A gambler’s addiction to hope

There’s a brilliant line by the comedian Norm Macdonald. He talked about the gambling addiction he had suffered from all his life. His psychiatrist told him he was gambling to escape life. But he argued that this is a lame explanation. Because everything is an escape from life. He also declined that he was addicted to winning. Most of the time, gambling is incredibly frustrating. What he really was addicted to was hope:

“As long as the red dice are in the air, the gambler has hope. And hope is a wonderful thing to be addicted to”.

The Chief Marketing Officer responsible for Dove allegedly once said that he’s not in the business of selling soap, but selling hope. Hope that people recognize real beauty beyond the superficial idea of beauty that is promoted in ads and women’s magazines.

Hope is a powerful tool in elections

Donald Trump was a brilliant merchant of hope. Trump is a great salesman. He perfectly understood that there was a gigantic untapped reservoir of frustration and humiliation in rural America. Trump sold hope to these people. He promised them revenge, respect, jobs and excitement. He sold them the hope that someone would finally look after them again.

The poor person who buys a lottery ticket buys the hope for a simple shortcut to escape the grim prospect of becoming wealthy through hard work.

Companies are selling hope

Every time someone buys a subscription to the gym, they’re buying hope. They hope for more self-confidence, more sexual admiration, or more success. And they buy into the hope that they’ll build a workout habit and stick to it this time.

Every boardroom that hires a top-level consultancy is buying hope. They hope McKinsey can solve their problems and get them unstuck. They hope that the external forces might persuade them to get stakeholders finally aligned and that success will follow. They also buy into the hope that their peers will look at them as intelligent, responsible leaders for bringing in the best of the best.

In conclusion

Every company is selling hope or a dream. And of all the things we’re selling, hope might actually be the strongest emotion – the thing we are addicted to.

Tom De Bruyne

PS: Want to learn more about the power of behavioural science to create better products, services and policies? Join our two-day certification course Behavioural Design Fundamentals, or contact us for an in-company training. 

The issue

Great ideas

In six hours, the teams managed to present interesting ideas at various levels. One of the ideas was to stimulate façade gardens by indicating with lines where façade gardens are allowed. And… the houses with visible lines do not yet contribute to a greener climate – a good form of social pressure. Interesting ideas also emerged for market parties, such as designing pieces of greenery in the dimensions of garden tiles. In that way, you can easily remove your tile and replace it with something green. Or adapt your garden to who you are, such as incorporating a typical cultural symbol in your garden. The winning team came up with a very original idea, with which you can place what you like to identify within your garden. What this is exactly, remains a surprise. The City of Rotterdam is in the process of actually implementing this idea. So keep a close eye on the news from the City of Rotterdam.

Yes, it works!

The participants had fun, but they also sweated. At one point, we even heard the team that had emerged as the winner say: “Are we even going to make it?” The lesson? Behavioural Design is never easy, but something special always comes out of it if you follow the steps carefully. The stress balls, stress-control deodorant and energy bars also helped, of course!

Challenge yourself in Behavioural Design

Would you like to challenge yourself more in Behavioural Design? Then take a look at the Behavioural Design Academy. Here you will learn the basics of Behavioural Design within two days so that next time you will be able to participate in the Hackathon.
Have you already followed the Behavioural Design Academy, and are you ready for a further step? In the Advanced Course, we will train you to become an accredited Behavioural Designer. You learn from A to Z how to set up and lead a Behavioural Design project while working on your own case. This enables you to work as a Behavioural Designer in your own organisation on complex issues concerning behavioural change. Reserve your spot here.

In conclusion

We could not be happier with the results of our first Hackathon. We will repeat this event every year to give our alumni’s the chance to keep their knowledge up-to-date and work on a solution to a real-life problem!

Vice mayor Vincent Karremans was also very impressed by the results the candidates made in such a short time.

“Although many of the ideas need further work in order to be successfully guided through the decision-making process of the city government, the breadth and cleverness of the yield of these mere five hours were fantastic.”

