Getting People to Do Things

Tags

demonstration, Influence, leadership, modelling

[The importance of modelling in overcoming resistance]

It is a hot day. You are at some event outdoors with hundreds and hundreds of other people. The music is playing. There is a lone guy there dancing in a crazy way  all by himself. Do you join him? Watch this amazing clip:

Ok – now forget about the dancing. Has this ever happened to you? You have prepared an amazing mingling activity for your class. You give them the instructions and say ‘OK – off you go!’. And nobody moves. I am sure you know the feeling. It is even worse if you are a presenter, like I am, working with middle-aged colleagues. How do you get them to do things?

Jez Groom was facing a similar problem. As a business consultant he was running a workshop for a big company and it was important for his demonstration to get his group to do a particular activity. ‘What would this entail?’ I hear you ask. Well, nothing special – just listening to a song for 3-year olds, lying down pretending to be a sleeping little bunny when the singer goes ‘see the little bunnies sleeping’ and then jumping up and hopping around like a bunny when prompted by the lyrics. Piece of cake… 😊 Seriously: what would you say are the chances that a group of business people would do such a thing?

Groom tested this. He gave a control group a set of instructions telling them what they were supposed to do and then pressed ‘play’. Predictably, nobody moved. Yet with another group, it was a totally different story: the people dutifully lied down, and when the rousing ‘Wake up little bunnies’ came, they all started bouncing around. What was the difference? Here is the idea: Groom had told a few people in advance what was going to happen and he had got them to agree to comply unquestioningly. That was it. (Groom & Vellacott ‘Ripple’ – pp. 14-15)

There is a clear lesson for us here: people may be reluctant to do something, unless they take their lead from their peers. Here are some tips:

• First of all, your students may not know what to do – so make sure you do not just give instructions, but you demonstrate the activity as well.
• If you think your students might be self-conscious about doing a particular activity, tell some of them in advance and ask them to agree to be the first to do it.
• If you want students to organise themselves in groups, tell some people in advance and get them to initiate things.
• If you are worried people may not feel comfortable about asking questions after a talk, tell 2-3 of them to prepare some questions in advance to get the ball rolling.

Remember the crazy guy video? If he had arranged the whole thing with the first 2-3 ‘followers’, the ‘movement’ would have started sooner.

The Moral: To overcome reactance, get some people to model the desired behaviour.

How to Change People’s Attitudes

Tags

Classroom Management, dissonance, Influence, Motivation

[The importance of cognitive dissonance]

Here is a question for you: I ask you to do a boring task – say turn around some wooden pegs for no reason at all. They I offer you a reward – either $ 20 or $ 1. Are you more likely to say you enjoyed it in the former or in the latter condition?

Naturally, your answer is wrong. 😊 Watch the clip below:

But there was a reason why you got it wrong; I left out an important detail. The subjects in the study were actually asked to lie to a third person about the nature of the task. The ones who got paid $ 20 thought: ‘OK, the task was boring, but they gave me $ 20, so that’s why I lied’. With the others though, this wouldn’t work; $ 1 was a trifling sum. So why did they do it? Faced with this internal conflict, these subjects actually changed their perception of reality: ‘Oh well – I didn’t lie so much; the task was quite interesting’. This is pure magic! 😊

Think about it: most of us feel that people’s beliefs determine their actions; Cognitive Dissonance argues that in many cases it is people’s actions that shape their beliefs! (‘The Advertising Effect’ – pp. 32-33). Here are two examples:

• We value more things we paid a lot for (‘It has cost me a fortune, so either I am stupid or this is really very valuable’)
• We think worse of people we have wronged (‘I spoke badly about him, so either I was unfair or he really is a b****rd’)

So is there a way we can use this insight with our students? Yes, there is. We do not need to try to persuade them that something is good for them so they will do it; we only need to get them to do something and then their brain will do the rest! Here are some tips:

• Ask students to prepare mini videos advertising the school / the teacher / the coursebook (‘If I said I liked it, it must be good’).
• Ask students to help you with the lesson (‘If I have helped the teacher, she must be nice’).
• Ask students to participate in a project ‘as part of an experiment’ (‘If I have spent so much time, I must be a conscientious student’).
• Ask students to volunteer for a school initiative (‘If I have volunteered, this means I value the work we do here’).

By the way, here is one last tip: people feel that more expensive medicine is more effective (‘If I have paid so much, the pills must be potent’) – so make sure you charge quite a bit for your private lessons. 😊

The Moral: Get people to do things and they will change their attitude too.

From Action to Attitude

Tags

Consistency, Influence, Self-herding

Why do we do what we do? Well, a number of answers spring to mind ‘Because it is the right thing to do’ or ‘Because we like it’ or ‘Because we have to’. All these explanations are reasonable of course, but what if there is another one? What if the reason we do something is that we just happened to do it at some point in the past?!?

Imagine this scenario: you are walking down the street, you are a bit tired, you are in a bit of a hurry – you are also badly in need of caffeine. Normally you have coffee at ‘Dunkin’ Donuts’, but this is a few blocks away and you happen to walk past this place you have never been to before – ‘Starbucks’… I will let the great Ariely continue the story…

This simple observation is one of the most profound discoveries in the field of Social Psychology: Our brain is lazy; we don’t want to seriously sit down and think about each and everything we do every day. Instead, we rely on heuristics. One of the most potent heuristics is this: ‘What did I do last time?’ Never mind that last time I was in a hurry and ‘Dunkin’ Donuts’ happened to be away; we don’t remember these things – instead we remember what we did. And then what do we do? We ‘line up behind ourselves’ and do the same thing!

Not only that; according to Psychologist Daryl Bem, we also change our beliefs and attitudes so that they are consistent with our new behaviour pattern! ‘For many things, our attitudes come from actions, that led to observations, that led to explanations, that led to beliefs’ (McRaney 2013 – p. 60). Common sense says the chain of causation is: ‘I like films = I go to the cinema’;  Bem says: ‘I go to the cinema = I must like films!’

This of course has huge implications for us: if we can get our students to act in certain ways (e.g. be responsible, punctual, participate actively, behave in a pro-social way) initially, chances are they are going to carry on acting in the same manner and they are going to adjust their self-perception accordingly!

Consider the following study which is a classic in its simplicity: Psychologist Jack Brehm asked a number of children to rate how much they liked a long list of vegetables. He then told them that he wanted to see whether they might think differently after they had eaten them. So he asked them to eat, say, broccoli three times a week for the next few weeks. Each child was served with the particular vegetable which they had listed as the one they hated the most. A month later, Brehm again asked the same children to rate the items on the original list. Sure enough, the ‘despised’ veggies had moved up in the students’ preferences! Cognitive dissonance theory allows us to reconstruct what might have gone on inside the children’s head ‘Here I am, regularly eating this stuff – without being forced. Either I am a fool, or it’s not actually so bad’. Which of the two options would be the more appealing to them?

In fact, there are countless studies which show we all tend to act consistently across time – regardless of how carefully we considered our original action was (e.g. Ariely 2010 – Ch. 10). So here is the Moral: ‘If social psychology has taught us anything is that not only do we think ourselves into a way of acting, but also we act ourselves into a way of thinking’ (D. Myers) Brilliant!

References

Ariely, D. “The Upside of Irrationality” HarperCollins 2010.

Brehm, J. W. (1960) “Attitudinal Consequences of Commitment to Unpleasant Behaviour”  Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 60, 370-383.

McRaney, D. “You can Beat your Brain” Oneworld 2013.