Cheater's High

I read a great paper last night from the October (yeah, I am on time with this one) issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology by Nicole Ruedy and some of her colleagues.

What I like most about this stream of research is that they start out with a dialectic hypothesis.  Most research assumes the people feel bad when they do unethical things.  People feel bad when they are anticipating doing something unethical, they feel bad when doing something unethical, and then they feel bad when thinking back on an unethical thing that they have done. 

But they take what you all know is my favorite perspective – “it depends.”  Sometimes, we don’t feel bad at all.  They review a great deal of literature to demonstrate that this is not just sociopaths who have no bad feelings to have.  They are talking about all of us.  And they are not talking about the financial gain we get from some kinds of unethical activities.  There are many kinds of unethical activities where we feel a “cheater’s high” or a “duper’s delight.”  They want to know when, where, and most importantly, why.

And what they find is kind of a sad story about the human condition, but resonates with me and probably most of you.  First, let’s define the context.  If someone is going to get hurt, we don’t feel good about acting unethically.  And if we feel forced into acting unethically, we don’t feel good about that either.  But when we freely choose the behavior and when the only entity that gets hurt is some ambiguous corporation or society at large, there are many cases where we feel good acting unethically.  They speculate that this a combination of the allure of the forbidden fruit, the dopamine rush of immediate gratification, the sense of mastery that we got around constraints or outthought an entrenched opponent on his home turf. 

One of the strengths of the research is that they also looked for ways to explain the previous research where people do report feeling bad.  Otherwise, they haven’t proved anything.  They controlled for self-deception and confirmed that the people in their study knew full well they were acting unethically.  But what they found is that we are very good at self-deception in other ways.  When we are thinking about an unethical behavior in the future, we convince ourselves that we will feel bad if we do it.  And then afterwards, we convince ourselves that we feel bad as a result of having done it.  The cheater’s high that they talk about is the thrill of the moment – the only time we are really honest with ourselves.  It is the people who claim to feel bad who are fooling themselves.  This is the simple phenomenon of self-identity resonance that I have blogged about beforehttp://humanfactors.blogspot.com/2013/10/self-identity-resonance-motivated.html.  We like to think of ourselves as good people, so we really do believe that we will feel bad if we do something unethical.  And we really do misremember that we felt bad when we did it.

In fact, you are probably struggling with some self-identity resonance as you read this.  You probably have at least half of your brain telling you that this research doesn’t apply to you.  Perhaps other people experience cheater’s high during the unethical act and only feel remorse before and after.   But not you.  Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. This doesn’t make you a bad person.  You do feel bad if someone gets hurt.  You just don’t feel bad if it is the proverbial victimless crime.  You are human.

Or maybe this resonates with you right away.  Perhaps you realize or have always realized that you feel this cheater’s high.  Maybe now you don’t feel so bad because you realize that so does everyone else.  Happy to be the bearer of good news for you.

Gamifying the Flash Deal

Most of you know that gamification is an area that I have been very interested in lately.  If you don’t know, gamification is not about designing games.  It is investigating the fundamental mechanics that make games engaging, motivating, and even addictive and then trying to apply those mechanics to other processes, like work, consumer behavior, health care, home life, and education.  This does not mean turning these things into games – that is one of the most common ways of doing it wrong.  It is also not about adding points and badges, which is also a common way of doing it wrong and pejoratively referred to as pointsification or contestification.  In stark contrast, gamification is lot more complicated and comprehensive than that.  There are dozens of game mechanics that make up the gamification toolbox and it generally requires applying quite a few of them to a process in order to have a lasting impact on performance.

OK, so with that introduction, I want to present an application of gamification that I had not thought of until I saw Jamie Madigan’s recent post at the Psychology of Games on Steam’s Summer Sale.  Steam is a store and they had a sale this past summer.  Jamie posted about it in July, but I am just getting around to blogging the ideas that it generated in me.  Perhaps if I apply some of these game mechanics to my blogging, I would get to it faster J. 

