[Music]
[Applause]
how can we get people to do more good to
go to the polls give to charity conserve
resources or even to do something as
simple as washing their mugs at work so
that the sink isn’t always full of dirty
dishes when I first started working on
this problem I collaborated with a power
company to recruit customers from a
program that prevents blackouts by
reducing energy demand during Peaks the
program is based on a tried and true
technology it’s won the Obama
administration even called the
cornerstone to modernizing America’s
electrical grid but like so many great
technological solutions it has a key
weakness people people need to sign up
to try to get people to sign up the
power company sent them a nice letter
told them about all the program’s
benefits and asked them to call into a
hotline if they were interested those
letters went out but the phones they
were silent so when we got involved we
suggested one small change instead of
that hotline we suggested that they call
that they use sign-up sheets that they’d
post near the mailboxes in people’s
buildings this tripled participation why
well we all know people care deeply
about what others think of them that we
try to be seen as generous and kind and
we try to avoid being seen as selfish or
a mooch whether we are aware of it or
not this is a big part of why people do
good and so small changes that give
people more credit for doing good those
changes can make a really big difference
small change is like switching from a
hotline where nobody will ever find out
about your good deed to a sign-up sheet
or anyone who walks by can see your name
in our collaborations with governments
nonprofits companies when we’re trying
to get people to do more good we harness
the power of reputations and we have a
simple checklist for this and in fact
you already know the first item on that
checklist it’s to increase observability
to make sure people find out about good
deeds now wait a minute I know some of
you are probably thinking there’s no way
people here thought oh well now that I’m
getting credit for my good deed now it’s
totally worth it
and you’re right usually people don’t
rather when they’re making decisions in
private they worry about their own
problems about what to put on the table
for dinner or how to pay their bills on
time but when we make their decision
more observable they start to attend
more to the opportunity to do good in
other words what’s so powerful about our
approach is that it can turn on people’s
existing desire to do good in this case
to help to prevent a blackout backed
observability I want to give you another
example this one is from a collaboration
with a nonprofit that gets out the vote
and it does this by sending hundreds of
thousands of letters every election in
order to remind people and try to
motivate them to go to the polls we
suggested adding the following sentence
someone may call you to find out about
your experience at the polls this
sentence makes it feel more observable
when you go to the polls and it
increased the effect of the letter by
making the letter more effective reduced
the cost of getting an additional vote
from 70 dollars down to about $40
observability has been used to do things
like get people to donate blood more
frequently by listing the names of
donors on local newsletters or to pay
their taxes on time by listing the names
what about this example Toyota got
hundreds of thousands of people to buy a
more fuel-efficient car by making the
Prius so unique that their good deed was
observable from a mile away all right so
loser ability is great but we all know
we’ve all seen people walk by an
opportunity to do good they’ll see
somebody asking for money on the
sidewalk and they’ll pull out their
phones and look really busy or they’ll
go to the museum and they’ll waltz right
on by the donation box imagine it’s the
holiday season and you’re going to the
supermarket and there’s the Salvation
Army volunteer and he’s ringing his Bell
a few years ago researchers at San Diego
teamed up with a local chapter from the
Salvation Army to try to find ways to
increase donations what they found was
kind of funny when the volunteers stood
in front of just one door people would
why well because they can always claim
oh I didn’t see the volunteer or I
wanted to get something from over there
that’s where my car is in other words
there’s lots of excuses and that brings
us to the second item on our checklist
to eliminate excuses in the case of the
Salvation Army eliminating excuses just
means standing in front of both doors
and sure enough when they did this
donations rose but that’s when things
got kind of funny even funnier the
salvation the researchers were out in
the parking lot and they were counting
people as they came in and out of the
store and they noticed that when the
volunteers stood in front of both doors
people stopped coming out of the store
obviously they were surprised by this so
they decided to look into it further and
that’s when they found that there was
actually a third smaller utility door
usually used to take out the recycling
and now people were going out that door
in order to avoid the volunteers this
