The Small BIG: Small Changes That Spark Big Influence (10 page)

E
ven though we may not recognize it at the time, many of the choices that we make in our information-laden lives are essentially choices we have made without ever bothering to choose. Government policy makers, 401(k) savings plans, and car dealers alike all recognize the powerful draw of the “default” option and employ it to influence our behavior in some way or other.

For example, enrollments into tax-efficient 401(k) company savings plans can be as much as 50 percent higher if an employer sets a default automatic enrollment for employees as opposed to an active opt-in. An individual’s willingness to carry an organ donation card can be four times higher in countries where consent to donate is automatically assumed unless citizens specifically opt out. Defaults are also extensively used by Internet marketers who will send you email offers and marketing messages unless you actively decline to receive them.

It is because default settings tend to work
with
, as opposed to
against
, our tendency toward inertia that they can be such a useful and efficient tool when it comes to influencing the decisions and behaviors of others. Why go to the trouble of asking people to think about changing when a small modification to the default setting can get them to change without their having to think at all? But, despite both their widespread appeal and ubiquitous presence, default options are not without their problems.

One downside is that defaults are typically passive rather than active, and as we have shown in previous chapters this can create problems when we want to persuade people to live up to their commitments in the future. Another challenge when using defaults is the fact that, because they are optimally employed in situations where there is a single best course of action, when we want people to consider several options before deciding, or at least tailor choices to their own individual needs, they don’t work as well.

Is the answer, then, to ditch defaults in place of other more effective strategies? Certainly not. Rather fortunately, behavioral science offers up a couple of small changes that make it entirely possible to increase the effectiveness of a default strategy, without incurring any extra costs in terms of time and resources.

In a series of studies, researchers Punam Keller and colleagues showed that default strategies could be boosted by adopting a two-step approach that they call the “Enhanced Active Choice.”

The first step of the Enhanced Active Choice approach requires a small change in the default setting so that, as opposed to opting in or opting out of one option, people are instead asked to make a real choice between two options. In one of their experiments Keller and her colleagues assigned employees of an educational facility to one of two groups. Participants in both groups were offered the chance to receive a flu shot that would not only protect their health, but also save them money on their monthly health insurance premiums.

The first group (the opt-in group) was simply asked to “Check the box if you would like to receive a flu shot this fall.”

However, rather than defaulting the second group into a choice that had already been made for them, they were instead defaulted into making an active choice between two options. Specifically they were asked to check one of the following options:

or

The results showed that many more people were willing to get a flu shot in the active choice condition (62 percent) than the opt-in condition (42 percent), providing solid evidence that while the opt-in strategy was reasonably successful, a small change that simply required people to make an active choice led to a much bigger difference.

But the researchers weren’t finished. They also wondered how active choices could be enhanced further, and they found their answer in another fundamental principle of persuasion science:
loss aversion
—that is, the strong tendency in people to want to avoid losing or missing out. With this human tendency in mind, the researchers tested an enhancement to their active choice condition that pointed out what participants stood to lose if they failed to take action.

Specifically the participants of this group were asked to check one of these two options:

or

The small act of accompanying an active choice with a specific loss message led to a big difference, with 75 percent of people indicating that they would now get the flu shot. Such impressive results led Keller and her colleagues to test similar approaches outside of their lab, including a large-scale field study of some 11,000 Pharmacy Benefit members. In each case their Enhanced Active Choice strategy was shown to be more effective.

Although these studies were conducted in a public health environment where the objective was to persuade people to sign up for a flu vaccination, the enhanced active choice approach should also be quite effective in other contexts. For example, rather than employing a standard default approach, software developers, keen to encourage users to move from a free, feature-limited version of their software to a fully functioning paid-for one, should change their pop-ups so users are required to actively choose between
two options
, remembering to enhance that active choice by pointing out what users stand to lose if they remain with the free version (e.g., they’d lose faster download times and extra features).

Financial institutions that wish to persuade customers to switch to alternative savings accounts might, when customers log in to online banking, present them with an active choice between their current account and an improved account, again being sure to point out what they are currently losing by not switching. School principals might persuade more parents to enroll their children in the weekly “walk to school” initiative by asking them to make an active choice between driving to school on a given day or walking—again being sure to point out the fresh air, extra exercise, and social inclusion that their kids could potentially miss if they choose not to walk.

Whatever the influence challenge, the key to activating this two-step approach is always the same. First take the small step to consider the two choices that you want your audience to actively choose from. Then take the
additional small step
to enhance your preferred choice by pointing out what could be lost if it is not selected.

These two
SMALL
changes could lead to BIG differences in your success.

I
n a recent set of annual accounts, the US retailer Best Buy reported a gain of over $40 million from customers who had failed to redeem gift cards before the expiration date. It appears that it’s not an isolated phenomenon. The Tower Group, a consumer research company, estimates that the total value of money that goes unused on gift cards by the time expiration dates are reached is close to $2 billion annually.

