Fogg is describing experiments he ran in the mid-1990s with computers that handed out praise. In one condition he told participants up front that the praise was false and entirely programmed, and it landed just as hard as praise they believed was real. He draws the ethical line immediately after: don't be stingy with praise, but keep it true.
good question. Go a little further.
So I was thinking about this for donation pages, for example, because I just threw that example out. And I was thinking, okay, so if someone arrives at a donation page and let's say there's a pop-up, because we know there's a lot of fall off from those pages, right? And so if there was a pop-up that said, oh my gosh, we're so glad you're here. Thank you so much for being a part of blank. We are, you're 30 seconds away from blank. And then as they were filling out the form, because there's drop off there too, if there was like a, you know, this happens on forms sometimes where it's like 50% of the way there or something like that. Or if they filled in one line and it said, you're almost done, 15 more seconds until we can blank. And then they're celebrated after making the donation. How much that might improve or sort of catalyze the behavior on the page?
I think you're right. And let me break it down to just generic shine and personalized shine. So in terms of generic shine, certainly letting people know they're using the tool correctly. Oh, you're 25%. Because a lot of times you'll use these digital tools and they don't affirm that you're actually using it correctly. Now, that seems really basic, but too often it's like, well, I'm waiting here. Like I was filling in a form yesterday and it had multiple pages and it was like so confusing. So I did not feel successful using that form. And then that feeling creeped over into the brand that I was interacting with. It tarnished the brand. But yes, you have just generic, like functional, like you're doing this right. Keep going. You're doing it right. And then you have generic feedback, like your donation is going to help save these old growth redwoods. Thank you so much. And you're leaving these redwoods for the next generation. That can be generic feedback that gives probably most of the donors a feeling. Feeling of success. But if you can personalize it, and it's more challenging, but you could imagine, I'm going to keep going with the Redwoods preservation. If it said, you are leaving a legacy for your children, your children, Jennifer and Mario and Brian and their grandkids and grandkids will be able to enjoy the Redwoods because of what you just did. Notice that's like a even more potent version of the generic one. So it doesn't always have to be that personal. And sometimes it's, at least with digital, it's hard to do that. Now, in person, it's easy, right? And that's what people should be doing is being very specific about the praise, but it can be done more and more. But the bottom line is don't get too wrapped up and it has to be personal. Just tell people. I mean, even if you think people know that they're saving the redwoods or they're saving the coral reefs or what have you, make that really clear and salient and celebrate that person for what they're doing. Don't assume they know that they're having that kind of impact. Just in general, people never get tired of being praised. Like nobody says, oh, stop complimenting me. Stop telling me I'm doing a good job. Nobody ever does that. So for the most part, we go the wrong direction and we are too stingy with our praise or our affirmations of success. And I'll just say one more thing about I did experiments in the mid-90s with computers that gave out praise because I wanted to see the impact of that. And it was super powerful, even though they knew it was a machine saying, you did a good job on this. It was super powerful. And in one of the conditions of the experiment, and this shows how powerful it is, they knew the praise was false because I told them going into the experiment, like what the tells you is totally false. It's totally programmed. It has nothing to do with you. But yet it had the same impact as the people that thought the praise was true. In other words, the way I interpreted the data and the results is people are so starving to feel like they're succeeding and having a positive impact in the world that no matter where it comes from, even a fortune cookie, they're going to suck it up and go, oh yeah, that's true. So let's not be stingy with our praise, but it needs to be true. I think that's just an ethical issue, the most positive true thing you can tell somebody.
Yeah. Oh my gosh. I love that. And so I want to go back to the fog behavior model for a second. And I want to talk a little bit about the ability and motivation pieces of it. So let's maybe let's start with the ability piece because I think the motivation one is going to take us even deeper. But from an ability perspective, you talk about a few different ways. So for fundraisers or for nonprofit leaders who are having trouble, you know, fundraising, probably what their first inclination to say is that they are lacking ability in some way or another. So what's the first thing you want them to think about?
So within the context of ability, which is how hard or easy something is to do, there are five factors and think of it as a chain. You know, so there's think of these, this chain with five links. And some of the links might be really strong and some might be really weak. That's the right way to think about it. And that's a model that I call the ability chain. One is how much time does it take? Okay. If somebody's really busy and your donation page requires 15 minutes, then time's going to be a really weak link for them. If somebody's retired and they have all the time in the world, then it's going to be a strong link for them. So notice it's different for different people. The next one is money. How much money does it require? So let's say I want people to, I want my students to come here to Maui and take classes with me. Well, they may not have the money to do it, okay? But if I could get them here for $29, maybe get them. So next you consider money. And there's not really an order. I'm just going through the five links in the chain. So it's how much time, how much money. Now, somebody who's super rich, money will probably be a strong link. How much thinking does it require? How much cognitive effort? So if it's like, hey, go through this and do this and then put in this tax thing and then figure out what category and then go find the industry code. Oh my gosh, a lot of thinking. And then the next is how much physical effort does it require. And I know we're talking about online forms, but click, click, scroll, scroll down. That's part of physical effort. And this is part of what I did yesterday. Mallory, I don't think I'm exaggerating when there are 10 pages. I had to scroll and the iPad really wasn't that responsive on every single one to go find the next button. I had to sign all 10 pages and the signature thing wasn't working. And so, yes, it took time, but the tediousness of it, that's physical effort. It was tedious. And then the fifth link is kind of an odd one, but if it causes somebody to break their routine, then it's no longer simple. So what you want to do is make it fit into their routine. And from a fundraiser, Perspective that might be when does your potential donor typically make donations? What time of year or what time of day or what day of the week? And so you want to fit it into their routine rather than, you know, calling them in like May and say, donate now. And they're like, no, I typically donate in December or whatever that happens, right? So you want to think time, money, physical effort, mental effort, and don't cause them to violate or change the routine.
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