teaches us an important lesson though
when we’re trying to eliminate excuses
we need to be very thorough because
people are really creative in making
them all right I want to switch to a
setting where excuses can have deadly
consequences what if I told you that the
world’s deadliest infectious disease has
a cure in fact that it’s had one for 70
years a good one one that works almost
every time it’s incredible but it’s true
two diseases tuberculosis it infects
some 10 million people a year and it
kills almost 2 million of them like the
blackout prevention program we’ve got
the solution the problem is people
people need to take their medication so
that they are cured and so that they
don’t get other people sick for a few
years now we’ve been collaborating with
a mobile health startup called kik ela
to support TB patients as they undergo
treatment now you have to understand TB
treatment it’s really tough we’re
talking about taking a really strong
antibiotic every single day for 6 months
or more that antibiotic is so strong
that it will make you feel sick it will
make you feel nauseous and dizzy it’ll
make your pee turn funny colors it’s
also a problem because you have to go
back to the clinic about every week in
order to get more pills and in
sub-saharan Africa or other places where
TB is common now you’re talking about
going someplace pretty far taking you
know tough and slow public transport
maybe the clinic isn’t efficient so now
you’re talking about taking a half day
off of work every week from a job you
desperately can’t afford to lose it’s
even worse when you consider the fact
that there’s a terrible stigma and you
desperately don’t want people to find
out that you have the disease
some of the toughest stories we hear are
actually from women who in these places
where domestic violence can be kind of
common they tell us that they have to
hide it from their husbands that they’re
coming to the clinic so it’s no surprise
that people don’t complete treatment can
our approach really help them can we
really get them to stick it out yeah
every day we text patients to remind
them to take their medication but if we
stop there
there’d be lots of excuses I didn’t see
the text or no I saw the text but then I
totally forgot to put the phone down and
I just forgot about it or I let the
phone out to my mom we have to eliminate
these excuses and we do that by asking
patients to log in and verify that
they’ve taken their medication if they
don’t log in we text them again they
don’t log in we texted me and again if
after three times they still haven’t
verified we notify a team of supporters
and that team will call and text them to
try to get them back on the wagon no
excuses
our approach which admittedly uses all
sorts of behavioral techniques including
as you probably noticed observability it
was very effective patients without
access to our platform were three times
all right you’ve increased observability
you’ve eliminated excuses but there’s
still a third thing you need to be aware
of if you’ve been to Washington DC or
Japan or London you know that Metro
riders there will be very careful to
stand on the right-hand side of the
escalator so that people can go by on
the left but unfortunately not
everywhere it’s at the norm and there’s
plenty of places where you can just
stand on both sides and block the
escalator obviously it’s better for
others when we stand on the right and
let them go by but we’re only expected
to do that some places this is a general
phenomenon
sometimes we’re expected to do good and
sometimes not and it means that people
are really sensitive to queue
that they’re expected to do good in a
particular situation which brings us to
the third and final item on our
checklist to communicate expectations to
tell people do the good deed right now
here’s a simple way to communicate
expectations simply tell them hey
everybody else is doing the good deed
the company o power sends people in
their electricity bill a small insert
that compares their energy consumption
with that of people with similarly sized
homes and when people find out that
their neighbors are using less
electricity they start to consume less
that same approach it’s been used to get
people to vote or give to charity or
even reuse their towels and hotels what
about this one here’s another way to
communicate expectations simply do it by
saying do the good deed just at the
right time what about this one this
sticker reframes the kind of mundane
task of turning off the lights and it
turns it instead into an environmental
contribution the bottom line is lots of
different ways to do this lots of ways
to communicate expectations just don’t
forget to do it and that’s it that’s our
checklist many of you are working on
problems with important social
consequences and sometimes you might
need to motivate people to do more good
the tools you learn today can help you
with this and these tools they don’t
require that you raise additional funds
or that you develop any more fancy
technologies they just require
harnessing reputations by increasing the
observability eliminating excuses and
communicating expectations thank you
[Applause] [Music]
[Applause]
