BJ Fogg
A Stanford behavior scientist who directs the university's Behavior Design Lab and created the Fogg Behavior Model, the three part framework of motivation, abil...
“…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”
What the Fundraising · September 2026
Context
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.
Transcript
good question. Go a little further.
…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?
…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…
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…
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