Emotions at Work

Companies investigate employee satisfaction, engagement, wellbeing for a variety of reasons:

• High Recruitment costs;
• High turnover is bad for business;
• The role employees play in the final product, particularly in services;
• Inertia / trendiness. 

Most of these investigations are focused on rationally objective topics such as availability of physical resources for employees to do their jobs properly and presence or absence of opportunities for individual professional development etc.

While acknowledging the importance of such features, I believe that an approach based exclusively on rational-objective measures is, at least, incomplete. I propose that, alongside these objective rational measures, HR managers should investigate emotions experienced by employees in relationship with their jobs and co-workers.

Why Investigate Emotions at Work?

Employees spend a large proportion of their time at the workplace and develop complex relationships with co-workers, superiors (managers) and external stakeholders.

Considering the complexity of interactions and the length of time spent at work, it is natural for employees to experience a carousel of emotions at the workplace.

Emotions in marketing research

Marketers and advertisers have long known that emotions play a big role in decision making and behavior and advertising has been addressing emotions for (at least) the last 50 years. Market research was (is) a bit slower to adopt the investigation of consumers’ emotions, but now there are methodologies that do just that.

If emotions are highly important in purchase and consumption decisions and behaviors, it simply is unreasonable to ignore the effects emotions have in behavior at the workplace.

Undoubtedly, at the workplace people (strive to) behave in a professional manner and try to be as rational as they can. Nonetheless, emotions still play (an unconscious) role in the interactions people have at work and in the levels of dedication they put into their jobs.

An employee’s work dedication will be influenced by her emotions towards colleagues and managers. Imagine two (fictional) employees:

(1) Stephan who feels contempt towards his manager and experiences disgust in relationship with one or two colleagues.  

(2) Jack who feels pride when thinking about his manager and experiences anger in relationship with one or two colleagues.

If Stephan and Jack do exactly the same job in very similar companies, then their overall wellbeing, likelihood of searching for a new job and even performance will be rather different. Contempt and disgust are emotions that it is very hard to get over.

Sure, Stephan can work for a manager towards who he feels contempt, but that will require a lot of willpower and we know that we don’t have infinite self-control. Stephan will, probably, be able to have minimal interactions with the colleagues who disgust him, but not much more than that. The employee’s dedication will be very low. Most likely, Stephan will just perform his tasks without experiencing any intrinsic pleasure (gratification). Sooner or later, Stephan’s team will need him to put-in an extra-effort and he’ll just say: “sorry, not my job / sorry the shift ended 5 minutes ago”.

Jack, however, will probably happily accept the challenge of putting-in an extra-effort to support the team because he’s proud of working for his manager. Being angry with a co-worker is something that one can get over and, maybe, that very anger drives Jack to “fight” and prove himself to his colleagues.  

4 Behavioral Science Reasons Why Recently Dead Artists’ Album Sales Sky-Rocket

A couple days ago, David Bowie passed and (apparently) his albums sell like warm bread during a famine. Nothing New! A few years ago, after Michael Jackson’s death the same thing happened (though, then with Michael Jackson albums; Bowie’s albums didn’t sell any better than before MJ’s death).

While from a Normative Economics point of view, this sky-rocketing sales phenomenon might seem irrational or, at least, puzzling, in fact, there are very good reasons (explanations) that come from behavioral science.

1: SALIENCE – Huge Media Exposure. While many music fans knew about David Bowie (read any recently dead musician), his name and music wasn’t in the media all that much in recent times. However, because he was (used to be) famous, the media from the USA to Romania and from the UK to Singapore mentioned his death accompanied by some kind of eulogy on his remarkable career.

When something is (very) salient, people tend to give it attention and even buy it.

2: SCARCITY. We are all suckers for things that are scarce. ONLY 1(2) ticket(s) left! When someone dies, they’re gone forever (famous quote by Captain Obvious), hence people want to not miss out on the last few albums by Bowie (or whoever).

This is particularly interesting. The fact that scarcity (not miss out on the occasion) motivates people to buy is well known for decades. The interesting twist is that music by a certain artist or any kind of information-product cannot run out. David Bowie’s music is already in digital format, which means that it can be multiplied endlessly. It goes the same with music from any other singer, with books, movies etc.

While the death of a singer means that (s)he will not produce more music, it does not mean that existing music will run in short supply. In fact, the music pieces that made someone famous (usually) are quite old by the time of the artist’s death. Thus, what is bought by many people is, in fact, old products.

