o behave! issue 24
TRANSCRIPT
O BEHAVE!Issue 24 • March 2016
Veggie Tales of Product Placement 3
Bias of the Month 4
Your Brain on Altruism 5
The Power of a Simple Thank You 6
If It’s Not on the List… 7
Real Life Nudge of the Month 8
Upcoming Events 8
CONTENTS
VEGGIE TALES OF PRODUCT PLACEMENT
For those of you familiar with the behavioural science literature or if you’re a regular reader of O Behave!, it will not be news to you that the positioning or “choice architecture” of options influences what we choose. The latest research in this space has found that positioning healthy food to the left of unhealthy food not only enhances the preference for healthy food, but also increases the consumption of healthy food compared to when it is placed to the right of unhealthy food.
The authors leaned on research related to the spatial representation of magnitude to explain their findings. According to this evidence, individuals tend to mentally map increases in magnitude from left to right, i.e. dimensions such as time, weight etc. To relate this to food, healthy food items are perceived as being less heavy, lower in calories and less filling compared to unhealthy food and therefore are considered lower in magnitude compared to unhealthy food. This means that consumers naturally represent healthy items to the left of unhealthy food.
Romero, M., & Biswas, D. (2016). Healthy-Left, Unhealthy-Right: Can Displaying Healthy Items to the Left (versus Right) of Unhealthy Items Nudge Healthier Choices? Journal of Consumer Research, forthcoming.
So how does this influence choice? When mental representations are congruent (vs. incongruent) with display patterns, ease of processing is higher. Therefore, food displays that are congruent with consumers’ mental representations should lead to more fluent processing. This in turn enhances self control and further facilitates resistance to temptation, which enables consumers to choose healthy options over unhealthy options when they are displayed in this way: healthy to the left, unhealthy to the right.
With restaurants, supermarkets etc taking on more responsibility to help consumers make healthier choices, these simple tactics are invaluable. Whether it be menu design, online shopping interfaces or physical choice architecture, those responsible for displaying the choices can help us all lead healthier lives by simply placing the healthy food to the left.
BIAS OF THE MONTH
Pareidolia
Liu, J., Li, J., Feng, L., Tian, J., & Lee, K. (2014). Seeing Jesus in toast: Neural and behavioral correlates of face pareidolia. Cortex, 53, 60-77
Anyone who follows the Twitter account Faces in Things will be familiar with the phenomenon of seeing human-like faces in inanimate objects. The word pareidolia covers any kind of imagined pattern or meaning where none exists, but as we are an incredibly social species, seeing faces in things tends to be the most common manifestation.
This phenomenon has been linked to activation in the fusiform face area (FFA), a part of the brain specifically dedicated to processing faces. Liu et al (2014) presented participants with pure-noise images, half of which were designed to provoke pareidolia. They found that, when participants reported seeing a face in an image of random noise, they exhibited more activation in the FFA. This is a highly adaptive feature; being overly sensitive to the presence of faces makes it less likely that we will fail to detect a face, which is important in our social environment.
It can also be incredibly lucrative, especially if you’re lucky enough to see the image of a religious idol. Florida resident Diana Duyser noticed the Virgin Mary in her cheese toastie in 1994, which she saved for over ten years before selling it on eBay for $28,000.
YOUR BRAIN ON ALTRUISMAltruism is an evolutionary quirk; as a survival strategy, helping others (at a cost to ourselves) is not always obviously beneficial. In terms of natural selection, when the person we are helping is a relative, the altruistic strategy can ensure our genes are perpetuated. Similarly, helping those we will have repeated interactions with is advantageous if they choose to reciprocate. However, people are frequently altruistic in situations with no clear benefit, such as donating to communities affected by natural disasters thousands of miles away, and often experience a ‘warm glow’ associated with magnanimous acts. Evidence even suggests that offering a monetary incentive for blood donation can reduce the number of people donating, because it removes this warm glow and replaces it with a cash transaction.
Hein G, Morishima Y, Leiberg S, Sul S, & Fehr E (2016). The brain's functional network architecture reveals human motives. Science, 351 (6277), 1074-8.
New research by Hein, Morishima, Leiberg, Sul & Fehr (2016) has examined the neural correlates associated with altruism, specifically the different motivations behind it. Their experiment used the classic dictator game paradigm: the ‘dictator’ is paired with another participant, and given an amount of money to split between the two of them. In rational economic terms, it would make sense to take as much as possible for oneself and leave one’s partner with very little, as it maximises one’s gains without any negative consequences. However, in practice, most people tend to split the money much more evenly. Before starting the game, the researchers primed one of two different motives for altruism: compassion or reciprocity. To elicit the former, the participant watched their partner receive multiple electric shocks, ensuring they felt suitably sorry for them. To provoke the latter, the participant saw their partner sacrifice their own profit in order to prevent the participant themselves receiving electric shocks. These two manipulations were intended to evoke the same altruistic response, but for different reasons: out of empathy to make up for their partner’s painful shocks and repaying their partner’s initial kindness, respectively.
Both conditions prompted more altruistic divisions of the payment, relative to the control group. Interestingly, there was noeffect of motive on the brain areas that were activated, but the way in which the brain areas communicated with each other was different. More intriguingly still, the pattern of brain activity of participants who behaved altruistically in the control condition, with a neutral participant, mapped more closely onto the compassionate brain activity than the reciprocal activity. In other words, it seems that spontaneous altruism may be a result of empathy for others, rather than a reciprocity device. This is a fascinating insight that informs our understanding of the mechanism behind altruism, although for the time being still leaves questions about its evolutionary basis open.