What I am going to present to you today is the gamified flash deal.  You all know what flash deals are.  Something is available for a limited time only.    The original versions of Groupon and Woot worked this way.  By putting the time constraint on it, they create the feeling of scarcity (a game motivator).  It is similar to the old infomercial trick of screaming “Limited time offer!!!  Only 3 left !!”  “Only 25 will be sold!!”   In the Web flash deal version, you had to log in (or subscribe to the email notification) every day to find out what it was and to purchase it.  In contrast to the infomercial, they didn’t scream.  They actually made it hard to find to add some mystery (another game motivator).  And you never know what the item might be – the more variety in their offerings the better (the anticipation motivator and the surprise motivator). It also makes you feel special if you are “in the know” (the secret information motivator).   

In some flash deals, a minimum number of people need to commit to buying it before the sale goes through (Groupon’s original model). This adds the social promotion motivator.  If you wanted to buy it, not only do you need to commit, you also need to tell all your friends to buy it too, just in case.  Remember how many times Farmville, and Mafia Wars announcements flooded your Facebook feed from friends who were playing?  Same idea.

We can use reward motivators in several ways.  If you frame the flash deal properly, customers will feel like they have “won” when their purchase goes through.  Perhaps counterintuitively, the more effort they invested in making the deal happen (logging in every morning, recruiting several friends to join) the bigger the reward feels when they win. This winning feeling is one of the reward motivators.  We can add a long term component to this through a loyalty program.  Building up the reward over time based on frequency, volume, duration, etc. can make the reward motivator more powerful. 

The mastery motivator is one that is rarely used with flash deals, but we can add it if we think creatively.  What if getting the flash deal requires first solving some puzzle that is related to the brand or product being sold?  If Groupon offered a $25 certification at American Apparel, perhaps users have to solve a word scramble to figure out the name before they can sign up.  The trick is to balance making it hard enough so that the customer feels that sense of accomplishment, but not so hard that any potential customers might fail or give up before they finish.  Adding effort is OK, but adding “work” is not. 

But now I am getting into mechanics – which are the ways we design the system to elicit and engage the motivators.  The word scramble would be an example of the puzzle mechanic, which leads to the mastery motivator.  Designing the flash deal to be announced at the stroke of midnight and to have a limited supply is a way to use the schedule mechanic to elicit the mastery, scarcity and secret information motivators – because they had to learn the time, make the effort to log in exactly at that time, and be faster than anyone else who tries. 

There are two ways we can elicit the social promotion motivator and the difference illustrates good gamification from weak gamification.  We can elicit the social promotion motivator by automatically posting their successful purchase to their Facebook feed.  But feeling in control is another motivator and this violates control (even as it makes your marketing department happy).  So instead, we make it really really easy for them to do it themselves.  Making it easy increases the chance they will do it (effort wouldn’t work here) and letting them make the decision adds the empowerment motivator.  So have the message already written out, in quotes to make it obvious what would be posted, editable in case they want to change it (but not mandatory in case they don’t), and a one-click activation.

You could add all kinds of loyalty, reward, and competition motivators through a loyalty program.  The cheap way is to award points for purchases and have a leaderboard to help them show off.  But this is an example of extrinsic tangible reward, with is the least effective and shortest term.  When you give points for their spending, it makes it seem like you only love them for their money.  True or not, you don’t want this to be obvious.  Instead, give them points for other actions that still benefit your company but are not directly linked to the purchase.  You can give them points for posting on their Facebook feed or writing a review of the purchased product after they use it.  And instead of points being usable for discounts or free products (which is extrinsic tangible again), use them for more intangible rewards.  Perhaps have t-shirts for the flash deal company (rather than a client) that are not for sale and can only be acquired by being a loyalty program star.  This adds to the feeling special motivator and the social promotion motivator because wearing that t-shirt demonstrates that you are star and anyone who doesn’t know how you got it might ask. 

Randomness is something that adds to the surprise motivator, similar to the mystery motivator.  We can elicit this by having a sale at noon maybe once a month but on unpredictable days and unannounced.   Someone happens to be surfing by the site, sees the sale, and WOW – dopamine rush.  They tell their friends (social promotion) either because they think their friends might want to join or just to show off their luck and good fortune.  Or perhaps every 1000 product reviews you give the reviewer a random award.  One of the special products that I mentioned earlier.  There is no way to know if you are the thousandth reviewer, so you have to keep trying (and keep reviewing).  And if you get it, the feeling of accomplishment kicks in.