Just as a note: New music by dead singers was released after their deaths… that is: previously unreleased old recordings (mixes).

3: SOCIAL CONTAGION. When the news gets out that lots of people are doing (buying) something, other people will follow (imitate) and do (buy) the same thing. This is more the case when the others have something in common with the decision maker (buyer). In this case, they are all Bowie fans.

4: STATUS ENHANCING THROUGH (COSTLY) SIGNALING. While owning a Bowie album was rather banal for most music fans, owning one of the (last) albums sold after his death is something worthy of talking about with friends, acquaintances, prospective mates (girlfriends / boyfriends) etc. In a nutshell, buying a Bowie album these days will give the buyer a reason (pretext) to brag (self-advertise) to relevant others.

RIP David Bowie and all other singers & artists who passed away! 

What Is NOT Happening: The Wisdom of the Insect Screen

When we analyze a situation (or simply are awed by it), we look at what is happening and, naturally, try to understand why. When designing something or when working on a new product / service, we focus on what it enables us (people) to do.

This is all perfectly natural, yet it is only (I dare say, small) part of the picture. When analyzing a situation we need to try and see What is not happening. Of course, pigs don’t fly and aliens don’t land in your backyard, but these are extreme examples. Whenever something happens, many (related or not) other things don’t happen. If it is too abstract, it will make lots of sense in a couple of paragraphs.

When designing / working on a new product or service the focus is on what it will enable people to do (better). Very rarely, we focus on what the product or service will prevent people from doing. This is only natural, but, nonetheless, what a product / service prevents from happening is at least (equally) important.

The Wisdom of the Insect Screen

On a personal note: For a long time I had in mind the notion of what isn’t happening and non-events on a very abstract level, but only recently found a great, down to earth, illustration: The Insect Screen.

When my wife and I moved to the Washington DC area (USA), we didn’t fully realize the issue with insects (it was early March and there was snow). Virginia is a warm and humid area – a paradise for bugs. When we picked the apartment in which we now live, we took for granted the insect screens at the windows. For those who don’t know, an insect screen is a fine-metal-wire-grid fixed on the outside of (opening) windows that allows for the circulation of air and prevents insects from entering.

That’s all good and rather simple. It’s not rocket science and makes perfect sense. Moreover, the product – insect screen – does what it is supposed to do: it prevents insects from entering the house. It also enables people to open windows without having to be concerned about flies, mosquitos and other bugs creating nuisance.

The insect screen, however, has further implications. While it was designed to keep insects out, it also makes it difficult for things to get out of the apartment through the windows.

A couple of days ago, a Facebook friend posted that her cat took a dive from the 6^th (7^th by American standards) floor. While I’m glad that the cat is alive (though a bit shook-up), I have to say that this accident wouldn’t have happened if the windows had (fixed) insect screens.

In my country of birth (Romania), though not only, many people living in apartment buildings have a habit of throwing out trash out the window. While most often this restricts to cigarette buds, shaking out carpets, blankets or table cloths, sometimes it happens to be larger items such as trash bags. Many apartment buildings have small yards around them, but these behaviors happen even in buildings that are facing directly to the sidewalks of large streets and passers-by might get some breadcrumbs on their heads.

These negligent, inconsiderate and even anti-social behaviors would be impossible if windows would have (fixed) insect screens.    

On a more positive note, while insect screens are designed to keep out insects, they also keep out other things such as leaves, flying plastic bags, birds and even large rain drops. Insect screens are impotent when there’s a large rainstorm, but if the rain is mild, you can still keep windows opened without having to worry about moping the floor.

If a banal product such as the insect screen has so many non-event implications, shouldn’t you think creatively on what your product’s non-event implications are?  

The Nudge is Not Enough! The Love Story Between Behavioral Science and Practical Applications

A couple of weeks ago I published this post on BehavioralEconomics.com 

Thank you Alain Samson for the invitation.

A romantic relationship goes through various stages from early dating to marriage and, in about half of all cases, divorce. It begins with flirting and continues with that essential first date. If that goes well, it is followed by more dates. If things go OK and the chemistry is good, the relationship will go to the next level: one partner offering the other a shelf in their closet. Sooner than many realize, this leads to the natural question of Why pay two rents? followed by a de-facto living together. After a while, one of the partners pops the BIG question: Will you marry me?

The relationship between academic or theoretical behavioral science (let’s call him THEORY) and applied behavioral science (let’s call her PRACTICE) is not much different from a romantic relationship.

