Removing Barriers To Change PDF

Changing Minds, Organizations, and the World
The Challenge of Change
Jonah Berger, Associate Professor of Marketing

The Challenge of Chance
Write down something you want to change

• How have you tried to change these things already?
Status Quo Bias
An example: My cell phone

• My cell phone was almost six years old
and running out of memory
• I didn’t want a new phone, or a different
phone - I wanted the same phone I had
already, just updated
• I finally order a new phone
• But I was so attached to my old phone, I
didn’t open the new one for more than
three months
Status Quo Bias
• New things are often better

• People should switch
• But they don’t
• Even though a new thing is technically better, people still cling to the old
Status Quo Bias
• Every change has upsides and downsides

• These advantages (upsides) and disadvantages (downsides) are not
weighted equally
• Example: $100 coin flip bet
Status Quo Bias
Losses loom larger than gains

• Potential disadvantages are weighted more heavily than potential
advantages
• Research suggests that the potential gains of doing something have to be
more than 2 times larger than the potential downsides to get people to take
action
• Chance of losing $100?
• Potential win has to be at least $200 before most people will take that bet
Status Quo Bias
• Whenever people think about changing, they compare things to their current
state
• If the potential gains barely outweigh the potential losses, they don’t budge
• To overcome loss aversion, the advantages have to be at least twice as
good as the disadvantages
• While the advantages of new things are often salient, potential change
agents often ignore the disadvantages or costs
Status Quo Bias
An example: A new router
• Monetary cost
• Mental effort - read reviews, compare
attributes, investigate alternatives
• Time - to order the device, install it, learn a
new system
• Potential cost of regret for making the wrong
choice
Getting People to Change

Pushing
• We think if we just push people a little bit harder, if we just add a little bit
more information or reasons or facts, they’ll come around
• Over 99% of the time when people list things they’ve tried already to get
people to change, they come up with some version of pushing
Pushing
• Intuition comes from physics - if we push an object it moves
• When we push people, they often push back
• When we try to get people to do something, they often ignore us or do
the exact opposite
• How can we get people to change?
• If we can’t push them, is there another better approach?
A Different Approach
Chemistry
• Left to itself, chemical change can take eons
• To facilitate change, chemists often use a special set of substances
• Chemical reactions usually require a certain amount of energy
• But these special substances work by taking a different approach
• Rather than upping the heat, they lower the barrier to change
• These substances are called catalysts
A Different Approach
Successful change is about being a catalyst

• It’s about changing minds by removing roadblocks and lowering the barriers
that keep people from taking action
• When we try and push people into change, we tend to forget about the
person whose mind we’re trying to change
• Rather than asking what might convince someone to change, catalysts
often start with more basic questions:
• Why hasn’t that person changed already?
• What’s hindering or preventing them?
Be a Catalyst
• Overcome inertia, incite action, and change minds—not by being more

persuasive, or pushing harder, but by being a catalyst
• Example: Driving
• Whenever change fails to happen, we think we need to push harder
• We overlook an easier and more effective way - identifying what’s
preventing or inhibiting change
• Sometimes we don’t need more horsepower, sometimes we just need to
unlock the parking break
The REDUCE Framework

Five Horsemen of Inertia

• Reactance
• Endowment
• Distance
• Uncertainty
• Corroborating Evidence
Reactance
• When pushed, people often push back
• To lower this barrier, we need to encourage people to persuade themselves
• Science of reactance
• How warnings become recommendations
• Power of providing a menu
Endowment
• People are attached to what they are doing already
• Surface the cost of inaction
• Burning the ship
Distance
• Sometimes things are too far away
• If information is in people’s zone of acceptance, they are willing to listen
• If it falls too far away, in the region of rejection, everything flips
• Big changes require asking for less, not pushing for more
• Unsticking points
Uncertainty
• Uncertainty pauses action
• Catalysts make things easier to try
• Reduce risk by letting people experience things for themselves
Corroborating Evidence
• Sometimes one person isn’t enough
• Catalysts find reinforcement
Good change agents…

reduce Reactance
ease Endowment
shrink Distance
alleviate Uncertainty
find Corroborating Evidence
• Not every situation involves all five roadblocks

• By understanding all of them, we can diagnose which ones are at work, and
be able to mitigate them
In this course:
• Reframe how we approach a universal problem
• Learn why people and organizations change and how to catalyze that
process
• Changing both minds and behavior
Reactance - How Warnings Become Recommendations

How Warnings Become Recommendations
Example: Proctor & Gamble’s Tide Pods

• In early 2018, Proctor & Gamble had a small PR problem
• Fifty years earlier they had launched Salvo,
a granular laundry detergent compacted
into tablet form
• It didn’t do great, and eventually they
took it off the market
Reactance Example: Tide Pods
• Proctor & Gamble reintroduced the product under

the Tide brand, called them Tide Pods, and
launched them with the promise of making laundry
easier
• The company invested more than $150 million in
marketing, believing that the pods could ultimately
capture 30 percent of the $6.5 billion U.S. laundry
detergent market
• There was only one problem:
• People were eating them
• The “Tide Pod Challenge” started as a joke
• Now people were challenging others to eat detergent

• Teens would shoot videos of themselves chewing or gagging on the pods
and post them on YouTube
• Soon everyone from Fox News to Washington Post was covering the story
• Proctor & Gamble did what many companies would do in this situation—they
told people not to do it
• Warnings have been a standard approach for decades

• Pick any health concern, add an admonishment not to do it or to do it and
you’ve basically captured the essence of public health messaging for the last
fifty years
• It’s no surprise that Proctor & Gamble thought this is what they should do
• Enlisting Gronk to tell people not to eat the pods should have been enough
• But that’s not what happened
• Google searches for Tide Pods spiked to their highest level ever
• Within a week they were up almost 700 percent
Warnings Become Recommendations
• Tide’s efforts had backfired

• The Tide Pod Challenge might seem unusual, but it’s actually an example of
a much broader phenomenon
• Instructing jurors to disregard inadmissible testimony can encourage them
to weigh it more heavily
• Alcohol prevention messages can lead college students to drink more
• Trying to persuade people that smoking is bad for their health can actually
make them more interested in smoking in the future
• In these and similar examples, warnings became recommendations
Need for Freedom and Autonomy

Why Warnings Backfire
Example: Arden House experiment (1977)

• Working with a local nursing home called the Arden House, they conducted
a simple experiment
• On one wing of the nursing home, they gave people more choice than they
had usually
• In another wing, they gave people similar things, but without the choice
• Then they compared how the health of the residents in the different wings
changed over time
Why Warnings Backfire
Example: Arden House experiment (1977)

• The results were quite striking
• Residents who had been given more control were more cheerful, active,
and alert
• But even more astonishing were the longer-term effects
• Eighteen months later the researchers examined mortality rates across
the two groups
• On the floor that had been given more freedom and control, less than
half as many residents had died
• Feeling that they had more autonomy seemed to make people live longer
Agency and Control
• People have a need for freedom and autonomy

