07 May From the front lines of behavioral research – Know Thy Audience!
Always looking for ways to apply behavioral psychology, this blog’s editors attended the annual Behavior, Energy, and Climate Change conference held in Baltimore. Present and/or presenting were people from electric companies, academia, trade associations, marketing and polling firms, local and federal government, and think tanks. Cass Sunstein, coauthor of Nudge, gave the keynote.
The principles discussed have application beyond the energy sector. Here are a few things we heard:
—We keep saying it: we can’t overestimate the power of inertia—what happens when people do nothing, and how to leverage that in choice architecture: opt-outs instead of opt-ins, for instance. And the power of loss aversion—people are more likely to act if they think they will lose than they will if they think they will gain.
—Know your audience. Not just demographics. Know what drives them. Know what they love. A campaign promoting energy efficiency among Marines tied energy conservation with the warrior identity of self-reliance and exceptionalism: doing more with less, having the “power” when it comes to energy consumption. In Texas, an anti-littering campaign successfully capitalized on that state’s tough-talking, get-things-done attitude with the slogan “Don’t mess with Texas.”
—Make it easy. Programs have to fit with people’s lifestyles, or they won’t act. A nudge is like a GPS: it helps to navigate a problem. People know what the end is, they just need to know how to get there. Don’t just talk about problems and abstract ideas; provide solutions.
—We have a bias for the present. The future is a foreign land. The future self is a stranger. When we think about ourselves in 10 years, the neural patterns in our brain are like the patterns present when we think about someone else.
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