coke to people who already drink Coke is easy because that population of people already like Coke. It’s a much harder task to try and get people who think soda is bad for you to drink Coke.

Okay, so obviously there are huge political implications, and important marketing implications. Let’s sum things up with some takeaways:

People have self-regulatory orientations. On different topics they can either have promotion orientation, to maximize gains, or prevention orientation, to minimize losses.

When messages are framed in the same orientation people are in, they are more effective and better received. This is because messages in the same orientation are processed faster, and therefore “feel” better.

If you want to be successful in any sort of voting contest where it is between a few choices, it is best to use a message that is framed in the correct orientation as your target audience. If everyone is in the same direction, including your competition, be the loudest voice. Either be the most preventing loss, or the most maximizing gain to make yourself stand out to a “base”.

If at all possible, do both! Be preventing losses to one crowd and maximizing gain to another.

 

Lee, A. Y., & Aaker, J. L. (2004). Bringing the Frame Into Focus: The Influence of Regulatory Fit on Processing Fluency and Persuasion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 86(2), 205-218. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.86.2.205

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Episode 13: Satisficing


I want to give credit to an old paper that was quite ahead of its time. In 1956 Herbert Simon in his paper “Rational choice and the structure of the environment” had some of the ideas of behavioral economics before the field had really developed.

His take on some of the interesting human behaviors was a word entitled “satisficing”. It’s a combination of sufficing (good enough), and satisfying. Behavioral scientists often will use different phrases today like cognitive biases and prospect utility, but you’ll still hear economists mention the phrase satisficing now and then.

Satisficing is the idea that when people make decisions, they don’t optimize for maximum enjoyment the way an economist would expect. Rather, as the Behavioral Economics Guide of 2016 summarized, people “choose options that meet their most basic decision criteria.”

For example, if you really want fancy Mexican food, and eating fancy Mexican food would give you the most happiness, and maximum utility, the traditional economist would predict that you get fancy Mexican food. But, of course, we don’t do that, we do what is satisfying, and sufficing; satisficing. So instead of getting fancy Mexican, you go to Chipotle and get a burrito. It’s enough.

Later Tversky and Kahneman would come along and invent prospect theory, and a much more solid behavioral economic model and base on which the modern version of behavioral science is founded. But Herbert Simon gets lots of credit for being really far ahead of his time and putting down a ton of ideas that influenced future thinkers.

 

Simon, H. A. (1956). Rational choice and the structure of the environment. Psychological Review, 63(2), 129-138. doi:10.1037/h0042769

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A Closer Look At Concession, or “The Foot In The Door” Technique


Logo for HumanTech podcastDo you want people to say “yes” to a request you make? In this episode of the Human Tech podcast we take a closer look at the original research on concessions and the Foot in the Door technique. We discuss what works, what doesn’t and why.

Here’s the reference for the study we are looking at:

Cialdini, R. B., & Et al. (1975). Reciprocal concessions procedure for inducing compliance: The door-in-the-face technique. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 31(2), 206-215. doi:10.1037/h0076284

Human Tech is a podcast at the intersection of humans, brain science, and technology. Your hosts Guthrie and Dr. Susan Weinschenk explore how behavioral and brain science affects our technologies and how technologies affect our brains.

You can subscribe to the HumanTech podcast through iTunes, Stitcher, or where ever you listen to podcasts.

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Change Your Organization By Changing Your Meetings


Cover of the book Meeting DesignMeetings are everywhere. Whether it’s a team meeting at work, or a committee meeting of the local music society you volunteer for, a lot of us spend a lot of time in meetings. How many of those meetings are actually enjoyable, productive, and satisfying?

Forget about the usual meeting hacks you’ve read about (start and stop on time, have a clear agenda and action steps after the meeting, and so on). Kevin M. Hoffman, in his book Meeting Design, goes much further. He approaches the design of meetings as he would approach the design of a user experience, or a product interface.