See you next year!

Tim Versnel

Impression of the Hackathon

Flip those tiles

New Formats

At SUE, we’re constantly experimenting with new ways to use our SUE | Behavioural Design Method© for the best way to effectively and efficiently solve wicked behavioural challenges. In many cases, that’s one of our Sprint propositions. Still, we’re increasingly discovering the potential of smaller formats such as a hackathon to serve as an accelerator of ongoing innovation processes. We’re getting great feedback on it from alumni of the Behavioural Design Academy who are experimenting with it in their organisations as well. 

Getting it done

We firmly believe that being a behavioural designer is about a lot more than understanding the scientific theory and models that describe human behaviour – although that is an essential part of it. It is about developing the practical know-how to be able to navigate the reality of your organisation or business and design real-world interventions to real-world problems. It is about not just knowing what should be done, but about being able to actually get it done. Designing and leading the right process is a key part of that. 

Little time, big yield

During the hackathon, the five teams were each able to very positively surprise the vice-mayor of Rotterdam Vincent Karremans. He took part as a jury member to judge how well the solutions could be applied in practice. With their solid analysis of the human perspective of the desired behaviour and the truly human-centered solutions they were able to come up with, each group did a great job presenting their behavioural design solution.

In conclusion

We could not be happier with the results of our first Hackathon. We will repeat this event every year to give our alumni’s the chance to keep their knowledge up-to-date and work on a solution to a real-life problem!

Vice mayor Vincent Karremans was also very impressed by the results the candidates made in such a short time.

“Although many of the ideas need further work in order to be successfully guided through the decision-making process of the city government, the breadth and cleverness of the yield of these mere five hours were fantastic.”

See you next year!

Tim Versnel

The rules are back

You’ve heard it: the basic hygiene rules have been reintroduced by the government to suppress the spread of the virus. Two years ago people would’ve laughed uncomfortably at such a sentence. Right now, we all know what it means. Get tested and stay at home if you have symptoms, work from home if you can, wear a face mask in public places, keep your distance, cough in your elbow, and wash your hands. We can dream it, and the vast majority of us support and will conform to these norms – mostly.

Saying isn’t doing

Throughout the pandemic, the Dutch public health institute RIVM has kept track of public support of and compliance with the various norms. Its insightful dashboard shows that for most norms, support and compliance have differed significantly. For instance, 84 percent supports staying at home when having symptoms, but only 55 percent reports actually doing it. That’s a noteworthy difference, yet for behavioural designers, such a gap between intention and action would have been expected.

There’s one such disparity on the dashboard, however, that will take even the most experienced old fox among you by surprise.

“83 percent support washing hands in accordance with the guidelines, and a mere 32 percent actually do it.”

They just don’t

What makes this even more remarkable, is that none of the explanations which typically help us understand intent-action gaps are applicable. There are no obvious conflicting motivations, like when social jobs-to-be-done supersede the intention to stay at home with symptoms. There are no overwhelming practical problems: hands can be washed in every bathroom, toilet or pantry at no cost to the individual involved. And it doesn’t really involve resisting any kind of conflicting temptation.

People support it. They want to do it. They can do it. But they just don’t.

So – how do we change that?

The challenge

This is the challenge we were approached with by Majka van Doorn (who by the way happens to be an alumnus of our Behavioural Design Academy) and her team at DGSC-19, a Rijksoverheid-directorate focused on medium-term measures to suppress the spread of the virus, together with the RIVM. Hand washing is incredibly effective in reducing the spread of pathogens and is particularly important in office environments, where people touch many of the same surfaces. Whether elevator buttons, doorknobs, phones, coffee machines, fridges, food in the cafeteria, or copy machines; they’re all great for the spread of viruses when hand washing discipline is low. It’s obvious why the government would want to come up with an effective intervention, especially now more and more people have begun working at the office again. And boy, did we deliver.

