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Hello all

Here’s another bunch of behaviour change and behavioural economics reads. You can read the previous newsletter over here . Thanks for the feedback, sounds like the behavioural economics guide, Sheena Iyengar’s art of choosing and ‘I know where your cat lives’ were popular reads. And welcome to any new readers.

How can you get people to value something more?

Why is it that we seem to have a deeper affection for the wonky bookcase we've constructed or the cake we’ve personally baked which – if we’re being truly objective — doesn't really taste or look as nice as the pre made version? Dan Ariely (author of Predictably Irrational) shares one explanation where he explains a cognitive bias called ‘The Ikea Effect’.

Turns out we place a higher value (including perceived monetary value) on the things that we create. Your attraction to a product increases with the amount of effort you expend in it – we fall in love with our own project. Which also has interesting implications for prototyping ideas during idea development. So having a sense of ownership over something has an interesting effect on our perceived value of it. Which could help with understanding why getting people to invest time finding and buying Coca Cola bottles with your mate’s name on it worked so brilliantly (or better yet, making the personalised bottle yourself)

But there is a flip side to this – the commonly experienced ‘not invented here’ bias where we overvalue our own ideas and undervalue similar ideas from other people! So, all the more reason to embrace the Ikea Effect and generate ideas and prototypes with all those who will be involved in the idea – clients included.

You will (eventually) enjoy furniture more if you assemble it than if someone else assembles, enjoy a room more if you paint it than someone else paints it, enjoy your food more if you make it. So how can you get people to do some labour so it leads to love? Think about involvement in the design process, customisation of product or packaging, creating playlists, involved personalisation. Then go another step and help people share their ‘project’ to encourage a sense of ownership.

Changing social norms with rainbow laces

Paddy Power have brought their rainbow laces to the Premier League for the 2nd time. They are working with Stonewall to challenge homophobia within football — there are still no openly gay or bi professional players and homophobia on the terraces is rife. It’s a really interesting effort to challenge social norms. Arsenal football players support the campaign in this ad and are seen wearing the laces on the pitch. Nice way of visualising a shared identity (footballers against homophobia) and kick starting a movement. Would be interesting to see if attitudes are shifting. More info about campaign

Why does hyperbolic discounting stop you getting stuff done?

Hyperbolic discounting is one of those fancily named behavioural economics concepts where it’s hard to work out what on earth it means. In a nutshell, we value short terms gains over long terms gains even if the long term gain is significantly better. We’re biased towards instant gratification.

What does this mean for our big goals in life…well, we don’t get around to them despite our very very best of intentions.

So, firstly, accept that everyone succumbs to this. Secondly, here’s an exercise to help you overcome your own human nature. Jay Papasan, author of The One Thing, very kindly agreed to talk me through his interesting exercise called ‘Goal Setting to the Now’. Instead of simply working towards a 5 year goal, the exercise helps you to break the goal down into achievable actions that you do NOW rather than sometime in the future. Work backwards from your future goal and line up each smaller goal as a domino run. That way you invest your energy in knocking down the first domino in the run. More info on the exercise here.

One more tip, here’s why you should draw up your to-do lists the night before.

Changing habits with small behavioural interventions

Stoptober started again last week. Over 240,000 people have signed up to take part. I signed up so I could experience the campaign first hand (although I’m a non-smoker, so not truly testing it out). In addition to the tv ad, the Stoptober pack has some behavioural techniques (oooh I smell a nudge). A desk calendar with rip off pages counts down the 28 days, including tips to help you quit and ‘craving distraction’ exercises on the back of the sheets such as sudoku and origami. The scratch off calendar (think a quit smoking advent calendar) also helps keep track of progress and encourages self monitoring. Breaking that ‘winning streak’ feels painful and helps to push you through. The scratch off calendar is going down well in my household where it’s been repurposed as a detox/alcohol free October chart!

Ice, Ice, Ice, Ice and more Ice

Ice bucket nominations have probably just about left your Facebook feed. Maybe there’s a few laggards around. Loads of people had lots to say about it, these posts included some nice graphs and visuals.

· Nice map visualising the social connections across the US with Boston as a kickoff hub

· Search terms plotted against celeb involvement

· Altruism or social norms? And some interesting thoughts on charity narcissism

Spotting faces in random things

Pareidolia — seeing significant things in random stimulus. Our brains are super primed to recognise faces, which is part of the reason why we see faces in things that are nothing remotely face like. It’s also why cars are perceived to have cheeky grins or menacing snarls. And why drunk octopus looks like he wants a fight. Here’s some neurosciency/psychology thoughts on face recognition. Or if you just want to look at faces in objects that don’t have faces, check out this Tumblr >> Inanimate objects with faces.

Pitbulls in flower crowns

Outrageously cute. Have been seeing lots of different efforts aimed at changing perceptions towards Staffordshire bull terriers and pit bulls, often motivated by the disproportionate numbers of these dogs needing to be rehomed. People find staffies scary and so they are low down on the desirability list for adoption. I might just be a sucker for puppy dog eyes, but images like these pitbulls in flower crowns by photographer Sophie Gamand and this from the Battersea Dogs Home have had an impact on my perceptions.

You are sooooo predictable

Well that’s not true at all otherwise changing behaviour and getting people to buy the things we want them to buy would be very easy. But, it is pretty true in some areas, such as (importantly) in coin flipping and rock, paper, scissors games. So if you want to know whether to go rock or paper first, or fake mind reading powers have a look at this as we’re not very good at being random, even when we are trying to be. And Derren Brown is a statistician.

Helping people save money for big spends

Mental accounting, habits and rules of thumb. Interesting summary from Crawford Hollingworth on how to help people save money both from a general saving accounts perspective, but also in terms of saving for big ticket spends. Includes examples of how different banks use psychological principles in their savings products Save more money in 4 easy steps.

If you’re eager to read more

Ipsos Mori have compiled this nickable list of trends spanning over the last 40 years covering all sorts of social issues including unemployment, economic concerns and crime stats. What happens when you rebuild tinder to see what influences whether someone swipes? Turns out we might be all classist (geeky researcher note…not convinced about how robust the methodology is so take with a big pinch of salt, but interesting concept and read all the same). Here are 10 tricks to help you appear smart during meetings. Finally, a quick quiz on one of my favourite topics (psychology of resilience) — find out how resilient you are.

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