It was quite hard for THEORY to get that first date with PRACTICE, but luckily it happened.

In hindsight, the seminal papers of Kahneman and Tversky on heuristics and biases and on prospect theory published in mid and late 1970s were not enough, at the time, to get PRACTICE to accept the first date.

Fortunately, after about 20 years of flirtation, that first date happened. It was in mid and late 1990s, when Thaler and Benartzi developed and analyzed early implementations of the Save More Tomorrow program which helped (American) employees to save more for retirement by bridging the intention-action gap. In very brief, at every pay raise a person’s savings rate automatically increased (e.g. from 3% to 4%). The automated escalation of savings rates helped most people keep their commitment to save more, while the coupling with pay raises eluded the miserable feeling of losing money out of one’s current paycheck (i.e. loss aversion identified by Tversky and Kahneman).

Occasional dates happened between THEORY and PRACTICE after that, but neither side was taking the relationship too seriously.

The book Nudge (2008) by Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler showed that THEORY and PRACTICE have a shot at a serious relationship. The establishment of the Behavioral Insights Team (UK Nudge Unit) in 2010 was equivalent to PRACTICE offeringa shelf in its closet to THEORY. As in any romantic relationship, THEORY brought in more and more of its things into PRACTICE’s apartment. Now in 2015, they have (almost) de-facto moved in together.

Throughout their relationship, THEORY and PRACTICE have enjoyed making nudges… those small, relatively inexpensive, supposedly irrelevant changes in choice architecture that lead to potentially large changes in behavior – tax collection, college enrollment rate, savings rate, sales etc. Simply put, nudges are small changes that have a large impact on behavior. The result of THEORY and PRACTICE’s union.

However, the Nudge is Not Enough!

Indeed nudges or behaviorally informed interventions have (considerably) improved several areas of public and private services. Most of the time, these small interventions are more than welcomed. Simplifying and structuring choice related information is great simply because everyone hates filling in endless forms and making complicated choices between things they are clueless about (such as Ethiopian food).

Nudges are, most often, great! Nonetheless they are not enough.

The shortcoming of nudges is that most often they are simply tweaks augmenting a pre-existing service or policy.

While they can be beautiful, intriguing and occasionally elegant, nudges are just augmenting (improving) an existing service / policy regardless of that service’s (policy’s) quality, appropriateness or fitness.

For example, an education institution optimizes the choice architecture of its forms in order to smooth the actual application and enrollment processes, resulting in more students joining the institution’s programs. This nudge does not change the service provided. The additional students will attend the exact same courses, go through the exact same stages (from enrollment to graduation) as before the nudge was applied. While for the additional students who joined because of the improved choice architecture attending more education might be beneficial, it is possible for them to be rather unhappy since the courses might be boring and irrelevant.

Getting more people into schools or other forms of (adult) education is generally beneficial for everyone involved. We can use behavioral science insights to increase enrollment and decrease drop-out rates. But what if we could use the same knowledge to design better education services?

For example, night-school or other forms of evening-learning are rather popular among adults. However, after a full day at work, System 2 is fatigued and self-control resources are almost depleted. Therefore, it might be a good idea to adapt both the content and teaching methodology to this cognitive reality.

Applying nudges to traffic tickets in order to increase payment compliance (i.e. voluntarily paying the fine) will not solve the issue of traffic safety. If anything, it will continue to feed a carrots-and-sticks approach to influencing human behavior. What if we could use existing knowledge in behavioral science to design safer roads? OK. That would cost a lot of money and will take a lot of time. But what if we could (re-)design insurance services that encourage safer driving behavior?

It is time for THEORY and PRACTICE to take their relationship to the next level: from Nudging to Behavioral Design.

In his book “Slim by Design” Brian Wansink says: it is better to work with human nature than against it. The main thesis of his book is that instead of emphasizing on counting calories and self-control reliant diets, it is much better to (re-)design eating spaces, homes and shops. This way, eating better (healthier) is the natural thing to do and not an eternal fight between temptation and self-control.

In the same line of thought, we can design public policies and (private) services that work with human nature and not against it. While nudges add a (thin) layer of human-friendliness, these behaviorally designed policies and services incorporate behavioral science knowledge in their very core.

Car Insurance

Insurance companies truly and deeply hate when their clients have car accidents, leading to expensive repairs, because insurers have to pay the bills. Although this is the very nature of the insurance business, your insurer would love to take your risk of minor accident from 2% to 1.9% and/or have to cover the damage of a broken bumper than that of a full-frontal collision, while at the same time keep on charging you the same $400 / 6 months.

