Changing Behavior by Making a Process MORE Difficult Rather than Less

https://buffalo7.co.uk/blog/how-to-get-buy-in/

Holly Dykstra, Shibeal O'Flaherty, and Ashley Whillans have written a fascinating new Harvard Business School working paper titled, "The Buy-In Effect: When Increasing Initial Effort Motivates Behavioral Follow-Through."   They begin by noting that many behavioral scientists advocate the removal of friction as a mechanism for stimulating people to adopt a new behavior (or to change their existing behavior).   In other words, make a new course of action easier for people to adopt, and you are more likely to get people to engage in that desired conduct.  However, these scholars posit that sometimes it might make sense to actually ADD friction - in short, make it MORE difficult to pursue a new course of action, and you might actually induce behavioral change.    They argue that adding some friction can increase a sense of ownership and buy-in toward a new course of action.  

To test their hypothesis, they conducted a field experiment with Oregon Department of Transportation.  Several years ago, the department migrated to a new carpool platform for residents of the state.  The scholars noted that there were many inactive users on the old platform (87% of all accounts).  In other words, they had established accounts, but they were not actually using the carpool services.  

The scholars examined whether a slightly different procedure for migrating inactive users to the new platform might have an impact on sign-ups and usage.   Some users were provided information regarding a low-effort method for moving to the new platform.  Others received information regarding a sign-up process that involved more effort.   Here's what the scholars found:

"More Effort group took more trips overall, despite there being fewer participants who signed up to the platform: while 694 signed up from the Less Effort group, only 511 signed up from the More Effort group. During our 122-day study period, we observed 9,147 total trips; out of these, the More Effort group took 5,106 trips, while the Less Effort group took 4,311, meaning that More Effort group took 795 more trips overall than our Less Effort group."

Why did adding friction actually increase usage of the carpool platform?  The scholars don't have a way of actually determining the psychological mechanism underlying individual behavior in this case.  However, they offer some possible explanations.  For example, they suggest that people may "feel a greater sense of psychological ownership over the action and value it to a greater extent, which would increase their likelihood of following through."  They also note that the sunk cost effect may be at play here.  If you are invested some time and effort into a process, you may continue down that path because you don't want to "waste" the initial investment you have made.  

Fun & Creative Techniques to Tackle Challenging Goals

Wharton Professor Katy Milkman, author of How to Change: The Science of Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be, argues that we should try more often to "reach individual and team goals by relying on short-term gratification instead of willpower." Milkman explains that willpower simply isn't a very effective strategy for goal attainment for most of us. Here's her description of what researchers consistently find:

The research is clear: It doesn’t work. We tend to be overconfident about how easy it is to be self-disciplined, but a big payoff far down the road — or even knowing that a change is simple or cheap — just isn’t enough to keep us motivated. Economists call this tendency to favor instantly gratifying temptations over larger long-term rewards “present bias.” Unfortunately, it’s universal, and one of the biggest barriers to change.

What techniques work more effectively than simply relying on willpower alone?  One strategy she advocates is called "temptation bundling" - something I've blogged about in the past.   Milkman also argues that adding a little fun to our strategies for goal attainment can be highly effective.  Many firms, for instance, have pursued gamification strategies to encourage employees to achieve certain objectives.  Sometimes, even more creative options can be very successful.   Milkman describes one such highly imaginative approach to encouraging people to pursue a healthier activity: 

Every day, nearly 100,000 passengers rush through Stockholm’s Odenplan metro station. Each one of them has a choice: To get to and from their train, they can take the stairs or the escalator. To encourage the former, making a difference to people’s health (9% of premature deaths worldwide are attributed to inadequate exercise), a team of technicians funded by Volkswagen’s “Fun Theory” initiative turned the staircase into a set of giant, working piano keys. The result? Because taking the stairs was now fun, 66% more people than usual chose the stairs over the escalator.