Transcript
Phil Agnew (0:00)
No. Stop talking, Phil. Oh, this is so hard. That is me hours into an agonizingly difficult challenge which was designed to help me go viral on YouTube. I had added a powerful psychological bias into this challenge, which was designed to make people pay attention to me and my YouTube video. And this bias, well, it could help me go viral. Today I share my latest experiment. Can I use a psychological nudge to create a viral YouTube video? Let's find out.
Natalie Gingrich (0:42)
The OPS Authority, hosted by Natalie Gingrich.
Phil Agnew (0:45)
Is brought to you by the HubSpot.
Natalie Gingrich (0:46)
Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Every week on the OPS Authority, you'll hear transformational stories of powerhouse business owners who value business operations. You can't ignore the back end pieces that have to work together and flow smoothly to build a brand, grow a community or disrupt an industry. If the operations side of your business is a mess, putting out fires will always take priority, leaving no room for the behavioral science improvements that I think every business needs to make. So listen to the OPS Authority wherever you get your podcasts.
Phil Agnew (1:23)
In the five and a half years I've spent creating this podcast, I've encountered hundreds of different biases, all sorts of heuristics and shortcuts that all of us use to make decisions. Some are well known, the scarcity bias for instance, while others are a little niche like the noble edge effect. But there is one nudge that I think is a little bit more powerful than the rest. One that's more persuasive, more attention grabbing and more likely to change behaviour. I'll share a study which I think helps prove it. In 2013, Castro, Samuels and Harman tried to convince chocolate loving kids to eat veg. To do so, they took a novel approach. They gave the children and their families access to a small local garden. They gave the kids ownership over growing the vegetables in the garden and encouraged them to look after and harvest them. Over the course of several months, the children tended to the veg and they sunk effort into harvesting them. And all of this effort changed the children's attitudes. The children in this group, who were overweight, considerably lowered their BMI because they ate more vegetables. Not just the vegetables they harvested, but all sorts of fruit and vegetables at breakfast, lunch and dinner. Many will recognise this bias as the IKEA effect. We prefer products that we've created and children who originally loved chocolate will love vegetables that they've harvested themselves. Michael Norton in 2012 found that adults prefer self built IKEA wardrobes over expert built alternatives. We love our own creations. Coach Kocher and Wilcox took this principle further. In their 2022 study, they asked some amateur golfers to assemble their own putters. These were high quality putters, but the golfers needed to attach the grip and tweak the position. Kocher and Wilcox sent these golfers out to play a round of golf and it turns out those who created their own putter performed better than those who used an identical pre assembled putter. Assembling their own putter made the golfers play better than those using the exact same putter just pre assembled. But this nudge doesn't just affect the individual. No, merely putting effort into something changes other people's perspective as well. For example, one study cited in Ayelet Fishback's book Get it Done found that many people believe mouthwash that causes an unpleasant burning sensation in the mouth is better at eliminating germs than a pleasant tasting mouthwash. When served two mouthwashes, the one that caused the most burn in the mouth was deemed most effective even though it had no additional mouthwashing chemicals. All of us have a subconscious link between effort and quality. If a mouthwash is more painful to use, we think it must be more effective. I always thought dark roasted strong flavoured coffee was more caffeinated, but I was wrong. I was being influenced, influenced by this bias. The truth is that caffeine content remains the same during each stage of the roasting process. The stronger taste just takes longer to create and it led to my inaccurate perception. One 2009 study cited in the book Methods of Persuasion found a strange finding which makes sense when you consider this bias. Researchers Jostman, Lakens and Schubert found that job applicants have a better chance of getting the job if their resume was attached to a heavy clipboard rather than a lighter clipboard. Why? Well, there is this unconscious link between weight and quality. A heavier clipboard equals a higher quality clipboard. Which led the recruiters to think the applicant may well be more motivated. This bias goes by many names, but in today's show I will refer to it as the input bias. Simply put, the more input you put into something, the higher you and others will value it. The input bias is visible in all types of human behavior behaviour. Your friendship groups may have been dictated by this bias. The legendary researcher Elliot Aronson and his colleague Judson Mills decided to test this hypothesis. They wanted to know if individuals who went through a lot of effort to join a group ended up preferring that group over others who didn't sink effort into joining. In their studies they found college women who had to endure a severely embarrassing initiation ceremony to gain access to a sex discussion group. Those who went through the embarrassing initiation ceremony convinced themselves that their new group and its discussions were extremely valuable, even though Aronson and Mills had rehearsed the other group members to make the conversation as worthless and uninteresting as possible. This is why initiation ceremonies are so important for young students. Those ceremonies bolster the commitment the group members have. One study of 54 tribal cultures found that those with the most dramatic and stringent initiation ceremonies had the greatest group solidarity. It's a bias that's visible in American college girls and ancient Amazonian tribes. Let's use a simple example to showcase this. Say you meet someone you like, someone you want to be friends with. How could you get them to like you? Well, one study suggests that you should experience something painful with them. Chip and Dan Heath, in their book the Power of Moments, share that when strangers were asked to perform a painful task together, like submerging their hands into tubs of ice water, they felt a greater sense of bonding than strangers who perform the same task in room temperature water. It's the pain and effort that you experience which solidifies the friendship. All of us value things more when more effort goes into it. We prefer vegetables that we've picked and origami figures that we've created ourselves. We'll like job candidates who print their resume on expensive, weighty paper, and golfers will decrease their handicap if they assemble their own clubs. This same bias could affect your friendship groups. Your devotion to your college friends may stem from that simple yet embarrassing initiation ceremony. Perhaps even your partner is a result of this bias. Many couples discover love by experiencing pain together. Putting up with a particularly horrible boss, being part of the same grueling CrossFit club, or perhaps sitting together while cramming for a difficult examination effort changes our perspective. But what does all of this have to do with going viral? Will any of this actually help me achieve my goal of creating a viral video? Well, maybe. See, I've always believed that this bias could be used effectively in marketing. Back in January 2022, I ran my own experiment. To test it, I created two Reddit ads, spending $100 promoting both and targeting them at people in the UK. The posts were remarkably similar. Both prom my podcast both contain the same image, a picture of my five star reviews and my logo. And both contain the same link to my podcast. The only difference was the headlines on the post. I slightly tweaked one of the headlines to emphasize the effort I'd made in creating the podcast, it said. I've spent 480 minutes listening to marketing experts over the past year. Here are the six best marketing lessons I've heard the control Read Learn six memorable marketing lessons with Nudge, the podcast that simplifies the science behind great marketing. Two exceptionally similar posts, but one that showcased the effort I had made the 480 minutes I'd spent interviewing experts. So did this input bias variant perform better? Well, it did dramatically. So redditors were 46% more likely to click on the input bias variant. So stating that I'd spent 480 minutes listening to experts basically made the ad 46% better. Showcasing effort works in marketing. It makes your customers more likely to pay attention and more likely to engage. But this cheap and quick Reddit test isn't really enough to draw lofty conclusions. I can't be sure that the input bias alone will help me create a viral YouTube video. So to test my assumptions, I decided to experiment on some friendly Nudge fans. I interviewed a number of Nudge listeners to see how impactful this nudge really is. All of that coming up after this quick break.