Invisible Influence (24 page)

And rather than being placed in the easiest spot, at the opposite end of the starting box, the finishing box was placed on one of the sides. So the roach had to run straight, make a right or left turn, and run some more before reaching the end. It couldn't just run blindly, it had to try different options to learn which one was correct.

Not surprisingly, it took the roaches longer to run the more complex track. They had to figure out which way to go and needed three times as long to finish.

But the audience also influenced performance. On the straightaway, roaches ran faster when the audience was present, chopping almost a third off their time. But for the more complex track, others had the opposite impact. An audience led the roaches to run slower, increasing their time by almost a third.

Zajonc was right. Whether others help or hurt performance depends on the complexity of the task.
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In the decades following this seminal study, the same pattern has been found again and again. Having others around improves
performance (e.g., speed and accuracy) on easy, well-learned tasks, but decreases performance on unfamiliar, and thus more difficult, tasks.

Others make us faster at tying our own shoes, for example, but slower at tying a bow tie (at least for most of us who don't tie one often).
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Skilled pool players make more shots when others are watching, but unskilled players miss more.
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Having an audience makes us faster at taking notes, unless we're taking notes with our non-dominant hand. If we're right-handed, having someone else watching makes writing with our left hand slower.

If you've ever gone to the gym with a friend, or run next to someone on the treadmill, you've probably experienced the positive impact of others. Even though you're not competing, their presence helps. You lift a little harder or run a little faster.

But if you've ever had someone watch you while you parallel park, you've also probably felt others' negative impact. Parallel parking is never easy, but other people often make it more difficult. You thought you were pulling in just fine, but it ends up you turned too late, so you have to pull out and start over. Other cars start pulling up behind you on the street. You take another pass, but this time you cut it too tight, so you have to start again. By now your passenger starts looking at you like you need to go back to driving school.

Some of us are just bad at parking, but social facilitation is also playing a role. Having someone watch makes the (somewhat) difficult task of parallel parking take longer.

Whether helping or hurting performance, social facilitation happens for a few reasons.
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First, others can be distracting. They take attention away from parallel parking or whatever else we are trying to do. Second, others increase impression management.
We want to look good to others, so we try harder. Third, in part due to impression management, others increase physiological arousal. Our heart rate quickens, our blood pumps faster, and our body readies for action.

These factors lead us to do better at things that are automatic, natural, or well learned. We feel challenged, our competitive juices start flowing, and we spring to action. Faced with something we're pretty good at (e.g., running on a treadmill or doing an exercise we've done a hundred times before), we perform even better.

But for tasks that are more difficult or require more attention, those same factors make us do worse.
What are they thinking? Are they going to judge me if I park badly?
We feel threatened and anxious. We're worried about failing or doing badly. And that leads us to perform worse.
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Have you checked your e-mail today?

For many people, that's not even a question. Most would say yes. Of course. You've probably checked your e-mail in the last hour. You might have even checked it while reading this chapter.

And what about the weather? Have you checked that today? This week? How about sports scores or social media?

While we may not check these things as frequently as our e-mail, we certainly check them a lot. We have a decent sense of what the weather will be like this week, how our local team is doing, and how pretty it was in Aruba when our high school classmate went there on vacation (thank goodness for social media).

But what about your household energy use? How much
power you or your family are using in your home or apartment. Have you checked that today? This week? Ever?

Energy use is one of the biggest challenges facing society. But while everyone realizes it's important, solving the problem may be less about technology and more about social influence.

Climate change is one of the most pressing global concerns of the twenty-first century. Regardless of your political bent, it's tough not to at least acknowledge the overwhelming scientific evidence that temperatures are rising. Glaciers are retreating and subtropical deserts are expanding. Extreme weather events such as droughts and heavy snowfalls are more frequent, species of plants and animals are vanishing, and food security is threatened as crop yields decrease.

Energy use lies at the core of these global warming trends. Burning fossil fuels generates carbon dioxide, and greenhouse gases emitted from cars, factories, and power plants continue to rise. As the world economy grows, people are using more and more energy. It takes energy to keep us warm in the winter and cool in the summer. It takes energy to power our computers and run our factories. And it takes energy to get us to work and back home again. As more of the world industrializes, a greater and greater strain is put on our natural resources.

Something has to give. Either we figure out a way to cut down and clean up energy use, or the world is on a course for some unsettling changes.

Many of the proposed solutions are sizable in scale. Government regulations such as capping the amount of carbon dioxide power plants can produce or standards that require automakers to achieve a certain number of miles per gallon. Other solutions
focus on new technologies and alternative energy. Solar and wind farms have become more prevalent, and exciting developments in geothermal energy have enabled us to harness the warmth of the earth's core.

Attempts to shift consumer behavior also focus on big changes. Buy an Energy Star washer that saves water and uses less energy per load. Swap out your old lightbulbs for compact fluorescents that may last up to ten times longer. Even your attic can be improved through more effective insulation.

One of the simplest solutions, though, is just getting people to conserve energy. Flip the lights off when you leave the room and take shorter showers. Turn the heat down a degree or two in the winter and leave it on low when you leave the house. When added up across the population, small changes in energy conservation can have a big impact.

So how do we get people to change their behavior?

If you had to pick someone who would revolutionize the power industry, Dan Yates would have been an unlikely choice. An expert pole vaulter from San Diego, Yates came to Harvard with almost shoulder-length hair. He graduated a few years later with a degree in computer science and an interest in entrepreneurship.