In this episode of Human Tech we explore how designing meetings can change the team, and perhaps change the organization.

 

 

The best way to reach Kevin is to contact him via twitter:

@Kevinmhoffman

AND Kevin is looking to hire designers and researchers at Capital One in Washington DC area, Chicago, New York, Richmond VA, San Francisco, or Plano TX, so contact him if you are interested.

And check out his book: Meeting Design published by Rosenfeld Media.

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Get a Free Social Media Evaluation, Free Social Media Care and Feeding, and Free Advice

Would you like to get FREE advice on how to start and/or improve the social media impact of your organization or brand? And help train the next generation of social media/UX designers?

I am an Adjunct Professor at the University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point. Starting in September of 2018 I’m teaching a course on Social Media. From the course description:

“Topics will include: the behavioral science of social communication online, the user experience of social media, legal and ethical issues in social media, and strategies for effectively using social media for growing a business and/or community. Student teams will work on case studies with actual organizations and companies to plan social media strategies, as well as experience the “care and feeding” of social media communities. Diverse applications will include, healthcare, wellness, tech, and non-profits.”

In the class we will use real life case studies. A team of 3-4 students will be assigned to a client. They will perform a Social Media Audit and make suggestions for changes to improve the impact of the existing social media, if any, and suggest changes for adding new social media channels. The teams will also be responsible for the “care and feeding” of one or more social media channels for the case study organization thoughout the semester.

If you have a social media existing channel that you would like evaluated and/or if you would like to start a social media campaign for your organizaiton, then you can apply to be a team case study. If chosen you receive free advice  and you will be helping to train the next generation of social media and UX designers.

What you should expect:

  • You will  spend about 2-3 hours a month for September, October, November and December working with your team. This will be via email, Skype and/or teleconference. You will be speaking with them about your company/organization, your social media goals and giving them feedback on the  advice that they prepare for you.
  • At the end of the semester you will have suggestions for how to start, increase, and/or improve your social media.

Here are the requirements:

  • You have an existing or shortly to be deployed company or organization.
  • You have existing social media accounts and/or are ready to establish new ones. These accounts must work in English.
  • You or a member(s) of your team have time to meet with the team remotely, answer their questions and give feedback in a timely manner.

Here’s what you need to submit in an email to: susan@theteamw.com

  • Your Name:
  • Your Contact Info:
  • Brief Description of the company/organization
  • Brief Description of your current social media use
  • Social media goals or changes if you know them
  • Anything else you think we should know:

Let me know if you have questions, and thanks in advance for submitting your product for a possible evaluation. We will look through all applications submitted and get back to you in early September.

Thanks!

Susan Weinschenk, Ph.D.

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Episode 12: Individualist Societies vs. Collectivist Societies

Okay this one is a tough one. It’s kind of complicated, but it’s worth it, trust me. We mostly talk about how humans work biologically and in which ways that influences our decisions. That is somewhat the field of the behavioral science. But beyond biology that is consistent across all humans there are also cultural and societal differences, along with age and gender, and so on, that also have an impact.

I don’t want to leave these out! Today’s topic explores whether there are cultural and societal differences in decision making through a paper on individualistic societies verses collectivism societies.

Cialdini, Wosinska, Barrett, Butner and Gornik-Durose wrote a paper in 1999 entitled Compliance with a Request in Two Cultures. They compared social decision making between the United States and Poland with the emphasis on examining what they call “social proof”; or the idea that you examine the behavior of others, especially similar others, to determine the appropriate behavior for yourself.

Individualistic societies tend to define the self as autonomous and independent from groups.

Collectivistic societies tend to define the self more in terms of group membership.

The theory is that you can invoke behavior (in their study they used whether you’d go out of your way to help someone else) by using different strategies in different societies. It makes sense that different societies would respond differently to requests for help depending on how the request was presented.