• Consequently, people are loath to give up agency
• When we encourage people to do something, it impinges on their ability to
see that course of action as driven by themselves
Anti-persuasion Radar
• Like a missile defense system

• Avoid or ignore
• Delete email, change the channel, say no thank you
• Counterarguing – thinking about all the reasons why what you are saying is
wrong
Allow for Agency
What we need to do is encourage people to persuade themselves

• Allow for agency
• Guide (but not impose) the path
• 3 key ways:
• Provide a menu
• Ask, don’t tell
• Highlight a gap
Provide a Menu

Providing a Menu
• Imagine you want to encourage someone to do something

• You’ve suggested a particular course of action, call it X
• Rather than giving people one option, give them at least two— not just X, but
X or Y
• Rather than thinking about all the reasons why what you suggested is wrong,
the person now has a different role— they now have a choice
Providing a Menu
• This idea of providing a menu is used all the time

• Consultants
• Parents
• Providing a menu gives people bounded choice
• Doesn’t give people infinite choice
• Useful in a variety of situations
• Hiring - let people choose the tradeoffs
Ask, Don’t Tell

Ask, Don’t Tell
• Allow for agency by asking questions rather than making statements

Ask, Don’t Tell
Questions do a couple of things

• First, like providing a menu, questions shift the listener’s role
• Rather than counterarguing or thinking about all the reasons they
disagree with a statement, listeners are occupied with a different task—
figuring out an answer to the question
• Second, and more importantly, questions increase buy-in
• Because while people may not want to follow someone else’s lead,
they’re much more likely to follow their own
• Questions encourage listeners to commit to the conclusion, to behave
consistently with whatever answer they gave
Ask, Don’t Tell
• Rather than pushing to start, start by asking questions

• Allows you to gather information about the problem
• Also gets buy in
Highlight a Gap

Highlighting a Gap
• Pointing out a disconnect between someone’s thoughts and actions— a

disparity between what they might recommend to someone else versus what
they are actually doing themselves
Smoking Kid (Thai Health Promotion Foundation)
Highlighting a Gap
Example: Smoking Kid campaign (Thai Health Promotion Foundation)

• Hugely successful
• It got 40% more people to call the quitline than it had before
• It worked because it highlighted a gap— a disconnect between what
smokers were suggesting to others and what they were doing for
themselves
Highlighting a Gap
• Most people strive for internal consistency

• They want their attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors to align
• When attitudes and behaviors conflict, people get uncomfortable
• To reduce this discomfort, which scientists call cognitive dissonance,
people take steps to bring things back in line
• The smokers in the Thai campaign faced this exact discord
• They told kids they shouldn’t smoke, yet they were smoking themselves
• Their attitudes, or what they were recommending for others, and their
behaviors weren’t lining up
• To reduce that discord something had to give— they either had to stop
smoking or tell the kid that smoking was okay
Highlighting a Gap
Example: UC Santa Cruz water conservation experiment (1992)

• The University of California Santa Cruz wanted to get students to use less
water
• Instead of asking students to save water, researchers asked them to sign a
petition recommending that other people save water
• After signing the petition, some students going into the gym were
intercepted and asked to fill out a survey about their own behaviors, which
highlighted that they weren’t always saving water
• Researchers then timed how long these students’ showers were after
working out
Highlighting a Gap
Example: UC Santa Cruz water conservation experiment (1992)

• Results:
• People who had both filled out the petition and filled out the survey
shortened their showers by over a minute, or over 25%
• By highlighting a gap between the students’ actions and their
recommendations, they changed behavior
Highlighting a Gap
• We can apply this idea in a variety of situations

• Example: An old project that’s not working
• Telling people to kill it isn’t going to work— they feel bad about the fact that
it’s not working, so they are not going to kill it
• Instead, ask what they would recommend for someone else
• By pointing out that what they would recommend for someone else is not
the same thing they’re doing themselves, you can make them more likely
to change their own behavior
Start with Understanding
• Rather than trying to persuade, we need to start with understanding

• If we don’t understand the core problem, it’s going to be hard to fix it in the
long term
• We need to find the root— to figure out what that key thing is that’s causing
someone to be unwilling to change, figure that out and mitigate it
Encourage People to Persuade Themselves
• When people feel like someone is pushing or trying to convince them, they
often push back
• To change minds we need to stop trying to persuade, and encourage people
to persuade themselves
• We need to provide a menu or guided choices that allow people to pick
their path to the desired outcome
• Like Nafeez Amin, we need to ask, rather than tell— use questions to
encourage people to commit to the conclusion
• Like the Thai Health Promotion Foundation, we need to highlight a gap or
a disconnect between what people might recommend for others versus do
themselves
Endowment - Staying Put Feels Costless

Status Quo Bias
Example: PG&E power plans

• Pacific Gas and Electric, or PG&E, wanted to understand exactly how much
consumers dislike power outages
• PG&E works to balance reliability and cost
• They could invest in more preventative measures, but this would make
the service more expensive
• Or, they could cut rates, but reliability would likely suffer
Status Quo Bias

• Which did customers prefer— greater reliability or lower cost?
• They surveyed more than 1,300 consumers and asked them which of six
power plans they preferred
• Some plans were more expensive, but promised fewer and shorter
outages
• Other plans were cheaper, but involved more frequent, longer outages
Status Quo Bias

• Few consumers picked the plan with lots of power outages
• It meant a 4-hour outage at least once a month
• Most customers currently experienced around three outages a year, so they
said they’d need at least a $20 monthly discount to move to a service this
bad
• One group of people liked the higher power outage plan, even though it meant
worse service
• The only difference was the status quo, or what they were getting already
• This small group of people were already experiencing lots of power outages
(as many as fifteen a year of 4-hours each), so they picked a plan that was
similar to what they knew
Status Quo Bias
• The status quo bias is everywhere

• People tend to eat the same foods they’ve always eaten, buy the same
brands they’ve always bought, and donate to the same causes they’ve
always supported
• Change is hard because people tend to overvalue what they have already—
what they already own or are already doing
Endowment Effect
Example: Coffee mug

• How much would you be willing to pay for this
mug?
• When asked a similar question, people said
they would pay a little less than $3, on average
Endowment Effect
Example: Coffee mug

• They asked a different group of people a
slightly different question
• They were asked to take the perspective of a
seller
• What is the lowest amount you’d be willing to
accept to sell it to someone else?
• Sellers, on average, wanted more than twice
as much to part with the mug, or a little over $7
• Why?
Endowment Effect
• Once we have something, once we’re endowed with it, we start to become
attached to it, and consequently, we value it more
• Anything we’re endowed with, anything we’re doing already, tends to be
valued more than the things we’re not
• Examples:
• Duke University students were willing to pay around $200 for Final Four
tickets, but students who already had tickets wanted more than $2,000 to
sell them
• Memorabilia dealers selling the same baseball card valued it more if they
owned it than if they didn’t
Endowment Effect
• Whether considering time, intellectual property, or a host of other things,

people demand more to give them up than acquire them
• Ownership even increases the perceived value of beliefs and ideas
• The longer people do or own something, the more they value it
Easing Endowment Effect
• How do we ease endowment?