Learning of these huge surpluses of unused cash, some consumer groups have called for a change to the law requiring retailers to further extend the expiration dates on the gift cards they issue in an effort to give people more time to redeem them. But based on what we know from research into the persuasion process, this kind of a change, rather than improve matters, is likely to make matters much worse. We believe that an entirely different approach is needed. In fact, it is an approach that requires the deployment of just a small change that engages a central motivation to act. Deploying this costless small change may not only increase the probability that your cousin will use that $25 Amazon.com gift certificate you purchased for him last holiday, but it could also help you persuade someone not to put off until tomorrow what they really should be doing today.

We all know that there are occasions when we procrastinate. Whether it’s exercising a little more, starting that new study assignment, or mowing the lawn, many of us can display remarkable inventiveness when it comes to stalling for time. As the Spanish proverb states, “Tomorrow is always the busiest day of the week.” Typically procrastination is associated with tasks that people find less pleasant to carry out, but it turns out that oftentimes we are just as likely to put off until tomorrow activities that we actually find fun and enjoyable. Why?

One reason is that, because people are so focused on dealing with whatever is vying for their attention at a specific moment in time, they wrongly believe that once they have gotten that albatross off their back they will have more time in the future to carry out more enjoyable activities. Of course what they fail to realize is that that albatross was one of a flock, and another one will invariably take its place, meaning that they will be just as busy in the future and, as a result, simply end up not completing even enjoyable activities.

Noting that in a busy information-overloaded world people are increasingly as likely to procrastinate desirable tasks as undesirable ones, researchers Suzanne Shu and Ayelet Gneezy set up a fascinating series of experiments. In doing so they uncovered how a small change to the expiration date can have a remarkable and counter-intuitive effect on people’s likelihood to complete a task.

Before the studies got going the researchers asked people to rate the attractiveness of a gift certificate that was good for coffee and cake worth $6 at a high-quality local bakery store. They were also asked the likelihood that they would redeem it should they be given one. Unbeknownst to the participants, although the gift certificates they reviewed were equal in terms of their cash value, they were different in terms of their expiration date: One was valid for just three weeks, but the other was good for two months. There was no doubt that when people were asked to evaluate the certificates, those with the longer expiration date received much more positive feelings than those with the shorter ones.

Interestingly, it appears that this positive evaluation influenced their predictions of whether they would use the certificate too. Close to 70 percent of those who evaluated the certificate with the two-month expiration period said they would use it, compared to roughly 50 percent who evaluated the three-week expiration period certificate. Clearly people appear to like the greater flexibility that a longer expiration date offers. Recall how in the introduction to this book we offered evidence of how poorly people predict their future behaviors. Could it be that even though people prefer the gift certificate with the longer expiration date they would, in fact, be more likely to use the gift certificate with the shorter one?

That’s exactly what the researchers set out to test and what they found was astonishing. Despite participants’ predictions to the contrary, five times as many given the short-expiration date certificate visited the bakery to claim their coffee and cake than those given the long-expiration date certificates. People may have preferred the offer with a longer expiration date because it afforded them more time to redeem the offer; however, in reality, it actually caused fewer of them to do so.

As a final check to ensure that the results of the study were attributable principally to procrastination and not to other factors, the researchers completed a series of follow-up surveys. Those who did redeem the certificates reported an enjoyable and worthwhile experience. Those who didn’t conveyed their regret and were most likely to agree with statements such as “I got too busy and ran out of time” or “I kept thinking that I would do it a bit later” as opposed to other explanations such as “I forgot,” “I don’t like pastries,” or “It seemed like too much effort.”

The result of this research suggests an immediate small change that any communicator can make when seeking to persuade clients or customers to take up offers and proposals. Instead of offering a longer time frame in order for your target audience to respond, in the mistaken belief that doing so will make it more attractive, this research suggests that a much shorter time frame should be offered. For example, a software company seeking to boost new-user registrations might see improvements if their pop-up box is changed from the standard options “Register now,” “Ask again tomorrow,” and “Ask again next week” to “Register now,” “Ask again tomorrow,” and “Remind me again in 3 days (last day to register),” perhaps offering additional benefits or bonuses to encourage early registrations.

A financial adviser or investment manager, seeking to persuade potential investors to attend a webinar or presentation on the latest investment tips, may increase sign-up rates by changing the “RSVP by” date on the invitation to one that looms sooner, rather than later. This is consistent with other research showing that email invitations indicating a specific and close deadline increase click-through registration rates by 8 percentage points.

Finally, if your spouse, friend, or business partner has promised to share a fine and presumably delicious wine with you but keeps putting it off while waiting for a special enough occasion, Shu and Gneezy would point you to a scene from the hit movie
Sideways
for a clue for how to potentially persuade him or her: