ACRL President’s Program – Hilton Anaheim, California Pavillion D
Dan Ariely – author of Predictably Irrational
Research about decisions regarding pain management – removing bandages…short time, intense pain OR gradual process, less intense pain. Nurses/Doctors believe the former. But they are wrong. In what other areas of life does reality not reflect the practices of experience and good intentions?
Examples of visual illusions – colors of the rubix – the basketballs and the gorilla.
What is the point of this? The point is that our vision is the our most powerful, specialized, highly trained tool we have, but it is subject to failure/structured mistakes.
Decisional Illusions
Organ Donations rates across Nations — what causes some nations to give a lot and others to donate very much less. Some rationalization is that this is cultural but Sweden is has a very high rate of donation, Denmark has a very low rate of donation. Germany has a low rate, Austria a very high rate. What’s the real reason? The question is the form – opt in or opt out. check if you WANT to donate? nope, they don’t check. DON’T want to donate? don’t check and then they are donors. This is the default, and it is the most common selection; the decision that is made by somebody else.
What about professionals? How does this inclination toward the default decision present itself in professional behavior?
When choosing between ibuprofen and hip replacement they choose ibuprofen
When choosing between ibuprofen, piroxicam and hip replacement… they choose hip replacement. Because the decision between the two drugs became too difficult.
The Jam Study
What is more exciting? 6 jams or 24 jams? Approach – 60% will approach if there are 24 jams. 40% will approach the display of 6 jams.
They will try 1.5 jams no matter how many are in the display.
30% will buy from the 6 jam table. 3% will buy from the 24 jam table.
Default Behaviors: The manner in which the question is formed, the display is presented, is very much a driving force in what action we will take.
It’s all about Free Lunch – in economic theory we are told that there are no free lunches.
People do not know they’re preferences
Answer the following:
Please write 3 reasons why you love your significant other? (left side of the room)
Please write 10 reasons why you love your significant other? (right side of the room)
Then ask – how much do you love your significant other, how likely are you to stay in this relationship, have an affair, etc?
The people who had to come up with 3 reasons tend to have a higher response to the second quesion. Most people cannot come up with more that 6 or 7 reasons… and they then start to doubt their love for that person.
This works for whether to buy a BMW as well.
Assymetric Dominance
What do you want? A weekend in Rome all expenses paid? Or a weekend in Paris all expenses paid? Hard decision
What happens if you add another option that is undesirable… having your car stolen?
But what happens if this third option is less significantly less attractive — a weekend in Paris OR a weekend in rome without coffee. People will choose Paris.
Example – Economist online subscription – print-only $125, online-only $125, both – $125.
With all three options, most people choose the both option.
With only two options, most people choose the online-only version.
Do we really understand our choices with regard to sexual attraction?
When given the choice between Tom, Jerry, and ugly Jerry… ugly jerry makes Jerry more popular. In reverse, when presented with Tom, Jerry and ugly Tom…ugly Tom makes Tom more popular.
What this all means is that we really don’t know our own preferences. — We have this problem where we really don’t know what we like, so we use our environment to try to figure out what we like.
Adding finances complicates social relationships.
When we think about gifts things are interesting -
If you invite me to dinner, I can buy you a $50 bottle of wine and present it to you (but i don’t know what you like, so this is really probably a waste of money) or I can show up and give you $50. because I really don’t know what you like/want. But this would be offensive.
What happens when you give a gift and you mention how much money it costs? People get offended again.
Adding finances complicates social relationships.
Daycare example – late parents, if you start charging them $3… more parents are late and later – the guilt disappears.
When you realize that this is an ineffective policy and take the fine away, the guilt does not re-appear.
The moral is that as you rely more on people’s rational, you set them up for more failure.
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Questions -
Q: The Power of Free – why doesn’t free bring more people to libraries? How do we leverage the power of free?
Example of Audi – free oil change for 3 years is about $150. What would the cash benefit have to be for me to make this decision.. about $2000.
Kid and candy – you can get a small candy bar if you give me one hershey kiss. you can get a big candy bar if you give me two hershey kiss. All the kids get the bigger one. But what if you say, you can have the small one for free or you can get the bigger one for one hershey kiss.. all the kids take the free small candy bar even though their ROI is much less. This is the power of free.
So the question is… why aren’t people flocking into the
Issues of “inferences of cost to quality” and the “factor of no regret from lack of use”
- the problem is, when you offer someone something free, their inference is that the free thing is not of quality.
- If people pay for things, they hate to waste it. But if they don’t pay for it, they don’t feel bad for not using.
Q: Library Instruction – trying to convey to students that they pay for these databases so that they will use them.
Telling people that they pay for something is a step forward, but explaining to them how their lack of use of these things is the further step.
Q: Too many databases. Do we have too many choices? Does this cause them not to be used?
It turns out that it is very easy to overwhelm people. The library is a prime example of this – a place of all kinds, or every kind, of information. This causes anxiety and ultimately lack of use. You need to offer more students/users more entry points.
Q: From a management perspective, how do we learn from the lesson of the tire changing example?
Choices – $1000 in cash? or a weekend in the Bahamas? The bahamas vacation would offer more ROI for management. Your employees would be more likely to work harder as a result.
Example – pay people to build items out of legos and pay them per complete item. They will build them and build them, and get paid. In the other condition, have them build them but then destroy them in front of their eyes. The second group will stop building them very quickly.
Q: Incentive systems.
No child left behind – problems:
- A lot of opportunities for gaming the program – example busing students to achieve the averages, movingn students to achieve/avoid the demographic requirements.
- Teaching to the test does not give general skills.
- It is stunting children’s love of learning. It is an extrinsic motivation and when the test is over, they abandon the learning. For example the magic marker contest… kids were drawing all sorts of pictures for prizes. After the contest was over, prizes gone, they didn’t want to see a magic marker ever again.
Q: Libraries and measurable outcomes — we report statistics, but we don’t have financial outcomes.
Libraries need to come up with other measurements of value – methods to gain understanding of how the library positively affects the community that it supports.
Q: in-service days for librarians?
Librarians should start playing a more substantial and role in their communities. It is a central, neutral ground. It is beyond departments and programs.
In order to achieve this, we need to figure out what we want our librarians to be and then we need to train to that outcome.
If we cannot trust our intuitions, we need to do more experiments. Don’t trust what people say, you must always look at what they do.