• Three key ways:
• Surface the cost of inaction
• Burn the ships
• Frame new things as old ones
Surface the Cost of Inaction

The Cost of Inaction
Example: Mountain Man Lager

• Mountain Man, a family owned business, has been making one beer,
Mountain Man Lager, for more than 80 years
• They have an extremely loyal customer base of working-class males
• In the early 2000s, the company’s leadership was struggling with how to
respond to changing consumer preferences
• Light beer sales were growing and fewer people were drinking lager, so
for the first time in history, company sales were declining

• Management was considering introducing a light beer, but worried it would
alienate current customers
• If “yuppies” who like light beer started drinking the brand, their core
customers might move on to something else
• The entire case rests on this idea— whether introducing a light beer will kill
the core brand

• Everyone is worried about the risks of doing something new
• Equally important are the risks of doing nothing
• While doing the same thing the company has done for 80 years feels safer
than doing something new, that’s not necessarily the case
• Sales are declining— doing nothing doesn’t mean nothing bad happens, it
means the company slowly but surely disappears into oblivion
Example: Injury pain

• What causes more pain, a severe injury or a milder one?
• It seems likes a severe injury should cause more pain
• Milder injuries don’t seem as bad
• A closer look reveals something interesting— milder injuries end up causing
more pain because of how people respond when those injuries occur
• When a severe injury happens, people take active steps to speed
recovery
• When lesser injuries happen, people tend not to exert the same effort
• When the status quo is terrible, it’s easier to get people to switch
• People are more willing to change because inertia isn’t a viable option
• When things aren’t terrible, it’s harder to get people to budge
• Terrible things get replaced, but mediocre things stick around
• Horrible performance generates action, but average performance generates
complacency
• To overcome endowment we need to help people realize the cost of doing
nothing
Surface The Cost of Inaction
Example: My cousin Charles

• My cousin used to manually enter a sign-off every time he sent an email—
he would type out “Best, Charles” at the bottom
• For Charles, it didn’t seem that bad— it only takes a couple of seconds
each time, and he didn’t know how to set up signatures and didn’t want to
take the time to learn
• Surfacing those costs of inaction helps people realize that sticking with the
status quo isn’t as costless as it seems
• Add those seconds up across 400 emails a week and it takes between 10
and 20 minutes— over a year it’s more than 10 hours
“ Good is the enemy of great… We don't have great schools, principally
because we have good schools. We don't have great government,
principally because we have good government. Few people attain great
lives, in large part because it is just so easy to settle for a good life.”
— JIM COLLINS
• When things are good, it’s easy to stick to the status quo
• Change is costly and requires effort, so as long as things are good enough
the impetus to switch is muted
• But while doing nothing seems costless, it’s often not as costless as it seems
• The status quo may seem fine, but compared to something better, it’s
worse
• Though the difference may seem small, added up over time it becomes
quite large
• So to change minds we need to surface those costs of inaction— we need to

make it easier for people to see the difference between what they are doing
now and what they could be doing
• As loss aversion shows, losses loom larger than gains
• Seeing how much money or time you are losing by doing something old is
more motivating than seeing how much you could gain by doing something
new
Burn the Ships

Burn the Ships
Example: Hernán Cortés

• Born in Spain to a relatively poor family
• At age 14, his parents encouraged him to study law, but news of
Christopher Columbus and the New World were streaming back to Spain
• Cortés wanted to do something different, so he made plans to sail for
America
• In 1504, Cortés landed in Hispaniola (what is Haiti and the Dominican
Republic today) and spent the next few years establishing himself
• Cortés’ efforts won favor with Hispaniola’s governor, and he was appointed
to a high political position in the colony
Burn the Ships

• Eventually, the governor asked Cortés to help him invade Mexico
• Accompanied by around 600 men, 13 horses, and a small number of
canons, Cortés and his 11 ships landed on the Yucatan Peninsula
• After he established a town, Cortés wanted to explore further
• Unfortunately, the governor and Cortés were at odds— the governor feared
losing control over the expedition and sent orders to relieve Cortés of his
command
Burn the Ships

• Cortés had gone ahead anyway, now facing imprisonment or death if he
returned to Cuba
• His only option was to conquer and settle part of the land
• When some of his men learned of Cortes’ plans, they conspired to seize a
ship and sail back to Cuba
• Cortés moved quickly to quash their plans, but had a dilemma
• For the mission to succeed, he needed the mens’ allegiance, but with
ships so readily available it would be difficult to prevent another mutiny
Burn the Ships

• Cortés burned the ships
• To ensure that mutiny didn’t happen again, he removed the tackle and
artillery and had his own ships demolished
• Going back was no longer an option— now everyone had to forge ahead
Burn the Ships
There are many examples of “burn the ships”

• An ancient Chinese saying “break the kettles and sink the boats” alludes to
a battle in which a Chinese leader did something similar to encourage his
army to commit
• The expression “burning bridges” comes from the idea that burning a bridge
after crossing it during a military campaign provides the troops no choice
but to continue the march
Burn the Ships
Example: IT support
• Sam Michaels runs IT for a mid-sized entertainment firm
• They have the job of getting people to update their software
• Regardless of how great the upgrade is, there are always some people who
don’t want to switch
• Rather than getting a new machine or new software, they preferred
sticking with the old one
• Their existing machines were working fine, so they didn’t want to take the
time to learn a new layout or risk files getting lost
• They often wouldn’t budge
Burn the Ships
Example: IT support
• Rather than pushing, Sam tried something else— he took the old option off
the table
• He sent out a note to anyone who had yet to upgrade and noted an
upcoming change in IT support
• Any machines that were still running the old version of Windows in two
months would have to be disconnected from the network
• If the machine broke down or had an issue, employees would need to
address it themselves
Burn the Ships
Example: IT support
• An hour later, more than half the people responded to set up times to fix
things
• The email worked because he burned the ships
• He didn’t completely remove the old option, but he made it clear that if
people wanted to stick with it, it was going to be costly
Burn the Ships
• Same idea applies more broadly

• Car manufacturers don’t refuse to make replacement parts for older
vehicles, but once a reasonable time has passed, they stop making as
many
• Prices go up, and consumers are encouraged to transition to something
new
• Inaction is easy— it requires little effort to stick with the same beliefs, little
time to stick with the same policies and approaches
• Compared to action, inaction often wins— inertia prevails
• Sometimes inertia needs to be taken off the table
Frame New Things as Old