If we want to make the scarcity motivator more powerful, we can make it salient.  Have a countdown clock for limited offers.  “Only 10 left, 9, 8, 7 . . . . only 1 left!!!”     

Another motivator that affects many people is the desire to collect.  We collect baseball cards, stamps, shot glasses, baseball caps, etc.  You can leverage this by giving special rewards for the 10^th restaurant deal a customer joins.  You can make this visible by showing it on the page when they log in or posting it to their Facebook page.  “Joe Smith has 8 stamps on his restaurant set, with only 2 to go for a free dinner.”  This increases the motivation for Joe to purchase another restaurant deal because he wants to complete his set, he wants the free dinner, he wants the feeling of winning, and he wants his friends to know all of the above. 

Another mechanic that we can use to help motivate (or prevent demotivation) is onboarding.  When a potential customer hears about all of these great game motivators, they may want to join the fun.  But what chance to they have when there is all this secret information to learn, puzzles to master, sets to start collecting, etc.  What can we do to make this onboarding process easier and less intimidating?  “Join now and get two stamps on your restaurant card.”  Or give new users a button to solve the word scramble if they can’t figure it out – can be used up to 2 times before it disappears. 

There are so many more of these that we can add.  And this is just for a flash deal service.  Imagine what you can do for a more complex environment like high school. 

Hands free Texting while driving

I can't tell you how many times I have gotten into this discussion/debate/argument with people.  I think many people have finally come to the realization that talking while driving is just as bad with a hands-free device because it is the mental distraction of the social interaction that causes most of the problem.  But they don't see it with texting because you don't have that social link.  With no social and no hands, it can't be as distracting can it?  Yes, actually, it can.

To HF practitioners, it is a no-brainer.  But it is so counter-intuitive to the typical driver that they refuse to believe it.  Great example of motivated reasoning (finding reasons to believe what makes your life easier) and commitment bias (finding reasons to justify what you have done in the past). 

People out there.  Texting while driving doubles your reaction time to important things like a car cutting you off on the highway or a small child running into the road to get her ball. Hands-free and hands-on are both double.  No difference.  If you hands free text while driving you are going to kill someone someday.  Perhaps yourself.  Please stop.

Luckily, David Pogue has finally been convinced.  He has some clout because he has been the tech writer for the New York Times for 14 years and was a denier for most of them.  (real time update - he just quit the NYT today and moved to Yahoo.  But he switched sides on the handsfree texting first).

The need to belong

Everyone who is either a teacher, a parent, a caring sibling, a mentor, a friend, a boss, a coworker, or . . . .I think I have everyone covered here somewhere - needs to read this.  I have blogged about this effect before, but this article is a great summary.  It captures a visceral and resonating story that happens to be true and almost tragic. 

We all have a strong need to belong to a group.  Of course this is adaptive - being part of a tribe added a lot to survivability compared to living alone.  But the nuances of this need can teach us a lot.

First, we can think about people who are part of a racial, ethnic, or religious minority.  It is harder to feel a sense of belonging simply because there are fewer people in whom to find a social group that you like.   There are no guarantees that you are going to have things in common with the other members who are nearby.  The digital world helps, but you can't meet all your friends on Facebook. 

Second, we can think about people who choose to join a rare group based on the career, hobby, or other interests.  Kids who like science are often made fun of because they are less common than the kids who like recess.  And what if you happen not to like the other five kids in the science club? 

It is even worse if you have both.  If you are an ethnic minority who pursues a rare career (like the woman in the article), it is really hard to find a strong cohort of friends.

Now we have to add on the psychological piece.  The feelings of stereotype threat and belonging uncertainty make it harder.  And since these are unconscious processes, you don't even realize when they lead you to give up your real passion and pursue something more "normal" for the larger group you fit in to. 

So why did I start off by asking teachers and parents to read this instead of inspiring the Hispanic, visually impaired, Muslim girl to pursue her love for quantum physics?  Because these things are really hard to recognize in yourself.  Instead (or rather in addition), it would be great if teachers could pay attention for students with counter-stereotype interests and help them along.  Bosses could do the same for their employees who have good job skills but seem to be spending lunch alone.  Friends. siblings, and co-workers might not have the position of power, but they have perhaps more social influence. 

