Removing Obstacles

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In the previous segment we discussed the potential importance of addressing

people's perceived ability to perform the desired behavior even if people are all in

favor of what you want them to do.

They might not do what you want because they don't think they can.

They think it's too difficult.

Okay, suppose you're facing this persuasion challenge,

that people just don't think they can perform the behavior.

The question is, what can you do as an influence agent in those situations?

In this segment and the next one, I want to give you three abstract strategies,

three general ways of potentially influencing perceived behavioral ability.

They won't all be useful in a given situation.

The usefulness of each of these strategies varies from application to application.

But, if you're facing a situation in which you need to address this issue, one or

more of these three approaches might be helpful.

Here's the first general idea, the first general strategy.

You might directly remove some obstacle to behavioral performance.

There are two kinds of obstacles that people might face and so

two kinds that you might remove.

One, is informational, that is,

sometimes people just lack information that's relevant to behavioral performance.

And in that case, you should give them that information.

For example, as some of you will know,

newborn infants can be scalded by tap water.

The hot water that comes out of the tap can be so

hot as to be dangerous to infants.

One way parents of newborns can prevent such problems,

is by lowering the temperature on their water heater,

but, a lot of people don't know how to do that.

I mean, they're all in favor of doing it once they know it's possible.

But, they have no clue about exactly how you do it.

So, one thing some hospitals have done is,

when they send the parents home with the new baby, the parents get a brochure

that shows people how to adjust the temperature on water heaters.

This is a straight-forward case of people simply needing information.

So asked to be able to perform the behavior.

Similarly, if you're a political candidate you want to make sure that your supporters

know where their polling place is, what hours it's open and so on.

You want to be sure that there is no informational barrier

to them voting for you.

Or, if you want people to recycle,

you want to be sure they have the information about how to do it.

So, sometimes the problem is simply an informational barrier.

People are perfectly willing to the behavior, but

they lack some relevant information.

And in situations like that, give them the information.

Make sure they know what they need to know.

A second kind of obstacle is substantive, material,

not just a lack of information, but something beyond that.

And where that's the case,

persuaders should think about how to remove such substantive obstacles.

Let me give you a couple of examples.

Now the first involves healthcare.

The situation is this, people come in to health clinics for testing, they go away,

the results come in and the results indicate a need for further testing.

So, the clinic gets in touch with the patient and says you need to come back for

more tests.

But patients don't always come back.

Of course, that can have really bad consequences.

So, the challenge for

clinics can be, how can you get people to return for follow-up testing?

Some clinics in Los Angeles noticed that they had this problem in a particularly

serious way.

These clinics served predominantly low income urban populations and

in thinking about possible barriers to patients returning for

follow up testing, they realized that transportation might be challenging.

So, when they got in touch with patients who needed further testing,

they started including free bus passes.

Enough to get to and from the clinic.

And, sure enough, patient return rate significantly increased.

The persuader directly addressed that material barrier.

As another example, insulating attics in the United Kingdom.

There were various incentives offered to homeowners that increased the insulation

in their attics as a means of encouraging home energy conservation.

Incentives like subsidies and the like.

But, there wasn't as much uptake of this program as was wanted.

Turns out, one key barrier to adding that attic insulation,

was all the junk in the attic that home owners would have to deal with.

Adding insulation would just be too hard to do.

So, there was a revision of the attic insulation program,

in which the insulation company would first clear out the attic.

Help the homeowner dispose of stuff they didn't want,

put in the additional insulation and then return the remaining goods to the attic.

And, even though homeowners had to pay for this additional part of the service,

the uptake rate for the insulation offer tripled.

Again, the persuader directly addressed some material barrier.

So, first strategy for addressing people's behavioral ability is

directly removing obstacles to performing the behavior.

And to crystallize the key idea here, when you're trying to get people to do

something, make it easy for them to do it, don' t make it hard.

There's a reason Amazon created that one click shopping button.

So, wrap up about this first strategy.

When you're trying to persuade people to do something.

And you think that perceived behavioral ability,

perceived behavioral difficulty, might be an issue, stop and ask yourself,

are there things I can do that would make it easier for people to do this?

Is there information they need?

Are there material obstacles I could help them address?

That's the first general strategy for

influencing perceived behavioral ability, directly removing those obstacles.

The next segment talks about two more strategies.

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Daniel J. O’Keefe

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