Example: Dominic Cummings, Vote Leave

• On May 21, 2015, Dominic Cummings agreed to help start an organization
that would eventually be called Vote Leave
• The next day, he began the monumental task of getting Britons to give up
their almost fifty-year membership in the European Union

• Unlike traditional policy making, referendums are determined by public
opinion
• Most referendums fail
• In Oregon and California, the two states with the highest number of
statewide initiatives, only about one-third of referendums pass
• Worldwide the number is only slightly larger
• For referendums to succeed, millions of people have to be persuaded to
change, to give up on what they were doing before and to do something
new

• Cummings realized that the status quo is fundamentally easier to explain
• It doesn’t require unpacking why the EU is bad, or how the complex flow
of subsidies, grants, and other support might not balance out the money
Britain was investing in the Union
• If people were to remain in the EU, all they had to do was stay the course
• If Leave had even a chance of staging an upset they had to have a simple
message that anyone could understand

• They bought a big red bus and stamped it with the Vote Leave slogan and
had politicians drive around the country speaking to voters
• On one side of the bus in large white
letters it read: “We send the EU £350
million a week, let’s fund our NHS
[national health service] instead.”

• The Brexit bus, as it came to be called, didn’t just grab attention, it surfaced
the costs of inaction
• Brits might think that staying in the EU was safer, that it was costless
• The bus showed them otherwise— £350 million a week being sent as
membership fees to the EU, money that could be better spent in other
places

• The slogan started as just two words— “take control”
• Cummings was well versed in loss aversion and the status quo bias— he
knew that people prefer to stick with things they’re already doing rather than
doing something new
• He had to figure out a way to flip things around, make it seem like leaving
was the status quo

• He changed the slogan slightly— he inserted just one word between “take”
and “control”
• The word “back” triggers loss aversion

• It makes it seem like something had been lost, and that leaving the EU
was a way to regain that

• When the British Election Study surveyed voters, four times as many people
preferred the “take back control” language
• When votes were tallied on June 23rd, there was a shocking result—
Britons voted to leave the European Union

• Cummings cleverly reframed the entire debate
• He took the endowment effect, and people’s increased valuation for what
they already have, and reminded them that Britain used to be outside the
EU
• Framed this way, leaving wasn’t risky
• It was simply a way of righting the ship— returning things to how they
were
• This strategy isn’t always easy to apply, but in many cases, this approach is a
cunning way to turn the tables on inertia
• Politicians do this often when they talk about going “back to basics”
• Organizations talk about how a new approach has them “return to their roots”
• New products and services can also be talked about this way
• “It’s the same thing you’ve always known and loved, just updated for
today’s digital age”
• “It’s not a change, it’s a refresh”
• People are attached to things they’ve already been doing— whether it’s
products they own or beliefs they hold, suppliers they work with, or initiatives
they support
• Changing minds isn’t just about making people more comfortable with new
things, it’s about helping them let go of old ones— easing endowment
• Surface the cost of inaction— helping people realize that inaction and the
status quo aren’t as costless as it seems
• Burn the ships— taking the status quo off the table, or at least stop
subsidizing its cost
• Frame new things as old— make doing something new feel safer by
making it seem like it is returning to the way things were
Distance - Too Far from Their Backyard, People Tend to Disregard

Distance
• Too far from people’s backyard and they tend to disregard

Political Polarization
• More than half of Democrats and Republicans have “very unfavorable”

feelings towards the opposing party— more than three times the number of
the mid-1990s
• So-called “filter bubbles” are a common explanation for the discord
• People have always preferred media outlets that support their existing views,
but technology has exacerbated these tendencies
• Rather than talking to neighbors or flipping open local papers, people get
their news and information online
Intellectual Isolationism
• The online ecosystem is increasingly tailored to one’s existing views, towards

people who already agree with you
• The web and social media have combined to create a state of intellectual
isolationism, where people are rarely exposed to conflicting viewpoints
• Combined with people’s penchant for clicking on information that supports
their perspectives, these algorithms can lead humanity to become more and
more isolated
Reaching Across the Aisle
• To solve this problem, pundits suggest a basic solution

• Reach across the aisle— rather than holing up inside one’s online bubble,
talk to someone who sees things differently
• Intuitively, this makes a lot of sense
• By moving beyond caricatures and stereotypes and engaging with
someone who disagrees, both sides will benefit
• By understanding where the opposition is coming from, we’ll all gain more
nuanced views
• But does that actually work?
Effects of Exposure on Politicization
• Chris Bail, a sociologist from Duke University, thought if you could just get
people to consider the other side, they’d come around
• Exposure to opposing viewpoints would shift people towards the middle
• Bail recruited more than 1,500 Twitter users and had them follow accounts
that exposed them to opposing viewpoints
• For a month, they saw messages and information from elected officials,
organizations, and opinion leaders from the other side
• At the end of the month, Bail and his team measured users’ attitudes—
how they felt about various political and social issues
• The hope was that connecting with the other side would bring people closer
together
• Exposure to the other side didn’t make people more moderate

• Exposure to opposing views did change minds, but in the opposite direction
• Rather than becoming more liberal, Republicans exposed to liberal
information became more conservative, developing more extreme
attitudes
• Liberals showed similar effects— Democrats who followed a conservative
account became more liberal, not less
• It would be one thing if the tweets had tried to persuade— persuasive

attempts often induce reactance
• But in this instance, rather than telling people to do one thing or another,
most posts just contained information
• So why didn’t information help?
Correcting False Beliefs
• Whether looking at medicine, politics, or various other domains, research

finds that exposure to the truth doesn't always work
• Sometimes it makes people more likely to believe the truth
• Other times, and often, it just reaffirms falsehoods
• Even though there was little intent to persuade, and thus should be little
reactance, people still discounted the information
• Rather than changing false beliefs, exposure to the truth often increases
misperceptions
• Giving people correct information leads them to be more likely to believe
the exact opposite
Confirmation Bias

Confirmation Bias
• Confirmation biases even shape seemingly objective things like scientific

research
• Professors at Stanford University gave people information about two studies
examining the efficacy of the death penalty
• One study suggested the death penalty worked as a deterrent
• Another study showed the opposite— the findings suggested the death
penalty wasn’t much of a deterrent
• Participants were given information about how the research was conducted,
procedural details about the methods, and so on
• Participants were asked how convincing they found the studies and about the
quality of the research— whether each study was well done or poorly conducted
Confirmation Bias
• How people perceived these seemingly objective scientific results depended

entirely on their position
• People that supported the death penalty thought the study that supported
the death penalty was more convincing
• People that thought the death penalty was bad thought the exact opposite
• The same held for how they thought about the study itself
• People that supported the death penalty thought the study that suggested
it worked was “well thought out” and “gathered data properly”
• Opponents thought the exact opposite — they thought “the evidence was
relatively meaningless” without data comparing how the crime rate went up
overall across those different years
Confirmation Bias
• People interpreted them to fit their own way of seeing the world
• Their decision to accept or look for flaws depended on their existing beliefs
• Whether information seems true of false depends a lot on one’s position
• Rather than uniting opposing sides, exposure to evidence sometimes just
widens the gap
Confirmation Bias
• The tendency to look for and process information in a way that confirms what
we already think has been called the confirmation bias
• No one is immune
• Confirmation bias shapes the treatments doctors prescribe, the decisions
jurors make, the strategies investors follow, what actions leaders take, the
directions research scientists pursue, and what employees internalize
Confirmation Bias
• According to psychologist Thomas Gilovich:

• When we examine evidence relevant to a given belief, we are inclined to
see it the way we want to see it
• When it supports our conclusion we go along with it, but when it doesn’t
we ask ourselves, “Must I believe this?”
• People have a region, or range of beliefs, around things they’ll consider
A Football Field of Beliefs
10 10 2 0 3 0 4 0 5 0 4 0 3 0 2 0
10 2 0 3 0 4 0 5 0 4 0 3 0 2 0 10
10 10 2 0 3 0 4 0 5 0 4 0 3 0 2 0
C O N S E RVAT I V E
LIBERAL
region of rejection zone of acceptance
10 2 0 3 0 4 0 5 0 4 0 3 0 2 0 10
10 10 2 0 3 0 4 0 5 0 4 0 3 0 2 0
LIBERAL
zone of
region of rejection acceptance region of rejection
10 2 0 3 0 4 0 5 0 4 0 3 0 2 0 10
10 10 2 0 3 0 4 0 5 0 4 0 3 0 2 0
LIBERAL
zone of acceptance region of rejection
10 2 0 3 0 4 0 5 0 4 0 3 0 2 0 10
Zone of Acceptance or Region of Rejection
• Incoming information is not just compared with one’s existing view, it also
depends on if it falls in that zone or not
• If it’s close enough, if it’s in that zone of acceptance, then the information
works as intended— people change their mind and they move a little bit in
that desired direction
• If information is too far away, in that region of rejection, it fails
• Not only does it fail to persuade, it often backfires— people change their
mind in the opposite direction
• They become even more certain of their initial views or their initial beliefs
Zone of Acceptance or Region of Rejection
• People are willing to consider different perspectives up to a certain point, but

beyond that things get ignored
• These biases make changing minds all the more difficult
• Not only do people have to be willing to change, they have to be willing to
listen to information that might open them up to that possibility
Mitigating Distance
• How do we combat these biases?

• How can we avoid the region of rejection and encourage people to actually
consider what we have to say?
• Three ways to mitigate distance:
• Finding the moveable middle
• Asking for less
• Switching the field to find an unsticking point
The Movable Middle

Persuasion in Political Campaigns
• Every election cycle, political campaigns spend huge sums of money

• In 2016, for example, more than $6 billion was spent on the presidential and
congressional elections
• Most of the money is spent on persuasion
• Direct mail, phone banking, and door-to-door canvassing
• Things that are trying to convince voters to go one way or the other
• Political scientists looked across dozens of studies of primaries and ballot

measures and found a clear pattern
• Advertising and campaign contact worked
• Things like direct mail and door-to-door canvassing influenced both who
voters voted for as well as how they evaluated different candidates
• When they analyzed general elections, they found something else
• Across dozens of studies, the scientists found that the same persuasive
tools had zero effect
• They ran new experiments, studying thousands of people
• While this approach increased statistical precision, it netted the same
result— no effect
• Primaries involve deciding between two candidates who’ve staked out

positions on the same side of the field
• General elections involve someone who’s on one side of the field and
someone who’s on a completely different half
• Not only are the two options far apart, one is likely within the zone of
acceptance, while the other is likely in the region of rejection
Strong Feelings are Challenging to Change
• Feeling strongly about an issue or domain changes that zone of acceptance

• The more we care about something, the smaller the zone of things we are
willing to consider
• This is part of why changing political views is so challenging
• You’re not just trying to change positions slightly, you’re trying to get
people to switch sides
• And not just on any issue, but one they feel strongly about and where they
are unlikely to take alternate perspectives
• It’s like asking a Red Sox fan to start rooting for the Yankees or a Coke
drinker to switch to Pepsi— not the easiest ask
The Moveable Middle
• The election study found a silver lining, one place where candidates changed
minds in general elections even when change seemed difficult— the
moveable middle
• Smart campaigns don't try to change every mind, they focus on swing voters
who are open to facts and arguments
• Undecideds, or pockets of people who given the candidate,
circumstances, or issues, are more receptive to being swayed
• Rather than using the same arguments on everyone, smart change agents
use a more surgical approach—they target people with specific messages
that are most useful for them
The Moveable Middle
Example: Democrat Jeff Merkely

• In 2008, Democrat Jeff Merkely was running against incumbent Republican
Gordon Smith for US Senate in Oregon
• Researchers were interested to see whether they could change minds—
whether they could get people who would have voted for the incumbent
Republican to vote for the Democratic challenger
The Moveable Middle
Example: Democrat Jeff Merkely

• They started with a wedge— an issue where the incumbent was out of step
with at least some of his constituents
• They landed on abortion
• Oregonians tend to be pro-choice and the incumbent Republican was not
• They identified pro-choice voters and tried to persuade them
• By going after the moveable middle the campaign shifted voting by almost
10% and the challenger Merkely won
Find the Moveable Middle
• When dealing with issues where people feel strongly, start by finding the
movable middle
• Individuals who, by virtue of their existing positions, are more likely to shift
because they’re not so far away to begin with
• Look for behavioral residue— clues that indicate contradicting opinions or a
willingness to change
• In the political context, Democrats who support gun rights or Republicans
who’ve signed petitions supporting environmental reform
• In a business context, consumers who’ve complained about a competitor
Find the Moveable Middle
• Even when data isn’t available, try testing and learning

• Take a sample of people, test a particular approach, and record key
characteristics on various dimensions
• Using that data can help us identify subgroups that can determine what types
of people might be good to go after more broadly
Vitamins or Painkillers?
• Venture capitalists often talk about products and services as vitamins or

painkillers
• Nice-to-haves (vitamins) that can be put off until later
• Need-to-haves (painkillers) that people can’t live without
• Start by finding the people that see an offering as a painkiller
• Locating the potential users who need the offering and can’t wait to sign
up
Ask for Less

An Unreasonable Request
• A request like this clearly falls in the region of rejection— it’s just too much to
endure
• When two Stanford psychologists called people up and made a similar
request, barely more than a handful said yes
• How do you get people to do something they’d rather not do, and particularly
something that’s far away from where they are already?
• The most common way of attacking this problem is through pushing—
exerting as much pressure as possible to force someone to comply
• Is there a better approach?
Ask for Less
• When the researchers asked a different group of people, more than twice as
many said yes
• The difference?
• They started by asking for something less
• Three days earlier, the scientists called the second group of people with a
much more innocuous request
• Would you be willing to answer just a few questions about what household
products you use?
• Most people who picked up the phone were happy to help
Ask for Less
• When the scientists called back a couple days later with the much larger
request, these people were much more likely to agree
• Completing that first small request changed how people saw themselves
• Agreeing to a small, related ask moved people in the right direction
• The final ask, which once would have been too far away, is now more
likely to be within the zone of acceptance
• Because when people move their position on the field, the regions and zones
around them move with them
Ask for Less
• Try asking for less rather than pushing for more

