[MUSIC] In this module, we're discussing a third general challenge that persuaders might face. Namely, the problem that people don't think they are capable of doing what the persuader wants. They don't have the ability. The behavior is just too hard. And as an example to make this concrete for you, think about exercising regularly. It's easy to imagine people who have a positive attitude towards exercising regularly. I think exercising regularly would be a good thing. They have positive prescriptive and descriptive norms. Of these people who are important to me think I should exercise regularly and many people like me do exercise regularly. And yet they still don't exercise regularly because they think they can't. I can't do it, I don't have the time, it doesn't fit my schedule, I don't have the equipment, the gym is too far away, so on. Low perceived ability to perform the behavior. Now I know that that might sound like a rationalization, and maybe for some people it is. But whether it's a rationalization or not, it's something that an influencer may need to think about. If it's a genuine concern, then obviously it needs to be addressed. And even if it's a rationalization, then you may need to address it, so as to undermine it, so as to remove it. I think persuaders are prone to overlook this particular challenge. The challenge of addressing people's perceived behavioral ability. I think that when people aren't doing what you want the first thing that comes to mind is they must not think it's a good idea. And so, the natural first impulse is to try to convince people that it is a good idea. That is the natural first impulse is to try to influence people's attitudes. But, as that exercise example should suggest to you, at least sometimes attitude is not the problem. Sometimes the attitudes are thoroughly positive, but people think they lack the ability. As a nice illustration of this, I saw a study comparing households that recycle and households that don't. What was striking was that the two kinds of households had equally positive attitudes about recycling. Everybody was inclined to think recycling was a good idea. Where the households differed was in their responses to questions about whether they knew how to recycle. Questions about how easy or difficult they thought recycling is and the like. Households that recycled reporting knowing how to do it and thinking it was pretty easy, whereas households that didn't recycle were more likely to report that they were basically clueless about how to do it. And I can certainly relate to that. There was a point in my life where in three years I lived in six different places. And each place had different rules for recycling and it was a huge challenge trying to learn just what the procedures were. Do you separate or not, what items will they take, do you need to have special containers? And in fact, in one of those places I lived, shortly after I moved in, I got a brochure in the mail from the city about recycling. But it was a brochure touting all the advantages of recycling, giving a list of reasons why people should recycle. It didn't say anything about how to recycle. As I said, it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking that if people aren't performing the behavior you want it must be because they don't see that it's a good thing to do. But that is potentially a trap, is potentially a mistake. So you're sending a subordinate into a meeting. And there's something specific you want to get done during that meeting. Some decision you want to get made, some agreement you want to be reached, some information you want to be sure is conveyed, some framework that needs to be established. Whatever. So, you brief the subordinate, dispatch them. Turns out, after the meeting, that one thing you wanted to get accomplished did not happen. And the natural impulse can be to say to the subordinate, didn't you understand how important it was to get that thing done in that meeting? That was the whole point of the meeting. But the subordinate may have perfectly well understood the importance of the task, but they might not have known how to get it done. That is, expressed abstractly, the problem might not be attitude. It might be ability. So to summarize. One barrier to people doing what you want can be their perceived ability to perform the behavior. And correspondingly, that can be one challenge that persuaders need to take up. It's easy to overlook that challenge. It's easy to think that non-compliance reflects negative attitudes. Do not fall into that trap. Be alert to the possibility that you may need to somehow address people's perceptions of behavioral ability, behavioral difficulty. Okay. But how do you do that? That's the subject we turn to next. [MUSIC]