THE POWER OF A SIMPLE THANK YOU
Customers who feel valued and appreciated are key to businesses, as they tend to be loyal to the brand for life and advocates who spread the good word about it to their friends and family. Currently it is popular for businesses to provide small financial benefits to loyal customers in the hope they will feel appreciated, but is it having the desired effect? Recent research has shown that acknowledging a customer’s loyalty with a minor financial gift could be having the opposite effect than intended, as it shifts the genuine “thank you” to a trivial transactional thank you. Across three studies, Liu, Lamberton & Haws (2015) showed that in order to make your customers feel appreciated, a genuine thank you goes a long way; financial rewards can work, but not in as straightforward a manner as one might think.
Study 1: Guests who spent a night in a selected hotel were asked to provide feedback on their stay. Once they completed the feedback, one group received a note simply saying, “Thank you for your time and support, we really appreciate your feedback.” The other group received a financial benefit: “We would like to give you $0.05 to say thank you”. When asked how appreciated they felt on a scale of 0-7, those in the former group gave a significantly higher rating than the latter.
Liu, P. J., Lamberton, C., & Haws, K. L. (2015). Should Firms Use Small Financial Benefits to Express Appreciation to Consumers? Understanding and Avoiding Trivialization Effects. Journal of Marketing, 79(3), 74-90.
Study 2: Loyal customers of a clothing store were sent a thank you email which either said, “Thank you for being a loyal customer” or contained a voucher, which was a 5%, 10%, 15%, 20% or 40% discount off their next purchase. Results found that people felt more appreciated when given just a thank you with no voucher than those who received a 5% or 10% discount. Appreciation levels started to increase for discounts of 15% and over.
Study 3: To test if the framing of a financial thank you can influence appreciation levels, customers who rated a furniture website were sent an email saying thank you, a £0.01 reward or £0.01 reward donated to charity on their behalf. Results found that those in the financial reward group felt significantly less appreciated than those in the charity group. Those whoreceived a simple thank you again had the highest appreciation rating.
This research demonstrates that a simple thank you can go a long way in order to make customers feel appreciated, and unless you can offer customers a significant financial reward, it may be best to not offer one at all.
IF IT’S NOT ON THE LIST…
Read any business magazine or lifestyle blog and you’re likely to see conflicting views on the efficacy of to-do lists. Some people see them as an essential part of any well-organised approach to managing tasks, while others see them as an easy way to set yourself up for failure at the start of each day. As is often the case with this type of subject matter, much of what is written is based on opinion and anecdote, and very little empirical evidence. So what does the research say?
Masicampo, E. J., & Baumeister, R. F. (2011). Consider It Done! Plan Making Can Eliminate the Cognitive Effects of Unfulfilled Goals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101 (4), 667-683.
A new unpublished study by Francesca Gino and colleagues has found that crossing an item off a list once it’s complete is intrinsically rewarding, a phenomenon known as the completion bias. This isn’t influenced by the size or complexity of the task; even small, simple tasks like replying to emails can provide the same sense of satisfaction. Furthermore, the release of dopamine associated with these small successes can improve attention, memory and motivation, making us better able to take on bigger, more daunting tasks. In their experiment, Gino and Staats asked participants to write a to-do list at the start of each day, and cross each item off as it was completed. Those who started each day with two short tasks that they crossed off ended up getting more done throughout the experiment, as this created a positive feedback loop of productivity. This bias towards taking on small, manageable tasks has also been demonstrated in emergency rooms by Gino, KC and Kouchaki (again unpublished). Doctors tended to focus on easier tasks the busier the hospital became, taking on more patients with less severe symptoms. While this may have initial positive effects of dopamine release and getting through the first few patients more quickly, it is apparent that there could be a danger of more seriously ill patients waiting longer for their treatment than those with less acute conditions.
There is also evidence to suggest that unfinished tasks take up mental capacity, even when we’re trying to focus on something else; for example, just knowing you have an unread email while trying to perform a task can reduce your IQ by 10 points (Levitin, 2014). However, research by Masicampo and Baumeister (2011) showed that this disruption could be reduced by making a plan to achieve the unfulfilled goal. In their experiment, participants were interrupted while listing all the sea creatures they could think of, which then interfered with their ability to solve anagrams. This effect dissipated, however, for participants who made a plan to complete their list. Rather than a simple record of your tasks for the day, then, your to-dolist could be used as a plan for finishing incomplete projects, which could even dictate how well your day goes.
Spotted: Gamification to reduce littering
Research has shown that people are more likely to engage in behaviours they find fun and enjoy doing. Putting rubbish into bins doesn’t exactly fall under this category and therefore people end up choosing the easy option and littering on the streets. In order to overcome this and make the behaviour of putting rubbish in the bin more “fun”, basketball nets were put above the bins turning the behaviour into a game of basketball.
REAL LIFE NUDGE OF THE MONTH
UPCOMING EVENTSBehavioural Boozeonomics with the London Behavioural Economics NetworkMonday 11th April, 7.00-10.30pmThe Comedy Pub, Piccadilly
NIBS Conference 2016Monday 4th – Wednesday 6th AprilUniversity of East Anglia
Black Box Thinking: marginal gains, creative thinking and the secrets of high performanceThursday 28th April, 6.30-8.00pmLSE
Cíosa Garrahan@CiosaGarrahan
BROUGHT TO YOU BY
Juliet Hodges@hulietjodges