• Dial down the size of the initial request so that it falls within the zone of
acceptance
• Not only will that make that initial request more successful, it also makes big
change more likely overall
Ask for Less
• When trying to change minds, the tendency is to go big

• We want to shift people’s perspective right away
• We’re looking for that silver bullet that will immediately get someone to quit
drinking soda or switch political parties overnight
• Big changes are rarely that abrupt
• They’re often more like a process— slow and steady with many changes
along the way
• Asking for less is not about only asking for less, it’s about committing to that
process
• It’s about chunking the change— breaking a big ask into smaller, more
manageable chunks
Building Stepping Stones
Example: Uber
• Uber launched as an easier way to hail an executive car service
• “Everyone’s private driver”
• Only after the initial high-end positioning did they move down market to
UberX, a cheaper option that offered non-luxury vehicles
• Eventually they hope to move to entirely autonomous vehicles
• By chunking the change, they shrank the size of the ask
• Each new product launch was like a stepping stone, slowly moving
consumers from what they were used to, forward to something new and
different
Switch the Field to Find an Unsticking Point

Switch the Field
• Switch the field

• Find a dimension where there’s already agreement and use that as a pivot
point
• The Heineken ad works because it finds an unsticking point
• It finds a dimension where people are closer together— where they agree
rather than disagree
Switch the Field
• Change the conversation

• Rather than starting with a tough issue that seems divisive (a sticking
point), start with common ground
• Only after building that initial connection do people ultimately bend around
and pivot to the key issue at hand
• Finding an unsticking point means switching the playing field, from one where
two teams are dug in on different ends to one where everyone is on the same
team
Switch the Field
• Rather than pushing harder down the same blocked path, explore related
directions where they’re not so dug in
• Start with areas where you agree and build from there
Distance Summary
• Distance is the third main barrier to change

• Reactance highlights that people push back when they feel someone is trying
to persuade them
• But even when just providing information or evidence, distance matters
• If things are too far from where people are currently, it falls in the region of
rejection and gets discounted or ignored
Distance Summary
• Start by finding the movable middle— people for whom the change is not as
large, and who can be used to help convince others
• When trying to change those that are further away, start by asking for less
• Take big change and break it down it smaller, more manageable chunks or
stepping stones
• Ask for less before asking for more
• Find an unsticking point
• Start with a place of agreement and pivot from there
Uncertainty - Easier to Try, More Likely to Buy

Switching Cost Challenges
• Switching costs
• There’s extra money, extra time, or extra effort involved in doing something
new compared to doing what was done already
• When the costs and the benefits occur
• Costs-benefit timing gap— costs are usually now, or upfront, and benefits
are often later
• Certainty and uncertainty of those costs and benefits
• Costs are certain and the benefits are often uncertain
• People really don’t like uncertainty
• When we don’t know, we have anxiety
The Cost of Uncertainty
Example: Stanford Vacation Study

• Students were given a scenario:
• It’s the end of the semester and • Would you:
you just took a tough exam • Buy the vacation
• You feel tired and run-down package?
• You passed the exam • Not buy the vacation
• You have the opportunity to buy a package?
very attractive 5-day Hawaiian • Decide later
vacation package at a low price
• Most people went ahead and
• The offer expires tomorrow
bought the vacation package

• You failed the exam • Not buy the vacation
• You have the opportunity to buy a package?
very attractive 5-day Hawaiian • Decide later
vacation package at a low price
• Most people still went ahead
and bought the vacation
package

• You don’t know yet whether you • Not buy the vacation
passed or failed and you’ll find out package?
tomorrow • Decide later
• You have the opportunity to buy a
• Most decided to decide later
very attractive 5-day Hawaiian
vacation package at a low price • Uncertainty made them hit
the pause button
Harness Freemium

Easing Uncertainty
Four ways to ease uncertainty

1. Harness freemium
2. Lower the upfront cost
3. Drive discovery
4. Make it reversible
Freemium
• Dropbox gave a certain amount of storage away for free

• There was also a premium version
• By giving people the free version, Dropbox allowed them to experience
whether they liked the service or not
• If they let you experience it yourself, you’ve convinced yourself
Freemium
Freemium
• Freemium isn’t about tricking people

• There’s no bait and switch
• People only get charged if and when they decide they want an upgrade
• When they want more storage
• When they want extra features
• When they want additional functionality
• By cleverly structuring the freemium, companies get people to figure out
whether they like it themselves and encourage them to upgrade
How Much Freemium?
• How much should we give away?

• Example: Dropbox
• Full features for a limited time
• Full features but limited space
• Limited features but unlimited space
• Key questions:
• What will help people experience the offering itself?
• What will encourage them to upgrade?
How Much Freemium?
• Be careful about giving away too much

• Example: New York Times
• 40 articles per month
• Would encourage many people to get into the free version, but no one
would upgrade to the premium
• Most people don’t use 40 articles a month, so there’s no reason for them
to upgrade
How Much Freemium?
• Be careful about giving away too little

• Example: New York Times
• One article per month
• Wouldn’t be enough to help people know whether they like the New York
Times or not
• Wouldn’t give enough of a sense of what’s on the other side of the paywall
to make it worth it to upgrade
• Need to fall in-between— enough that people get a sense of what the
experience is like, but not so much or so little that they are not going to want
to upgrade
Key to Freemium
• The right thing to give away

• Enough to get them in the service initially
• Not making it so hard to upgrade to the premium version
• Make it clear there’s something better on the other side
• Be careful about giving away too much or too little
• Think about the switching costs
Key to Freemium

Key to Freemium
Key to Freemium

• Smart companies use freemium, but encourage customers to create their
own switching costs
Shrink Upfront Costs

Example: Free Shipping

• In November 1999, Shoesite.com announced free shipping
• Downside— it cost them money to pay for free shipping
• Soon they had millions in revenue
• Today their warehouses boast more then 3.2 million items from thousands
of brands around the world
• We know them today as Zappos

• Zappos built their business on free shipping
• They were one of the first companies to use free shipping
• They created the e-commerce experience that we know today
• The challenge consumers had wasn’t about price
• Lowering the price of the shoes might have made them cheaper, but it didn’t
solve the uncertainty
• The uncertainty was about whether I’m going to like the thing or not
• People didn’t want to have to pay to find it out