To some extent, behavioral design can create a car-insurance service that promotes safe(r) driving behavior. Part of the risk is purely random, while another part is (to some extent) related to behavior. Behavioral design can address the latter. Car manufacturers are already doing a lot to prevent drivers from not wearing a seat-belt or driving way above the speed limit. Insurance companies, too, can contribute to encouraging preventive behavior.

For example, in Europe cars need to go through regular maintenance and mandatory checks. An insurance company has the possibility of sending out customized reminders (nudges) when the check date is near. Such an approach will decrease the risks associated with unfit vehicles on the roads. Similarly, insurance companies can provide as a default option tracking devices that monitor driving behavior, provide real-time feedback, implement social-benchmarking on risky driving (e.g. 63% of drivers drive safer than you) and offer financial incentives (i.e. lower rates) for safe driving behavior. Moreover, the device can locate the car if it is stolen.

Health and Well-being

Health is a broad area in which nudges are popular — and for very good reasons. There are many examples of nudges for hand-washing, treatment adherence, in-store interventions for purchasing vegetables etc. The major challenge is to design health insurance and health-care services that incorporate behavioral science knowledge in a systemic manner.

As in the car-insurance situation, health-insurance companies (public authorities) hate having to pay large bills on treatments for conditions that could have been prevented or are delivered in a sub-optimal manner (e.g. emergency rooms overcrowded by non-emergencies).

For example, the treatment for diabetes is quite expensive and has to occur for a lifetime. Promoting more appropriate eating behaviors in order to prevent the disease actually makes (economic) sense for health-insurance companies (authorities). Nudges can be useful and are welcomed. However, things are a bit more complicated; simple augmentations of pre-existing frameworks might not do. Rather complex preventive programs that have behavioral science at their core are needed. Texting individuals in high-risk (of diabetes) populations reminding them to eat more fruits might be useful. However, a more direct approach such as fruits for junk-food exchange program might do more. Services that provide regular home-delivery of easy to prepare (eat) healthier food already exist (e.g. Hello Fresh) and can be an inspiration for preventive health services provided by insurance companies.

Another behavioral design approach to decreasing health-related expenses and increasing health well-being is to improve the financial well-being of the most vulnerable population groups. It may seem a bit awkward for a health insurance company (authority) to care about the financial well-being of the poor. However, health and financial wellbeing are inter-related to some extent. Moreover, a critical situation in one will lead (sooner or later) to serious problems in the other.

Unlike middle class or more affluent people, the (very) poor cannot absorb financial shocks such as car-repairs, replacing a broken fridge etc. Short-term money lenders are eager to offer loans for such emergencies, but the interest rates are skyrocketing (e.g. 500% per year). Since most of these individuals live from one pay-check to another it is virtually impossible to repay the loan, leading to a vicious cycle of debt and misery. When caught in such a debt-trap, it is very likely that some will neglect their health, eat cheaper and less healthy food, work 16 hours a day etc. All of these behaviors will, ultimately, result in health problems and high healthcare bills.

Offering financial safety-nets for vulnerable categories might be a good idea for preventing serious health-problems and subsequent large medical bills.  One solution would be to offer emergency small loans (e.g. up to $1000) with zero interest that would be repaid throughout one year in the health-insurance bill.

Applying nudges – augmenting existing service or policy frameworks – constitutes considerable progress similar to that of going from dating to de-facto living together in a romantic relationship.

Since the relationship looks and feels good, there is no reason for not taking it further. Behavioral science is so rich in potential applications that we should not restrict ourselves to highly effective, yet superficial, applications.

Soon the time will come to ask the BIG question:

Will you do Behavioral Design with me?

Check out my new website www.naumof.com 

Explicit and Implicit Physical Cues for Social Norms

In many models describing human behaviour, including my own 4D model, social influences and the physical environment are seen distinctly. However, there are situations in which there are physical cues of social norms.

Sometimes these cues can be explicit and prescriptive. They are physical objects that clearly state what the (formal) norm is. In this example, the signs clearly means: 

Your dog shouldn’t poop in my front yard.

Other times, elements of the physical environment represent cues of descriptive social norms. If there’s trash on the street, then it is socially acceptable to throw some more trash. 

The presence of lots of cigarettes buds suggests that

 it is OK to smoke here.

Which one do you think is stronger? The Explicit Prescriptive norm or the Implicit Descriptive Norm?