But you still have to study it! Okay so here’s the experiment they set up. This was a 2 x 3 x 2 conditional study. Lots of conditions so it’s a little complicated. The bottom line is that participants were asked to do a task and answer a survey.

The first 2 conditions were Poland vs. the United States. They did the Study in both places to see if there was a difference.

The next 3 conditions were using different degrees of social influence: either high, medium, or low.

To measure the intensity of social influence, participants indicated their willingness to comply three different times. Once when all other classmates had agreed to take the questionnaire (high social), once when half agreed (medium social), and once when no one else agreed (low social).

The last 2 conditions used the survey answers.

Half the participants were told to do the survey while considering their peers (group focus), and half were told to only consider themselves (individualism focus).

Again, it was a 2 x 3 x 2 conditional experiment by using the categories Poland vs. US, the amount of social pressure or influence used, and social influence vs. individualism.

What the researchers found was that there were similar effects. When there was more social influence (everyone else around had taken the survey), people were more willing to also take the survey. That’s not surprising and we’ll get into a lot more research about social pressure later.

What was interesting is that the strength of the impact differed. Social pressure was more effective in Poland, and using individualism was more effective in the US. This is most likely because the US has more individualism and Poland more collectivism generally, in their society.

Also, the effect on collectivists could be canceled by a making the person focus on themselves, rather than the group. To quote from the paper:

“In sum, the predicted tendency of collectivists to be more willing than individualists to perform a collaborative task was canceled by a prior focus on oneself rather than on one’s group as a standard for decision.”

Now one small caveat, the study is from 1999, when Poland was much closer to the USSR than it is today. Regardless, the main point is that society matters. It’s often hard to measure, but there are interregional differences that do make a difference.

In practical takeaways then, don’t assume that just because a strategy works in Chicago that it will be as effective in other cultures. There often will be overlap, but sometimes not.

Specifically, if you are trying to use social pressure to drive action, use social pressures more often and with a higher priority in societies that are more collectivism and group focused (like Eastern Europe or Japan). If you want people to succumb to social pressure, make sure their focus is not on themselves as it can cancel the push to do a collective task.

If you want people to reject social pressure, try and direct their focus onto themselves as a person before they are exposed to the social pressure. It can negate the effect.

In societies that are more individualistic like the US, you can drive action more through a story of self-consistency than group action. Social pressure is still effective, but it is not as effective.

Again, the impact of the effects will change based on the specific circumstances.

So try it out! Let me know how it goes. This is a pretty nuanced subject so hopefully it was decently explained.

 

Cialdini, R. B., Wosinska, W., Barrett, D. W., Butner, J., & Gornik-Durose, M. (1999). Compliance with a Request in Two Cultures: The Differential Influence of Social Proof and Commitment/Consistency on Collectivists and Individualists. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 25(10), 1242-1253. doi:10.1177/0146167299258006

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How Trust Affects Creative Collaboration


Logo for HumanTech podcastControl freaks and psychological safety — We brought Eric Olive on the podcast as a guest to talk about the science of decisions and we ended up talking about control and safety. How do you create an environment of psychological safety? And how does that encourage creative collaboration?

Eric has also offered a list of articles and books for more reading which we’ve added below.

You can reach Eric at:

uiuxtraining.com
eric@uiuxtraining.com

Articles

A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making by David J. Snowden and Mary E. Boone HBR November 2007

Fooled by Experience by Emre Soyer and Robin M. Hogarth

Leaders as Decision Architects by John Beshears and Francesca Gino— Harvard Business Review. Structure your organization’s work to encourage wise choices.

“Organizing and the Process of Sensemaking”, Organization Science, vol. 16, no. 4, pp. 409-421.

“The Identification of Solution Ideas During Organizational Decision Making,” Management Science 39: 1071–85. Paul C. Nutt (1993),

“Surprising but True: Half the Decisions in Organizations Fail,” Academy of Management Executive 13: 75–90. Paul C. Nutt, 1999.