• Zappos didn’t use freemium— free shipping didn’t make it any cheaper to
get the shoes themselves
• It lowered the upfront cost
• It made it easier for people to experience whether they liked something
or not
• Costs of switching
• Time
• Money
• Effort and energy
• It’s not just about making something free— it’s about lowering that upfront
barrier
• Example: Buying a car

• Other types of “test-drives”
• Apple store
• Renting skis
• Month-to-month contracts
• Smaller sizes
Drive Discovery

Drive Discovery
• Test drives are great for people who already know about your brand
• Not very helpful for people who don’t know you, have never heard about you,
or don’t think they’d like you
Drive Discovery
Example: Acura
• Acura had been in the US a decade longer than Lexus, but Lexus was
killing them in market share
• People weren’t aware that Acura was a good brand and they didn’t think
they’d like it
• Test drives wouldn’t solve the problem of appealing to a new customer base
Drive Discovery
An example: Acura
• Acura paired with W Hotels— anyone

staying at a W Hotel could get a ride
anywhere in town in an Acura
• It took a whole segment of people who
never knew Acura existed or didn’t think
they’d like it, and got them to experience
the offering
• They lowered the barrier to trial by driving
discovery
Drive Discovery
An example: Kia
• Encouraged people to check out Kias by

putting them in rental car fleets
Drive Discovery
An example: Redwood Living
• How can we bring the trial to people?

• We asked existing residents to have more
of their friends over
• Friends see the experience of what it’s
actually like to live there
Make it Reversible

Make it Reversible
An example: A dog named Zoe
• The two-week trial period didn’t make Zoe

easier to have
• It made me feel that just in case it didn’t
work, I could bring her back
Make it Reversible
• Many retailers often want restrictive return policies

• Returns are a big cost center for retailers
• Researchers have looked at whether lenient or restrictive return policies are
more effective
• Lenient return policies actually increased profits by over 20%
• Friction on the back end, just like friction on the front end, decreases action
• Free returns, money-back guarantees, or even pay-for-performance contracts—
these things make people feel like if it doesn’t work out they can get their
money or time back
Make it Reversible
• Does this only work when I’m selling something?

• Does this only work for products and services?
Summary
• Uncertainty often stems action

• Change often involves uncertainty
• When people don’t know whether something new will be better than what
they’re doing already they tend to hit the pause button
• To ease uncertainty we need to make it easier for people to experience the
value themselves
• Harness freemium
• Lower the upfront costs
• Drive discovery
• Make it reversible
Corroborating Evidence - Some Things Need More Proof

• How much do you like the word “juvalamu”?

• What about “chakaka”?
• Opinions toward these nonsense words are examples of what are called weak
attitudes
• Preferences or opinions that people don’t find very important, that haven’t
received much thought, or that are relatively easy to change
2, 3, 5, 7, serif
11, 13, 17, vs.
19, 23… sans serif
For most people, these are examples of weakly held attitudes

These are examples of strong attitudes— high involvement issues, topics, or

preferences that you’ve thought a lot about and hold with great moral conviction
Not surprisingly, strong attitudes are much more resistant to change
Some Things Need More Proof
• Imagine that an article suggests your favorite celebrity said something racist
• What’s your first reaction?
• It’s probably one of disbelief or denial
• Our anti-persuasion radar rushes to protect our strong beliefs
• Rather than giving up or changing our mind, we discount information that
goes against our existing views, picking it apart rather than revising our
perspective
• Some issues, products, and behaviors need more before people will change—
more proof or evidence is required
Some Things Need More Proof
• For strong attitudes, there is a higher threshold for changing minds

• More is needed— more information, more texture, or more certainty
• More proof before people will switch
• Changing minds is a little bit like trying to lift something on the other end of a
see-saw
• Trying to lift a pebble, you don’t need that much— a little bit of evidence is
enough to move it right away
• Trying to move a boulder, much more effort is needed— more proof is
required before people will change
The Translation Problem
• Imagine someone comes into the office Monday morning and they tell you they
watched an amazing show over the weekend
• They loved the show and they think you’ll like it too
• They’ve just added some weight to that other end of your seesaw
• Depending on your threshold for change or how strongly you feel about
television shows, that evidence is either enough or not enough to get you to
change
• Imagine it’s not enough— your preferences are more like a boulder and nothing
changes
• Thursday rolls around, they’ve watched another episode, and they continue to
be enthusiastic
• This adds a little more proof
• But it actually doesn’t provide that much additional information
• When someone endorses or recommends something there’s always a
translation problem
• If one person suggests or does something, it’s hard to translate

• It’s hard to know if their opinion is diagnostic
• If multiple sources say or do the same thing, it’s harder not to listen
• Now there’s corroborating evidence— reinforcement
• Multiple sources concur— they have the same view, response, or preference
• This consistency means it’s much more likely that you’ll feel the same way
Multiple Sources Add Credibility
• If multiple people are saying or doing the same thing, it’s harder to argue that
they’re wrong— harder to argue that the thing they’re suggesting isn’t any good
• Multiple sources add credibility and legitimacy
Finding Corroborating Evidence
• More sources saying or doing the same thing can provide more proof
• But WHO those sources are and WHEN they share their perspective plays an
important role
• In particular, when finding corroborating evidence, it’s important to consider
who, when, and how:
• Who else to involve (or which sources are most impactful)
• When to space corroborating evidence out over time
• How to best deploy scarce resources when trying to change minds on a
larger scale
Who Else to Involve

Make it Reversible
An example: La Trobe University study

• Students were recruited for a study on how people respond to audio
presentations
• The experimenters behind the study were interested in what makes people
laugh, and in particular, how laughter is shaped by social influence
• They had people listen to what’s called a laugh-track— essentially a stand-
up comedian with people laughing in the background (it included canned
laughter)
• As expected, the laugh track helped
• Listeners were more likely to laugh and smile at the comedian’s jokes
when they heard other people laughing
Make it Reversible

• But beyond the mere presence of laughter, the scientists also manipulated
something else— who people thought was laughing
• In one case the scientists told them the laughers were people like them,
other students from the same university
• The other group of students were told that the laughers were quite
different— members of a political party with whom students did not
identify
Make it Reversible

• Even though the laughter sounded exactly the same, whoever the listeners
thought was laughing shaped their reactions
• When listeners thought the laughers were not like them, the fact that
those people were laughing didn’t matter— it didn’t change their behavior
• When people thought the laughers were like them, they changed their
behavior— they laughed nearly four times as long
Who Else to Involve
• The translation problem is less of a problem when there’s less of a need for
translation
• In the absence of Another You, similar sources are the next closest thing
• The more similar they are, the more proof or corroborating evidence they
provide, and the greater their impact
Who Else to Involve
• Sources that are similar enough but different from one another offer the perfect
combination
• Similarity makes the feedback seem diagnostic and relevant
• Independence increases the chance that each adds additional value rather than
being seen as redundant
When to Space Corroborative Evidence Over Time

