How to motivate people to do good for others

How can we get people to do more good,

to go to the polls, give to charity,
conserve resources,

or even to do something as simple
as washing their mugs at work

so that the sink isn't always
full of dirty dishes?

(Laughter)

(Applause)

When I first started
working on this problem,

I collaborated with a power company

to recruit customers for a program
that prevents blackouts

by reducing energy demand during peaks.

The program is based
on a tried-and-true technology.

It's one the Obama
Administration even called

"the cornerstone to modernizing
America's electrical grid."

But, like so many great
technological solutions,

it has a key weakness:

people.

People need to sign up.

To try to get people to sign up,
the power company sent them a nice letter,

told them about all
the program's benefits,

and it asked them to call
into a hotline if they were interested.

Those letters went out,

but the phones, they were silent.

So when we got involved,
we suggested one small change.

Instead of that hotline,

we suggested that they use sign-up sheets
that they'd post near the mailboxes

in people's buildings.

This tripled participation.

Why?

Well, we all know people care deeply
about what others think of them,

that we try to be seen
as generous and kind,

and we try to avoid being seen
as selfish or a mooch.

Whether we are aware of it or not,
this is a big part of why people do good,

and so small changes that give people
more credit for doing good,

those changes can make
a really big difference.

Small changes like
switching from a hotline,

where nobody will ever find out
about your good deed,

to a sign-up sheet

where anyone who walks by
can you see your name.

In our collaborations with governments,
non-profits, companies,

when we're trying to get people
to do more good,

we harness the power of reputations,

and we have a simple checklist for this,

and in fact, you already know
the first item on that checklist.

It's to increase observability,

to make sure people find out
about good deeds.

Now, wait a minute, I know
some of you are probably thinking,

there's no way people here thought,

"Oh, well, now that I'm getting credit for
my good deed, now it's totally worth it."

And you're right.

Usually, people don't.

Rather, when they're making
decisions in private,

they worry about their own problems,

about what to put on the table for dinner,
or how to pay their bills on time.

But, when we make
their decision more observable,

they start to attend more
to the opportunity to do good.

In other words, what's
so powerful about our approach

is that it could turn on
people's existing desire to do good,

in this case, to help
to prevent a blackout.

Back to observability.

I want to give you another example.

This one is from a collaboration

with a non-profit that gets out the vote,

and it does this by sending
hundreds of thousands of letters

every election in order to remind people
and try to remind them to go to the polls.

We suggested adding
the following sentence:

"Someone may call you to find out
about your experience at the polls."

This sentence makes it feel
more observable when you go to the polls,

and it increased the effect
of the letter by 50 percent.

Making the letter more effective reduced
the cost of getting an additional vote

from 70 dollars down to about 40 dollars.

Observability has been used to do things

like get people to donate
blood more frequently

by listing the names of donors
on local newsletters,

or to pay their taxes on time

by listing the names of delinquents
on a public website.

(Laughter)

What about this example?

Toyota got hundreds of thousands of people
to buy a more fuel-efficient car

by making the Prius so unique

that their good deed
was observable from a mile away.

(Laughter)

All right, so observability is great,

but we all know, we've all seen

people walk by an opportunity to do good.

They'll see somebody asking
for money on the sidewalk

and they'll pull out their phones
and look really busy,

or they'll go to the museum and they'll
waltz right on by the donation box.

Imagine it's the holiday season,

and you're going to the supermarket,
and there's the Salvation Army volunteer,

and he's ringing his bell.

A few years ago, researchers in San Diego

teamed up with a local chapter
from the Salvation Army

to try to find ways to increase donations.

What they found was kind of funny.

When the volunteer stood
in front of just one door,

people would avoid giving
by going out the other door.

Why?

Well, because they can always claim,
"Oh, I didn't see the volunteer,"

or, "I wanted to get
something from over there,"

or, "That's where my car is."

In other words, there's lots of excuses.

And that brings us to
the second item on our checklist:

to eliminate excuses.

In the case of the Salvation Army,

eliminating excuses just means
standing in front of both doors,

and sure enough, when they did this,

donations rose.

But that's when things got kind of funny,

even funnier.

The researchers were out
in the parking lot,

and they were counting people
as they came in and out of the store,

and they noticed that when the volunteers
stood in front of both doors,

people stopped coming
out of the store at all.

(Laughter)

Obviously they were surprised by this,
so they decided to look into it further,

and that's when they found that there
was actually a third, smaller utility door

usually used to take out the recycling,

and now people were going out that door
in order to avoid the volunteers.

(Laughter)

This teaches us
an important lesson though.

When we're trying to eliminate excuses,
we need to be very thorough,

because people are
really creative in making them.

(Laughter)

All right, I want to switch this setting

where excuses can have
deadly consequences.