Only for HBR (Harvard Business Review) Subscribers

Before You Make That Big Decision by Daniel Kahneman, Dan Lovallo, and Olivier Sibony. Harvard Business Review.

The Hidden Traps in Decision Making by John S. Hammond, Ralph L. Keeney, and Howard Raiffa. Harvard Business Review, January 2006.

Books

A More Beautiful Question by Warren Berger

Beyond Greed and Fear by Hersh Shefrin

Decisive by Dan and Chip Heath

Educating Intuition by Robin Hogarth

Focus by Daniel Goleman

How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer

Intuition at Work by Gary Klein

Nudge by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein

Seeing what Others Don’t by Gary Klein

The Art Of Thinking Clearly by Rolf/Griffin Dobelli

Winning Decisions by J. Edward Russo and Paul J.H. Schoemaker’

 

Human Tech is a podcast at the intersection of humans, brain science, and technology. Your hosts Guthrie and Dr. Susan Weinschenk explore how behavioral and brain science affects our technologies and how technologies affect our brains.

You can subscribe to the HumanTech podcast through iTunes, Stitcher, or where ever you listen to podcasts.

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Episode 11: Status Quo Bias


Hey, here’s a suggestion. Go workout. Right now. Go! Whatever you do, pound iron, run super hard, walk around the block; whatever it is, go get after it for half an hour. Okay bye!

Hey so that was great? Did you do the workout? Right now, did you actually get up and change whatever you were doing and work out?

I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that you didn’t do that! I’m going to guess you just stuck with the status quo. And that’s status quo bias.

In a paper entitled “Status quo bias in decision making” by Samuelson and Zeckhauser, they do an exhaustive summary of a ton of studies. A metric ton of studies. I shall quote the conclusion from their study of studies:

“In choosing among alternatives individuals display a bias toward sticking with the status quo.”

If you want to call this human laziness, if you want to call this human biology to conserve energy, call it what you will. But humans much prefer the current situation to stay as is. We don’t like when odds, circumstances, prospects, or anything else change.

There’s a theory that dopamine is not just our pleasure chemical, rather it is our seeking chemical, we’ll go seek new adventures and experiences and pleasure with it, rather than the other way around.

What are some ways you can take advantage of this? Assume change is going to be hard. Anyone who has tried to get a department to switch to a new version of software or a different program knows the pain. Assume that someone needs an impetus to take an action. If you want someone to switch from something to something else, give them a point of action or a trigger so they are forced to reevaluate their decision. On the flip side, if you don’t want people to make a change, don’t rock the boat. Don’t give them an opportunity to make a change. Just keep rolling same old same old.

People will still take action if the status quo becomes too much to handle… But when in doubt people will stick with the status quo.

 

Samuelson, W., & Zeckhauser, R. (1988). Status quo bias in decision making. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 1(1), 7-59. doi:10.1007/bf00055564

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Episode 10: How Sunk Costs Work

One of, if not the most, important motivator in behavioral economics is the fear of loss. We’ve talked about this extensively and it takes many different shapes. One of my personal favorites is what’s known as a “sunk cost”.

Compared to a lot of behavioral economics terms this is pretty popular and well known, but just in case let me mind-journey for you.

You’re really hungry. It’s a hot Chicago summer day and you’ve had a long day at work.

On your walk home on the corner is a friendly neighborhood torta foodtruck. Oh my god. You love tortas. The thought of savory Mexican jamon (ham), topped with avocado and all the fixings with amazing green chili hot sauce and crema between bread carries you away. The smell hits you and you’re again reminded that there is a god. The cost is $8 for a sandwich. Even though you have leftovers at home that you can eat, you decide to stop and order one. You’re hungry and it’s after work; time to treat yourself (#treatyoself).

You wait in line, pay your $8 cash, and get your perfect torta. Warm juices of salsa and jamon dribble down the sides. Your mouth waters. However, unbeknownst to you, years of freezing ground has pushed up a part of the sidewalk by 3 inches. Your foot catches the ledge and your perfect torta flies out of your hand into a dirty puddle; gone forever.