In a custom Sprint that was set up to start creating and testing and get practical as quick as possible, we first rapidly worked our way through a truckload of reports on attempts in other countries to tackle the same behavioural challenge, dived in the available data on the Dutch situation, and filled up the Behavioural Design Canvas. In two creative sessions we then designed five intervention strategies that we thought should work, and with our partners from the Rijksoverheid we selected three of them to prototype with the target group. With some adjustments, the combination of the three appeared to be a comprehensive intervention strategy, and merited a full-scale field test to measure real effect on behaviour.   

Behavioural interventions

1. Reframing. The first element is to reframe hand washing. The framing that occurs naturally through the current public discourse is that hand washing is something you do to prevent becoming ill or spreading illness. If you’re not fearful of that, you might still consciously support the measure in general, but you won’t subconsciously be triggered to wash hands enough throughout a day yourself. And as most behaviour occurs automatic, this then simply won’t.

Using a tool that’s great to instantly test framing effects, we designed a set of thirteen posters that in a friendly way reframe hand washing and connect it with food and other peoples’ hands, and the simple message: nicer with clean hands. Each poster visualises a specific situation and should be placed contextually relevant.

2. Visual cues. The second element is to provide simple and clear visual cues, in the form of colourful stickers, that toilets are not just a place where you relieve yourself, but where you can also wash hands. If motivation and ability are high enough, then sometimes all that’s needed is a well designed and placed spark.

Morover, with another set of visual interventions we attempted to insert hand washing into the arriving-at-the-office sequence that for most people is very habitual. When you’re in the pantry to get coffee, first wash your hands. You’re there anyway.

Astoundingly effective

The field-test, which we set up in partnership with our partners from DGSC-19 and RIVM, in a government office building in Rotterdam consisted of a weeklong measurement before interventions were placed, and then a weeklong measurement within four testing conditions. Soap usage was used as a proxy for hand washing. And the results were astounding: hand washing increased with up to 165 percent, going from an average of 2,8 times hand washing per day to 7,4 times a day. And what’s more: test persons did not experience the interventions as annoying. In fact they found them very useful for other people. Great!

In conclusion

These interventions clearly make a huge difference, and that just goes to show that don’t always need a big flashy campaign to change behaviour. You just need to find and hit the right nerve as simple as you can. And here’s the best thing: you’ll have to print ‘m yourself, but the posters and stickers are free for you to use.

One last thing: do make sure that there’s enough soap available. Your colleagues are gonna want it.

Tim Versnel

Misinformation or conspiracy? 

Let’s clarify first, conspiracy theories might easily -but wrongly- be equated with misinformation. This however is not the same thing. Believing a Covid vaccine doesn’t work isn’t a conspiracy theory. It’s just being misinformed. For something to be a conspiracy there need to be two things. First, there need to be two or more people involved (conspirators) and second, they need to have a secret or hidden plot (the conspiracy). For instance, stating the Chinese government launched the covid-19 virus to be able to inject bio trackers in the population or claiming that the CIA was directly involved in the murder of Kennedy ‘is’ a conspiracy theory.

Such theories trigger numerous questions. Where do they come from, who benefits, which people are prone to fall for them and why do they do so? And even more importantly, how should we deal with these theories and their followers.

Evolution made us skeptical

Before we go into the psychology of conspiracy theories let’s look at this phenomenon through the lens of evolution theory. Evolution hardwired us to be at least a bit skeptic and doubtful. There is a very logical explanation for this: it is called natural selection. During our evolution as a species, we were confronted with many dangers. Now consider the effects of a false negative versus a false positive assessment. Imagine I wrongfully think there is a predator (false positive): in that case, my prudence wasn’t really needed but it didn’t do any harm either. Now consider the reverse situation. A false negative, thinking there wasn’t any danger, while there was a predator: this imprudent assessment got you killed. It therefore seems fair to presume that an overly naïve community that always gave it the benefit of the doubt would be rapidly decimated.

“As a species it seems, a certain level of distrust and skepticism pays off.”