how can we get people to do more good to
go to the polls give to charity conserve
resources or even to do something as
simple as washing their mugs at work so
that the sink isn’t always full of dirty
dishes when I first started working on
this problem I collaborated with a power
company to recruit customers from a
program that prevents blackouts by
reducing energy demand during Peaks the
program is based on a tried and true
technology it’s won the Obama
administration even called the
cornerstone to modernizing America’s
electrical grid but like so many great
technological solutions it has a key
weakness people people need to sign up
to try to get people to sign up the
power company sent them a nice letter
told them about all the program’s
benefits and asked them to call into a
hotline if they were interested those
letters went out but the phones they
were silent so when we got involved we
suggested one small change instead of
that hotline we suggested that they call
that they use sign-up sheets that they’d
post near the mailboxes in people’s
buildings this tripled participation why
well we all know people care deeply
about what others think of them that we
try to be seen as generous and kind and
we try to avoid being seen as selfish or
a mooch whether we are aware of it or
not this is a big part of why people do
good and so small changes that give
people more credit for doing good those
changes can make a really big difference
small change is like switching from a
hotline where nobody will ever find out
about your good deed to a sign-up sheet
or anyone who walks by can see your name
in our collaborations with governments
nonprofits companies when we’re trying
to get people to do more good we harness
the power of reputations and we have a
simple checklist for this and in fact
you already know the first item on that
checklist it’s to increase observability
to make sure people find out about good
deeds now wait a minute I know some of
you are probably thinking there’s no way
people here thought oh well now that I’m
getting credit for my good deed now it’s
totally worth it
and you’re right usually people don’t
rather when they’re making decisions in
private they worry about their own
problems about what to put on the table
for dinner or how to pay their bills on
time but when we make their decision
more observable they start to attend
more to the opportunity to do good in
other words what’s so powerful about our
approach is that it can turn on people’s
existing desire to do good in this case
to help to prevent a blackout backed
observability I want to give you another
example this one is from a collaboration
with a nonprofit that gets out the vote
and it does this by sending hundreds of
thousands of letters every election in
order to remind people and try to
motivate them to go to the polls we
suggested adding the following sentence
someone may call you to find out about
your experience at the polls this
sentence makes it feel more observable
when you go to the polls and it
increased the effect of the letter by
making the letter more effective reduced
the cost of getting an additional vote
from 70 dollars down to about $40
observability has been used to do things
like get people to donate blood more
frequently by listing the names of
donors on local newsletters or to pay
their taxes on time by listing the names
what about this example Toyota got
hundreds of thousands of people to buy a
more fuel-efficient car by making the
Prius so unique that their good deed was
observable from a mile away all right so
loser ability is great but we all know
we’ve all seen people walk by an
opportunity to do good they’ll see
somebody asking for money on the
sidewalk and they’ll pull out their
phones and look really busy or they’ll
go to the museum and they’ll waltz right
on by the donation box imagine it’s the
holiday season and you’re going to the
supermarket and there’s the Salvation
Army volunteer and he’s ringing his Bell
a few years ago researchers at San Diego
teamed up with a local chapter from the
Salvation Army to try to find ways to
increase donations what they found was
kind of funny when the volunteers stood
in front of just one door people would
why well because they can always claim
oh I didn’t see the volunteer or I
wanted to get something from over there
that’s where my car is in other words
there’s lots of excuses and that brings
us to the second item on our checklist
to eliminate excuses in the case of the
Salvation Army eliminating excuses just
means standing in front of both doors
and sure enough when they did this
donations rose but that’s when things
got kind of funny even funnier the
salvation the researchers were out in
the parking lot and they were counting
people as they came in and out of the
store and they noticed that when the
volunteers stood in front of both doors
people stopped coming out of the store
obviously they were surprised by this so
they decided to look into it further and
that’s when they found that there was
actually a third smaller utility door
usually used to take out the recycling
and now people were going out that door
in order to avoid the volunteers this
teaches us an important lesson though
