Unleashing the power of Commitment by Crawford Hollingworth

Leave a Comment » | 438 Views | 0 Comments » |

Crawford Hollingworth, founder, The Behavioural Architects, explains how we can unleash the power of commitment.

Commitment mechanisms have been used to cope with temptation for thousands of years; in the Odyssey Odysseus orders his men to strap him to the mast of his ship so that he will be able to hear the alluring singing of the Sirens on a rocky island but will be unable to steer the ship closer or to leap into the sea to his death in search of them; he further orders his men to ignore all of his requests to untie him and makes them stuff their ears with wax so they themselves will be immune from the Sirens’ song.

Some more modern versions of strapping yourself to the mast are illustrated below, the key being to ‘commit’ when we are calm, collected and cool, in what we call the rational cold zone. But whatever we commit to we also need the commitment device to work in an emotional hot zone filled with temptation, seduction and less rational behaviour. So how can we tie ourselves to the proverbial masts and stay strapped?

We have heard of highly successful commitment-led sites such as stickK.com in which you take out a contract to lose weight for example. These contracts or bets can have highly creative ‘straps’ like agreeing to donate money to something you hate if you fail to stick to the pledge.

But commitment mechanisms can get even more innovative. For those addicted to checking emails, social networking and scanning Twitter, there are now quite a few applications around to block access to the net or other forms of technology. For example, there is an OS X application which will block access to incoming and outgoing mail servers and certain websites for a predetermined length of time. Once begun, like the Odyssean straps, it is impossible to override, and even restarting your computer or deleting the application will do no good. You simply have to sit it out, going cold turkey in the hot zone! It’s free and downloadable here. Telia, a Swedish telecoms provider offers a similar application and has also set up internet free zones across the country. I love this use of technology to fight technology.

This next example is a little more personal and indicative of the problems of social networking addiction. Nudge blog reported the case of a teenage girl who had tried unsuccessfully to avoid using Facebook during the week so asked her elder sister to change her Facebook password every Sunday night and to give the new password to her the following Friday night and not before so that she could concentrate properly on her schoolwork. It’s a clear demonstration that some of us don’t have the willpower to resist that ‘poke’ in the hot zone.

A more formal version of committing to schoolwork was launched by the University of Chicago and uses the BE concepts of commitment bias and loss aversion to get students to work. The ‘Write In’ program accepts 20 students who pay $50 deposit at the start of the week for a desk space for 4 hours (including coffee and snacks) and commit to showing up at the library at 8.30am each day. On Friday, they get their money refunded and a completion t-shirt if they’ve attended every session in full. It’s popular among many students, especially those writing dissertations or final papers, so much so that they’re increasing the number of sessions. Chicago’s Law School is even setting up its own version – 7 hours for 3 days straight.

Commitment devices can be cruel though, threatening to shame us if we break our commitment. The Dutch Anti-smoking Council designed a Facebook app to help people stop smoking. You set the date you want to quit, upload embarrassing photos of yourself to a special file, and nominate a friend who will have access to these and license to make them public if he/she ever catches you with a cigarette in your hands. Here is the youtube video explaining it.

There are also a multitude of apps to help us deal with our weaknesses in a drunken hot zone such as drunk Blocker, Bad Decision Blocker, Don’t Dial, Textalyzer or Stupid Phone Calls Blocker all of which allow you to block certain numbers on your phone e.g. ex-boyfriends who you may end up calling 37 times when drunk on a Saturday night. To make it harder for you to contact them when drunk, Stupid Phone Calls Blocker asks you to solve basic maths equations which you may find tricky after several tequilas. Others ask you to nominate a time period to block them i.e. if you know you are going out for a few drinks, you quickly set up the blocker. Once you’ve finalised the time period, the application overwrites the data in your phone’s address book, making it impossible to recover until you relaunch the app after the allotted time has passed.

We all know we are more likely to go for a run if we do it with a friend. The Good Gym has taken this commitment further by adding a powerful social, altruistic element. The Good Gym commits runners to their jog by pairing them with isolated less-mobile people in their area who are often elderly. The paired runners jog to the house of their elderly partner; deliver milk, the paper or a small present, have a brief chat and are on their way again. So the aim of the pairing is not to get the elderly up and running but to forge a social link and improve the quality of life for a large section of the community who suffer from loneliness and isolation. 13% of people over 65 in the UK say that they always or often feel lonely and 17% of those living alone see family and friends less than once a week.

“With ageing you lose a lot of friends. It’s really sad, and it does affect your quality of life. Loneliness is difficult to cope with.” – Joan Boulter, 87.

It also gives people a great reason to go for a run and can increase their own well-being as well as that of the elderly person they are visiting.

“I feel I’m really making a difference to her life. I see her face light up when I walk in, which is lovely.” says Beth, a Good Gym runner.

The Good Gym is currently operating in Tower Hamlets London, but hopes to expand.

How can you use these simple brain tricks to help your customers stick to or adopt some desired behaviour? How could you tap into the power of self-contracting with penalties? Go on beat yourself up over it!

Crawford Hollingworth, founder, The Behavioural Architects.

Read more from Crawford here.