Yates moved to San Francisco, and after a short stint with one company, he cofounded an educational assessment software business with a classmate from Harvard. The company did well, and after three years had over 140 employees and close to 500 school districts as customers. Publishing powerhouse Houghton Mifflin became interested, and Yates and his cofounder sold the business.

After working at Houghton for a year, Yates needed a break. So he and his wife planned a yearlong adventure they would never forget. They bought a used Toyota 4Runner, started in Alaska, and traversed the entire length of the Pan-American Highway. Around 30,000 miles down to Ushuaia, on the southernmost tip of Argentina.

It was a beautiful journey. They saw rare animals in southwest Bolivia and majestic tree canopies in the cloud forest of Costa Rica.

But Yates and his wife also witnessed lots of environmental devastation. Acres of rain forest that had been leveled. Patches of brush and nature that had been set ablaze to clear the area for farming. Yates came back from the trip wondering what he could do to help the environment.

With another classmate from Harvard, Alex Laskey, Yates started thinking about ways to reduce energy waste. He and his partner bandied around a bunch of ideas. Some around solar power and some around reducing emissions.

But the most promising direction came when Yates looked at his electricity bill. It was a mess. Systems delivery charges, power adjustments, and regulatory fees, not to mention confusing terms such as kilowatt hours and therms. There were dozens of fields to pay attention to, and the information was hard, if not impossible, to parse. Yates thought there could be something better. “I didn't understand what kilowatt hours were; I didn't know what therms were. I didn't care to know. I just wanted to know how much energy I used compared to my neighbor or something else I could understand.”
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Yates wasn't alone. Most people find their energy bills so confusing that they don't even try to understand the details. They just pay the bill every month and move on.

Maybe social influence could help.

San Marcos is a great place to study energy conservation.
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Thirty-five miles north of San Diego, the city is tucked just inland off where Interstate 5 hugs the coast. Southern California is known for its sunshine, and San Marcos doesn't disappoint. The city gets less than half the amount of rain as the rest of the United States and is sunny more than 260 days a year.

In the winter, though, San Marcos can get cold enough that people need to turn on the heat. And when summer swelters, residents blast air-conditioning. The broader area is also plagued by drought, and every few years restrictions kick in around water use. People can only wash their cars certain times of day, and residents can only water their lawn certain days of the week, depending on where they live. Citizens aren't thinking about energy use all the time, but it's lurking in the background.

One dry summer day, over a decade ago, Professors Bob Cialdini, Wes Schultz, Jessica Nolan, Noah Goldstein, and Vladas Griskevicius ran a simple experiment in San Marcos.

Graduate students went door-to-door in the community, delivering persuasive messages promoting energy conservation. Each household received a door hanger (similar to the
DO NOT DISTURB
sign at a hotel) encouraging people to use less energy. The door hanger promoted using fans, taking shorter showers, and turning off the air-conditioning at night.

When trying to change behavior, energy conservation campaigns usually focus on one of three overarching appeals: saving money, helping the environment, or promoting social responsibility. To test which type of appeal was more effective, homes were divided into groups, and each group received different messaging.

Some homeowners received an appeal that highlighted saving money. When talking about fans, for example, the appeal stated, “Summer is here and the time is right for saving money on your home energy bill. How can you save money this summer? By using fans instead of air conditioning! Why? According to researchers at Cal State San Marcos, you could save up to $54 per month by using fans instead of air conditioning to keep cool in the summer.”

A second group got an environmental message. It encouraged people to “Protect the Environment by Conserving Energy. Summer is here and the time is right for reducing greenhouse gases. How can you protect the environment this summer? By using fans instead of air conditioning! Why? According to researchers at Cal State San Marcos, you can prevent the release of up to 262 pounds of greenhouse gases per month by using fans instead of air conditioning to keep cool this summer! Using fans instead of air conditioning—The Environmental Choice.”

A third group received a message about being good citizens: “Summer is here and we need to work together to conserve energy. How can you conserve energy for future generations? By using fans instead of air conditioning! Why? According to researchers at Cal State San Marcos, you can reduce your monthly demand for electricity by 29% by using fans instead of air conditioning to keep cool this summer! Using fans instead of air conditioning—The Socially Responsible Choice.”

In addition to passing out different appeals, the researchers also measured how much energy different households used, both before and after they received the conservation messages.

Most people guessed that the environmental appeal would work best. Not leaps and bounds better than talking about saving
money or helping the community, but at least somewhat more effective.

But they were wrong. None of the appeals worked. The conservation messages had zero impact on energy consumption. Whether the appeals encouraged people to help the environment, save money, or just be a good citizen, people didn't budge. They didn't use any less energy than they had before. It was almost as if the messages had never been delivered at all.

Fortunately, the researchers also tried a fourth appeal. Rather than seeking to convince people to conserve energy by pointing out different reasons for doing so, this appeal simply highlighted social norms; what other people in the community were doing. “When surveyed, 77% of your neighbors use fans instead of air-conditioning to keep cool in the summer. Turn off your air conditioning and turn on your fans.”

And people did. Households that received this message decreased their energy use significantly. And this reduced consumption persisted even weeks after they received the last appeal. Simply telling people that their neighbors were saving energy led them to conserve more themselves.

Building on these findings, Yates and Laskey saw an opportunity. Social norms could provide a simple and cost-effective way to reduce people's energy use. Coupling usage data with information about what others were doing could make for a more effective energy bill.