You turn around and there’s now a line around the block to get another one. What do you do? If you had not just already stood in line for forever you would have been overjoyed to stand in line and pay $8 for a torta. But dejected you droop your head and go home to your leftovers.

Okay! Mind-journey over. What is interesting about that story is that if you wrote a computer program that would make decisions for you the calculation is different than what happened in real life.

You were hungry and willing to wait in line and pay money for a torta. You lost a torta so you didn’t eat one and are still just as hungry. Your situation hasn’t changed, and a computer program would say that humans would get back in line and wait again.

But your lost torta is a sunk cost. You paid for it, and it’s gone. In theory, sunk costs should have no impact on your next decision. It’s sunk, it’s gone. But, of course it has an impact on your decision-making process. It shouldn’t but it does.

It’s partially because we humans have a fear of loss, and partially because we have trouble segmenting time and decisions. We lump things together. So even though the calculation should be would I pay $8 for a torta, because we’ve already lost one we can’t help feeling like we’re paying $16 for one torta, even though that previous loss is immaterial to our next decision.

This effect creeps up all over the place. We’ll talk about it more later, with for example the gamblers fallacy, where gamblers feel that if they’re on a losing streak they should keep gambling because their luck is going to turn around…

Okay so how does this idea manifest itself? When humans make decisions, they can weigh the emotional experience of a sunk cost as value and make what on paper is an “irrational” choice. Or a choice that is against their own self-interest.

There are a lot of great papers about real life experiments demonstrating the effect. I’ll stick with one by Arkes and Blumer from 1985, The Psychology of Sunk Cost. They asked a series of questions. Here’s a slightly modified version of the first experiment:

“You have spent $100 on a ticket for a weekend ski trip to Michigan. Several weeks later you buy a $50 ticket for a weekend ski trip to Wisconsin.

You think you will enjoy the Wisconsin ski trip more than the Michigan ski trip. Suddenly you realized your just-purchased Wisconsin ski trip is the same weekend as the Michigan trip! It’s too late to sell either ticket, and you cannot return either one. You must use one ticket and not the other. Which ski trip will you go on?

$100 ski trip to Michigan OR $50 ski trip to Wisconsin?”

Think about it and write your answer down.

THE ANSWER SHOULD ALWAYS BE WISCONSIN!

It literally says, “you think you will enjoy the Wisconsin ski trip more”.  Forget the price or what you purchased. The Wisconsin trip is the better trip! Go on the better vacation! Why would any pick a worse vacation?

Of course, 54% of respondents picked the Michigan vacation, and only 46% picked Wisconsin.

People who pick the Michigan trip say it’s because they don’t want to “waste the money.” But that money is already gone. It was spent and is a sunk cost.

Obviously, a fascinating result. And there are other questions that are variations on this theme.

The other interesting result was an experiment researchers did at the Ohio University Theater. People who bought season tickets were put into one of three conditions. One group got the normal price, one got a $2 discount (on each $15 ticket), and the third got each ticket for $7.

Results? The no-discount group used significantly more tickets (4.11) than both the $2 discount group (3.32) and the $7 discount group (3.29); but only for the first half of the season. There was no significant difference in the second half.

Now there are potentially a few factors at play. The first is sunk cost. After purchasing a season pass, those that paid full price felt compelled to go and not “waste money”. Even though it’s a sunk cost. Those who paid less had a smaller sunk cost effect.

The second main factor that may be operating is that people who pay more may give the concert tickets a higher value. The higher value is because it’s “worth” more for those who bought at full price than those who bought at reduced price.

Either way, the fact that the effect was time limited and faded after a few months is another interesting twist. The study doesn’t present a causal link, but there are a number of behavioral economics effects that seem to fade over time.