Concentration Increases Impact
An example: Adoption of a new website

• Existing users could help spread the word through Facebook
• The only way people could learn about the new site was through invitations
sent from their friends
• Consistent with the value of corroborating evidence, people who got more
invitations were more likely to join
• Compared to someone who got only one invitation, for example, potential
users who got a second invite were almost twice as likely to sign up
• Beyond how many invitations people received, WHEN they received those
invitations also mattered
• The closer different invitations were in time, the bigger their collective impact

• Each invitation provided some evidence that the website was good or worth joining
• Over time, though, it was like some of that proof disappeared or evaporated
• The more time that elapsed until the second invitation, the less proof that was
left from the first one
• After one month, the invitation provided only 20 percent as much impact as it
had initially
• After two months, it had almost no impact at all— almost as if people had never
even received it
• Concentration mitigated the decline
• Receiving multiple website invitations within a shorter period of time catalyzed
change

• When trying to change minds, not all proof is equal
• Concentrating that proof in time boosts its effectiveness
• Trying to increase attention for a new service or important social cause?
• Make sure that social media hits happen soon after one another so
potential supporters hear about it multiple times in a short period
• Trying to change the boss’s mind?
• After stopping by her office, catalysts encourage colleagues to make similar
suggestions right away
How to Best Deploy Scarce Resources When Trying to Change Minds on a Larger Scale

Sprinkler and Fire Hose Strategies
• Sprinklers spread water out— they sprinkle a little here and a little there,
providing broad coverage relatively quickly
• That coverage isn’t deep in any one place, but many places get attention
• All the grass within range gets a little bit wet
• Fire hoses are more concentrated— rather than spreading water out, they
saturate one area
• Hitting multiple areas happens sequentially rather than simultaneously
• Drenching one area first and then moving on to another
Which Strategy to Use
• Conventional wisdom would say that the sprinkler strategy is better

• It raises broader awareness, diversifies risk, and increases the chance of a
first-mover advantage
• But is conventional wisdom right?
• It depends on whether the thing we’re trying to change is a weak attitude or a
strong one— a pebble or a boulder
• Individuals or organizations can be classified into different segments: groups or

types of people and businesses
• Social ties tend to be stronger within groups than between them
• Whether it’s better to concentrate resources in one group or spread them out
across two or more groups depends on the threshold for change
• If a little proof is enough to drive action, then a sprinkler strategy is ideal
• Go after each group simultaneously without much depth
• When more corroborating evidence is needed, we need to concentrate those
resources
• Create social incubators where people can’t help but hear from multiple
sources, increasing the likelihood that they’ll switch too
• The more time consuming, expensive, risky or controversial something is, the
more likely it is to be a boulder— something that requires more proof
• The more that is at stake, the greater the financial cost, and the higher the
reputational risk, the more proof or evidence that is needed
Summary
• Some things need more proof

• One person is often not enough
• In those situations we need to find corroborating evidence
• Certain types of others are more impactful— using similar others that come
from independent groups is going to increase the impact
• Concentrating the efforts over time will make sure that people hear from enough
others to change
• Which is better— a sprinkler approach or a fire hose approach?
• If we have a pebble, that sprinkler is going to be much better
• If we have a boulder, using a fire hose is more effective
Course Conclusion

Summary
• To truly change something, you need to start by understanding it

• Whether it’s about shifting minds, changing behavior, or inciting action, we need
to REDUCE roadblocks
• Reactance
• When pushed, people often push back
• Rather than telling people what to do, or trying to persuade, we need to allow
for agency and encourage people to convince themselves
• Provide a menu
Summary
• Endowment
• People are attached to the status quo
• To ease endowment, we need to surface the costs of inaction and help
people realize that doing nothing isn’t as costless as it seems
• Distance
• Too far from their backyard, people tend to disregard
• Perspectives that are too far away fall in the region of rejection and get
discounted
• We have to shrink distance— ask for less and switch the field
Summary
• Uncertainty
• Seeds of doubt slow the winds of change
• To get people to un-pause, we have to alleviate uncertainty
• Make things easier to try, lower upfront costs to change
• Corroborating Evidence
• Some things need more proof
• We’ve got to find corroborating evidence, using multiple sources to help
overcome the translation problem
Summary
• Start by finding those barriers to change, and once you’ve identified them, think
about how best to mitigate them
• Everyone has something they want to change
• Politicians want to change voting behavior and marketers want to build their
customer base
• Employees want to change their bosses’ perspective and leaders want to
transform organizations
• Spouses want to change their partner’s mind and parents want to shift their
child’s behavior
• Startups want to change industries and non-profits want to change the world

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Changing Minds, Organizations, and the World

The Challenge of Change

Jonah Berger, Associate Professor of Marketing

Write down something you want to change

An example: My cell phone

• New things are often better

• Every change has upsides and downsides

Losses loom larger than gains

An example: A new router

Jonah Berger, Associate Professor of Marketing

Successful change is about being a catalyst

• Overcome inertia, incite action, and change minds—not by being more

Jonah Berger, Associate Professor of Marketing

Five Horsemen of Inertia

Good change agents…

• Not every situation involves all five roadblocks

Jonah Berger, Associate Professor of Marketing

Example: Proctor & Gamble’s Tide Pods

• Proctor & Gamble reintroduced the product under

• The “Tide Pod Challenge” started as a joke

• Now people were challenging others to eat detergent

• Warnings have been a standard approach for decades

• Tide’s efforts had backfired

Jonah Berger, Associate Professor of Marketing

Example: Arden House experiment (1977)

Example: Arden House experiment (1977)

• People have a need for freedom and autonomy

• Like a missile defense system

What we need to do is encourage people to persuade themselves

Jonah Berger, Associate Professor of Marketing

• Imagine you want to encourage someone to do something

• This idea of providing a menu is used all the time

Jonah Berger, Associate Professor of Marketing

• Allow for agency by asking questions rather than making statements

Questions do a couple of things

• Rather than pushing to start, start by asking questions

Jonah Berger, Associate Professor of Marketing

• Pointing out a disconnect between someone’s thoughts and actions— a

Example: Smoking Kid campaign (Thai Health Promotion Foundation)

• Most people strive for internal consistency

Example: UC Santa Cruz water conservation experiment (1992)

Example: UC Santa Cruz water conservation experiment (1992)

• We can apply this idea in a variety of situations

• Rather than trying to persuade, we need to start with understanding

Jonah Berger, Associate Professor of Marketing

Example: PG&E power plans

Example: PG&E power plans

Example: PG&E power plans

• The status quo bias is everywhere

Example: Coffee mug

Example: Coffee mug

• Whether considering time, intellectual property, or a host of other things,

• How do we ease endowment?

Jonah Berger, Associate Professor of Marketing

Example: Mountain Man Lager

Example: Mountain Man Lager

Example: Mountain Man Lager

Example: Injury pain

Example: My cousin Charles