It translates into an ongoing inclination to be on the lookout for hidden dangers or plots.  It seems, at least biologically, sound. In addition, there HAVE been many exposed conspiracies. The abundant proof throughout history of conspiracy ploys adds support to the notion that the ‘idea’ IS plausible. After all, didn’t we learn afterwards that America had a weapon deal with Iran, that the Belgian government did impose false testimony on its journalists during the Chernobyl disaster or that Nixon did commit the Watergate fraud? History shows some skepticism is merited.

Three forces that drive conspiracy theories

1. Cognitive bias

To complicate matters further our human psyche adds three additional forces that trigger us to take conspiracies seriously. The first component has to do with our desire -but limited ability– to understand the world we live in. We have developed several psychological short cuts to help us makes some sense of the world around us, but these mechanisms can bias our reasoning too. Some of our shortcuts lead us to fall far conspiracy ploys.

For instance, our proportionality bias makes us believe that big events need to have big causes. And our intentionality bias leads us to look for cause, meaning, and intent, also when it isn’t there.

To make things worse, our species is particularly tuned to look for patterns: it’s all connected, man! This desire to understand, pushes us towards narratives that provide meaning. An interesting narrative that satisfies our inner need to grasp the complexity of our lives is too attractive to ignore.

2. Group psychology

Group psychology adds another layer of appeal. Having something interesting to share within the in-group makes a person more valued and prominent. This attention-seeking behavior has been linked with an inclination towards narcissism (both on the individual as on collective levels). Clearly, social motives play a big part in the distribution of conspiracy ploys: remember for instance the appeal of the (false) proposition that there weren’t any Jews killed in the 9/11 attacks, a conspiracy rationale that was particularly prominent in Muslim communities.

3. The need to belong

And finally, several existential anxieties drive people to believe conspiracy ploys. We have a strong need to belong and feel at home. We define the world in terms of similarities and differences, in-crowds, and foreigners. Low-status groups tend to believe their position is a direct consequence of conspiracies of other groups. They regularly attribute their lesser position to a master plan of the outgroup to keep them oppressed.

“People that feel disconnected from society or experience a lack of agency and power, therefore, tend to be particularly sensitive for conspiracy thinking.”

In that respect, it is likely that the Qanon followers and the ‘deplorables’ that voted on Trump all shared a sense of loss of control over their lives and prosperity. Conspiracy theories have therefore also been called ‘the theories of the losers’ and it is indeed the case that many conspiracy theories focus on the ‘adversaries’ that happen to be in power.

How to debunk conspiracies?

Having now established that we have existential, social, complex, historical, and biological reasons to at least consider conspiracies it is no wonder they are so difficult to deal with. In fact, we still haven’t figured out how to counter them successfully. For now, we must satisfice with understanding what doesn’t work.

A route that has been often tried and failed, is the route of confrontational counter-argumentation. This route can even be counterproductive. For the believers, it only strengthens their belief in cover-ups. They only see the conspiracy at work. To make things worse their doubt and skepticism gets widened public coverage and exposure which more likely fuels the appeal of the group even more as well as that it serves as an ego-booster for (narcissistic) members that smelled a stage and fifteen seconds of fame. The public domain is the perfect yeast for a conspiracy theory and counter-argumentation in the public debate will prove of little avail.

It, therefore, seems better to tackle the problem from within. To debate and question the proof and facts within the believers’ community, to join their platforms, and to debate on their ground. That isn’t so easy. It requires at least a minimal amount of empathy for the conspiracy believers and a genuine interest in their facts, data, and rationale.

In conclusion

Clearly, it will not be a route with fast results. But in my opinion, it is one of a few feasible routes that have some chance of success. Meet them on their ground, empathize with their case and gradually probe and question their facts. You might even be surprised! Sometimes, as history has proven, … they could be right…!

Yves Plees

As managing director of Sue Behavioural Design, it is my firm belief that solutions for the world’s challenges can’t solely come from technological innovation but need to take human psychology and social behaviors into account. With my work and writings, I hope to contribute to this view.