The takeaway here is that the sadness of a sunk cost may fade over time, and eventually fades away to a point where it truly is sunk. Maybe it’s just people’s way of processing grief. I know this author would grieve a lost torta.

So again, your mileage may vary. The effect may be strongest at the moment of “sunk” (think torta on the ground). And then its magnitude (technically amplitude) fades over time as the person goes through acceptance.

What are some real world applications?

Use the fear of sunk costs to stop customers from switching. Try breaking a payment in half or into smaller payments, and make each payment final.  For example, tell the customer that they can’t complete the training without finishing the entire payment. This will trigger the fear of loss due to a sunk cost. The customers will want to pay to finish the training.

Conversely, if a customer feels like their payment has been wasted somehow, they will be much less likely re-up to get back to their starting position. This can generate a lot of negative emotions; even if it’s not even your fault.

For example, let’s say someone gets $800 of car work done and then the next week finds out that they need another $800 done on a different part of the car. They’ll be very hesitant to do so because of the sunk cost even though the two are unrelated. They should pay for both repairs, but the sunk cost and fear of loss will make them warry of spending more.

So that’s sunk costs. I hope you sunk some effort and energy into this topic! You’ll never get it back; it’s sunk.

On a personal note. This can apply to relationship and other personal feelings too. Letting go is hard. It’s a feeling of loss that we can’t get back. It really sucks. But this author’s personal advice is to take a deep breath and remind yourself that a sunk cost is gone. It’s just that; sunk and unsalvageable. You can’t get it back, and feeling bad about things doesn’t help anything. Use some mental scissors. Clip away the old circumstances and make your current situation the only factor that matters and make your decision from there. It’s the best way to move forward; even if it’s hard to do.

 

Arkes, H. R., & Blumer, C. (1985). The psychology of sunk cost. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 35(1), 124-140. doi:10.1016/0749-5978(85)90049-4

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Episode 9: What Are Heuristics?

I have a confession to make. It took me years to understand the concept of heuristics. I don’t know why. I mean, I’m a smart guy, who obviously understands this economic mumbo-jumbo far better than the ordinary person. And heuristics is/are one of the foundational ideas of behavioral economics.

Maybe it’s the name. Too Greek? A lot of behavioral economists who have written books explaining some of these ideas to the masses have done a pretty good job at explaining heuristics. I like the summary behavioraleconomics.com uses. They define a heuristic as a cognitive shortcut, a process in which a person substitutes a difficult question with an easy one (they cite Kahneman, D. (2003)). Maps of bounded rationality: Psychology for behavioral economics. The American Economic Review, 93, 1449-1475.).

We humans do this intellectually, but also athletically. Let me give you an example by way of a mind-journey.

You’re back in 7th grade playing little league softball. It’s the summer tournament and it’s the first game of the summer season. Mid-afternoon, warm sunshine, pretty grass. Your parents are in the stands, though you will of course completely ignore them all game (you’re cool).

You’ve been at a few practices before the first game and the coach has enough sense to figure out, even at this early stage, that you’re not going to make it to the majors… So out to the outfield you go. That said, you’re not the worst person on the team, so at least they don’t put you in left field (left daydream more-like), they put you in right.

So far the game has gone pretty smoothly. It’s 2-1, your team is up in the middle of the third inning. You’ve already been up to bat, and actually managed to softly dribble a ground ball into the outfield and got on base! Made it over to second but then it was three outs, and you didn’t get to score.

Every little league team has that one kid that actually is good. Just far and away better at softball than other kids. Early puberty I suppose. Good hand-eye coordination. Parents are big into sports. Well they are now up at the plate and you’re a little nervous. So far no one has hit a ball to you. It’s little league and you’re in the outfield. Most runs are scored on errors throwing to first base. But this kid… Could launch one out to you and everyone will be watching. There are already two people on base, first and second, so it’s a big moment in the game.