when we’re trying to eliminate excuses
we need to be very thorough because
people are really creative in making
them all right I want to switch to a
setting where excuses can have deadly
consequences what if I told you that the
world’s deadliest infectious disease has
a cure in fact that it’s had one for 70
years a good one one that works almost
every time it’s incredible but it’s true
two diseases tuberculosis it infects
some 10 million people a year and it
kills almost 2 million of them like the
blackout prevention program we’ve got
the solution the problem is people
people need to take their medication so
that they are cured and so that they
don’t get other people sick for a few
years now we’ve been collaborating with
a mobile health startup called kik ela
to support TB patients as they undergo
treatment now you have to understand TB
treatment it’s really tough we’re
talking about taking a really strong
antibiotic every single day for 6 months
or more that antibiotic is so strong
that it will make you feel sick it will
make you feel nauseous and dizzy it’ll
make your pee turn funny colors it’s
also a problem because you have to go
back to the clinic about every week in
order to get more pills and in
sub-saharan Africa or other places where
TB is common now you’re talking about
going someplace pretty far taking you
know tough and slow public transport
maybe the clinic isn’t efficient so now
you’re talking about taking a half day
off of work every week from a job you
desperately can’t afford to lose it’s
even worse when you consider the fact
that there’s a terrible stigma and you
desperately don’t want people to find
out that you have the disease
some of the toughest stories we hear are
actually from women who in these places
where domestic violence can be kind of
common they tell us that they have to
hide it from their husbands that they’re
coming to the clinic so it’s no surprise
that people don’t complete treatment can
our approach really help them can we
really get them to stick it out yeah
every day we text patients to remind
them to take their medication but if we
stop there
there’d be lots of excuses I didn’t see
the text or no I saw the text but then I
totally forgot to put the phone down and
I just forgot about it or I let the
phone out to my mom we have to eliminate
these excuses and we do that by asking
patients to log in and verify that
they’ve taken their medication if they
don’t log in we text them again they
don’t log in we texted me and again if
after three times they still haven’t
verified we notify a team of supporters
and that team will call and text them to
try to get them back on the wagon no
excuses
our approach which admittedly uses all
sorts of behavioral techniques including
as you probably noticed observability it
was very effective patients without
access to our platform were three times
all right you’ve increased observability
you’ve eliminated excuses but there’s
still a third thing you need to be aware
of if you’ve been to Washington DC or
Japan or London you know that Metro
riders there will be very careful to
stand on the right-hand side of the
escalator so that people can go by on
the left but unfortunately not
everywhere it’s at the norm and there’s
plenty of places where you can just
stand on both sides and block the
escalator obviously it’s better for
others when we stand on the right and
let them go by but we’re only expected
to do that some places this is a general
phenomenon
sometimes we’re expected to do good and
sometimes not and it means that people
are really sensitive to queue
that they’re expected to do good in a
particular situation which brings us to
the third and final item on our
checklist to communicate expectations to
tell people do the good deed right now
here’s a simple way to communicate
expectations simply tell them hey
everybody else is doing the good deed
the company o power sends people in
their electricity bill a small insert
that compares their energy consumption
with that of people with similarly sized
homes and when people find out that
their neighbors are using less
electricity they start to consume less
that same approach it’s been used to get
people to vote or give to charity or
even reuse their towels and hotels what
about this one here’s another way to
communicate expectations simply do it by
saying do the good deed just at the
right time what about this one this
sticker reframes the kind of mundane
task of turning off the lights and it
turns it instead into an environmental
contribution the bottom line is lots of
different ways to do this lots of ways
to communicate expectations just don’t
forget to do it and that’s it that’s our
checklist many of you are working on
problems with important social
consequences and sometimes you might
need to motivate people to do more good
the tools you learn today can help you
with this and these tools they don’t
require that you raise additional funds
or that you develop any more fancy
technologies they just require
harnessing reputations by increasing the
observability eliminating excuses and
communicating expectations thank you
[Applause] [Music]
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