Form follows feeling

New rule for design: form follows feeling.

As these articles (here and here) from Medium about Starbucks'  architectural design illustrate,
emotional design seems to be trumping functional design.  Is this an advance?


I have a few feelings about this as a trend.  The original focus of the science behind human factors has been functionality, usability, ease of learning, and much more "objectively measurable" performance indicators.  But the field (since Norman's Emotional Design) and my own practice has since evolved to understand that emotion and function are not dual systems but are tightly integrated.  This is a fundamental part of the brain's wiring, so we have no choice but to take it this way.  I find it more interesting too, as my previous blog posts have shown (recently for example here and here).

And reading the articles about Starbucks (and having been one of those "flying solo"), I can appreciate that this is just as important as an ergonomically effective chair and a table that can fit my laptop and notes.

But I don't think it is one or the other.  I think that the challenge going forward will be to create designs that support the functionality that users need, the performance levels that they need, and the emotional needs for that context.

The hardest part of this challenge will be prioritizing each context for how much of each a given design context requires.

The blindness of power

This paper explains a lot of bosses I have had.  It is a study of the phenomenon of self-anchoring and how it increases for people in positions of power. It makes them blind to the thoughts and feelings of those around them.

Self-anchoring is something you have probably experienced personally, both in yourself and in others around you.  None of us can truly know what is going on in someone else’s head, so we have to make the best guess that we can.  And since the person we know the best is our self, our estimate of what the other person is thinking is based largely on our prediction of what we would be thinking if we were in their shoes.  This makes some sense logically, especially if the other person is similar to us – perhaps in our family or a co-worker or a friend.  I have blogged about this before as it relates to our mirror neurons.

What makes this paper interesting is that they focused on people in positions of power.  Not even very much power - they just interviewed college students about their relationships with their peers and categorized them as high or low peer-influence based on their answers.  Then they had them go through various activities that required the students to judge the thoughts, opinions, and emotions of other people.  The study found that students who generally exert more influence over their peers are worse at estimating what other people are thinking.  These students have much more self-anchoring - basing their judgment of others on what they themselves would think in that situation.  They unconsciously assume that everyone else thinks the same way that they do. 

The study used several variations and found the same result pretty consistently.  In the first study, the powerful people were asked to assess the personality traits of other people.  Their answers showed that they classified these other people using descriptions of their own traits.  Students who were in the low-influence category didn't.  In the second study, the powerful people estimated the consensus of a group, and assumed the group agreed with them much more than they really did.  Again, low-influence students did not.  In the third study, the powerful people were asked to assess the emotions of people in photos who had vague facial expressions. The emotions they guessed were largely based on the emotion that the powerful person was feeling at the time. Their bias was much greater than that exhibited by the low-influence students doing the same thing.

So does this remind you of powerful people you know?  A domineering boss.  I parent who "wears the pants" in the family?  An older sibling?  A friend that likes to make decisions for the group?  It is often not that they are trying to force their opinions on you.  In part it is just blindness - they really think you agree with them.  You really want to see "that" movie, have "that" for dinner.  You really have bought into the new company policy. 

User Experience hinges on the little things.

One of the challenges of designing effective user experiences is that we can get so many things right but one small oversight can result in an annoyed, frustrated, or confused user.   It might be one confusing label among many well designed labels, but one that everyone has to get through during the initial use of the system (e.g. hard to find button on a shopping site, or a hard to figure out text box on a registration form).  Just one confusing widget in the midst of hundreds of well-designed widgets and the drop-out rate skyrockets. 

So here is my example for today.  My university just invested in the next generation of enterprise-scale telephony.  It probably doesn’t compare to the high end phone systems that some cutting edge tech companies have, but for a university it is quite an advance.  I can make video calls, conference calls, forward calls, and there are a few features I haven’t explored yet.  Good UI so far.

But the plastic handset feels cheap and doesn’t fit snug to my ear.  The weight is unbalanced and the earpiece is too small.  I am pretty sure that Cisco spent a lot more time on the technology UI and didn’t give the handset much thought.  After all, with all of these cool features, who cares about some plastic?  But the UX is ruined.  I cringe at the thought of a long phone call because I will have to hold that “thing” against my ear for an extended time.