Nervously you wait. Ball one. Strike one. Ball two. Next pitch is crushed. Right field. A high arcing sky-high hit. Now you’ve backed up a fair way, and no one hits home runs (it’s 7th grade), so it’s going to be up to you to catch it.

If a computer programmer, an engineer, or an economist were faced with this problem of getting your glove to the same spot of where the ball is projected to land (well, right before it lands), they would do the only thing that makes sense. The moment the ball is hit you can clearly see the flight trajectory. Based on the speed of the ball and the angle it is hit off the bat there is a clear concave flight pattern. You calculate the flight path, adjust slightly for wind, and determine the exact location the ball will land. Run to that spot, wait for the ball, and catch it when it gets to your glove. Easy peasy.

But if a human attempts to do that calculation in real time they always miss the ball. Human perception will misjudge the exact velocity.  The ark and weight of the ball will change how it falls, so it won’t be perfectly uniform. Wind and air humidity will influence exactly where it will land. The precision required to calculate where it will land is immense! Further, an outfielder needs to be precise to maybe 5 square inches. Maybe even 5 square centimeters.

It’s a nearly impossible problem for the human brain to solve in the 5 seconds of flight time. So humans don’t solve it. We take a short cut. We use a heuristic.

Right now (do this), put your hand up in front of you as if you were going to catch a pop fly. As long as your glove is “blocking” the ball as it’s in the air, you’re in the right place.

Imagine if you saw the ball under your glove, you’re too far back, it will fall in front of you. Conversely, imagine the ball is much higher than your glove, you’re too far forward, it’ll land over your head. And the same left or right. So long as you keep the ball at the same “spot” in your field of vision, you’re going to catch it. If it’s not at the correct height, or left/right, you need to run to get it back into position.

No humans calculate flight trajectories to figure out where the ball will land. They just use a thousand little, quick micro-adjustments to keep the ball at the right angle in air. And at the last second make a slight adjustment before it gets to the glove for the final placement. It’s a much easier calculation.

So this is what you do. Luckily you don’t have to move too far, just run a little in and towards your left. Even with the sun out you can see the ball, you track it, keeping it at a consistent angle. The “correct” angle says your brain. With your glove out, you let you reflexes take over at the last instant, moving the glove over ever so slightly, to correct the errors leftover from your heuristic. Instead of a huge error of maybe 30 meters, you’ve narrowed it down to a fraction of a meter.

You catch the ball. Overjoyed and excited you can’t help but look over to your parents who both gasp and clap and smile. You try to pretend you don’t see them because, duh, you are still being cool. The crowd claps and the other team groans that you didn’t drop it. But no one really cares except your parents, I mean, you’re in right field, it’s your job to catch balls that come to you. What sort of right fielder would you be if you missed fly balls? But you did it, another day another dollar. Your unconscious brain is trying to get your attention. Something you’re forgetting?

Oh! That’s right, we’re playing softball I need to throw it back into the infield! You do, and your throw is horribly off target and short by like 15 feet. But this is softball in 7th grade. No one is stealing bases. The second basement trots out to grab your pathetic attempt at a fastball and relays it to the pitcher who also drops the ball. Again. Softball, in 7th grade.

Play resumes and the parents continue to talk about this cool place they found out in the country that makes its own Chardonnay!

Ah yes, little league softball, those were the days…

Snap back to reality. Oh, there goes gravity (as an example). Oh, there goes Guthrie, he overwrote, you’re so mad, but he won’t give up that easy, no, just gotta lose yourself in the mind-journey, don’t you ever let it go. You only got one chance, do not, drop the ball. Use a heuristic! (The author groaned with he saw he had wrote this, but decided to keep it in because it’s so groan worthy…)

The process of catching a softball is a simple explanation of a heuristic and how it works.

Heuristics can be cognitive as well as physical. In fact, perhaps the most important heuristics you will come across are cognitive. Educated guesses, intuitive judgements, guesstimates, profiling, stereotyping, or most mental shortcuts are all examples of heuristics.

