Before you write your next call to action, stop and think: is your list of possible steps people can take to advance your cause going to activate or deactivate them? This is not a trick question. Your compelling case and list of ideas might inadvertently lead to people taking fewer, or less effective, actions rather than engaging in ways that can create meaningful change. Beware: your calls to action might accidentally be deactivating.
To experience this, go shopping for peanut butter and jelly. You will have a limited number of choices, which hardly covers all the fruits available, not to mention the endless combination possibilities. There’s a reason for this and it is explained in a study published in 2000 by Sheena Iyengar “When choice is demotivating: can one desire too much of a good thing?”, or more famously, the Jam Study. They found:
“People are more likely to purchase gourmet jams… when offered a limited array of 6 choices rather than a more extensive array of 24 or 30 choices. Moreover, participants actually reported greater subsequent satisfaction with their selections… when their original set of options had been limited.”
Researchers call this phenomenon “choice overload.” Basically, we like some options but too many options quickly overload us and we either don’t choose, or go with our default. Rather than list 150 things people can do to change the world, start with half a dozen. The shorter list might result in more action, and the longer list might result in no action at all.
Some activists complain that people changing lightbulbs won’t stop climate change. They’re right. Changing a lightbulb won’t solve much, but people making better decisions with the environment in mind will. This one small decision might lead to bigger ones that add up, like choosing renewable energy as source of power at the home. In the grocery the other day, I (Kristen) overheard a person say, “I’d like the happiest fish in the case.” I thought this was an odd request. It turns out it was her way of saying, “I want the fish that was most sustainably caught, without longlines or trawling that is known to kill indiscriminately.” She probably didn’t always care about how her dinner got to her plate; something led her to that. Now she was not only checking labels but asking the fish counter person questions. Now the grocery staff members must have answers. Because she is making responsible decisions, she is more likely to expect that the stores where she shops and her policymakers do the same. Small actions can lead to high expectations, and that is where big change becomes possible.
People don’t jump from, “I have no idea where my food comes from” to testifying before Congress. But you can get them there if you consider how your calls to actions stack up and offer more ambitious actions that make people feel better and better about taking actions. Do you need to start at entry level action? What gets people putting a toe in the water? Then what gives them a chance to dive in and escalate what they are going to do? How can you build confidence and competence along the way so they don’t get deterred and embrace the idea that ‘I can do that’? Action stack in a way that the person taking action sees this as who they are: I am a voter, I am a recycler. When the cause is integrated into a person’s identity, actions become automatic. People also think everyone else should be a voter and recycler, too. Automatic actions become social norms. Social norms are social change.
It is hard to get people to act, especially over and over again. A hack to get them to adopt new actions as behaviors is to habit stack. Habit stacking is adding a new habit to one you already have – adding a new habit of taking medication to the old habit of brushing your teeth before bed. If you want people to write their policy leaders more, connect it to bill paying. That is something many people do on the first of the month. Connect paying rent with writing the Congressperson about making life more affordable.
You don’t want to ask people from a highway billboard to text a message to policymakers about the dangers of texting and driving. One, it is hypocritical. Two, it is unlikely they can take the action if they are trying to be safe drivers. Instead, consider how you might ask people to take action right when they are already thinking about something and when they can take the action. Go back to our gal at the fish counter. If you have a QR code on the counter that says you can see which fish are raised most sustainably by checking here, you’re helping when the help is wanted and matters. You are making action taking plug and play.
People will take an increasingly ambitious set of actions if set up for success to do so. Your job is to set them along a successful path. My dad (Peter) tells a story that he once pulled over at a scenic overlook in Maine. Also taking in the view was a bicyclist. My dad asked the cyclist where he had biked from – and he responded, “I biked across country.” Appropriately impressed, my dad asked how he got fit for the trip, to which the cyclist replied, “I got fit along the way.” He became someone who biked from California to Maine by biking from California to Maine. He had the right equipment, a map, time, and confidence, and hit the road. If you want more people to take more bold actions, give people the tools and confidence they need to act however they can in whatever time they have.
Start with a personal choice – sustainably caught fish or LED bulbs. Then add asking friends to do the same or sharing the choice on social media. That leads to asking the local supermarket to provide information on where all their fresh food is from or asking the hardware store to stop selling incandescent bulbs. This leads to asking policymakers what they are doing to address climate change. If the person is doing their part, they will demand others in a position to do so are accountable.
Not everyone can do everything, and not everything has to matter. Give people compelling ways to do easy things that add up. What starts with jam, fish and a lightbulb makes things a little better – and might make everything a lot better.
By Peter Loge, School of Media and Public Affairs at The George Washington University and Kristen Grimm, Spitfire