Here’s a quick example:

You are in charge of designing the new website for your small business. Your boss comes to you and asks you, “Should the main menu be horizontal or vertical? “

To truly figure out the correct answer would take modeling, and user testing, and analytics and all sorts of tough thinking. But you can simply say horizontal because you’ve seen other websites with horizontal menus and you like them. You’ve used a heuristic to save a lot of time and decide.

There is often a perception that taking a heuristic shortcut is bad, or lazy. But there is research that suggests that you can get better results if you use a heuristic.

I want to talk about the “take-the-best” and the “recognition” heuristic as described by Gigerenzer and Gaissmaier in Heuristic Decision Making in 2011 and Models of ecological rationally: The recognition heuristic by Goldstein and Gigerenzer from 2002.

They very carefully outline the model of the take-the-best heuristic.

Here’s how the (very simple) take-the-best heuristic works:

You’re forced to pick between two choices. One of the choices “feels” good. Don’t think about it, just pick it. That’s all there is to it.

The reason this works is because the alternative with the positive cue (“feels good”) has a higher value. Pick it, trust your unconscious and move on.

The recognition heuristic is basically the same as take-the-best, but with a slight difference. When faced with a choice don’t pick what “feels” the best but pick whichever answer you recognize first.

Most of the time when you use the recognition heuristic you will end up with the same result as if you use take-the-best. This is because answers that come to you quickly often feel the best, and answer you recognize will come to you more quickly.

It may seem weird that using these simple heuristics would actually lead you to a right answer more often than if you think about it. But let me tell you very briefly about the research.

In their studies the researchers asked people two questions. The first was to pick which German cities had larger populations, and the second which mammal lifespans were longer.

German Cities and Mammal Lifespans
German Cities and Mammal Lifespans

They then told participants to use all sorts of various tactics to make their decision. The take-the-best heuristic got the best results as you can see on the graph in Figure 1 (each line on the graph is a different model, the higher the lines the better the accuracy).

The researchers later gave a question about German city size and then American city size. They asked most participants to use the recognition heuristic (if you recognize it, choose it).

Here’s the crazy part, German participants did better on the American cities test than German cities, and Americans did better on German cities than American cities!

Sometimes when you go with your gut, it really is the best choice. By overthinking the answer using more knowledge about cities in their own country people got worse results.

From these results the researchers came up with the very short and simple “fast and frugal” rules you can use to come to better answers, quickly.

First, search for clues, or information that would be useful in making a decision.

Second, stop searching when the costs of further search exceed the benefits. That is to say, stop searching when simple searches fail to provide you with useful information. Excess information is bad; you only want the bare minimum.

And third, make an inference or decision when the search is stopped. Don’t think too hard about it; just make a decision and move on.

Even though that sounds silly and not well thought out, it can often lead to better results than a long-drawn-out process.

We’ll cover more studies later about why heuristics often can create more accurate answers even though they take less thought and effort.

The short answer is that using a heuristic stops your brain from consciously thinking too much. The more you consciously think, the more your biases get in the way. And the more you are misguided by your cognitive biases, the easier it is to come to the wrong result.

If you take the fast and easy solution you skip that whole process.

In conclusion, here are some real-world takeaways:

It’s important to know what a heuristic is and how people think. We use these all the time, but it’s okay! Shortcuts for humans sometimes work best.

Don’t overthink things, it can be less accurate and takes much longer.

Utilize “fast and frugal” heuristic rules when you need to be relatively accurate quickly and en masse.

Let me know if you have seen too much thinking get in the way of the best result.

 

 

Goldstein, D. G., & Gigerenzer, G. (2002). Models of ecological rationality: The recognition heuristic. Psychological Review, 109(1), 75-90. doi:10.1037//0033-295x.109.1.75

Gigerenzer, G., & Gaissmaier, W. (2011). Heuristic Decision Making. Annual Review of Psychology, 62(1), 451-482. doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-120709-145346