What are the dots that connect the broken window theory, unique baby names and a 200-square-foot cafe on a high street in the city? Behavioural scientists called it the ‘social nudge.’ In common parlance it is described as monkey see - monkey do :)
There is a (relatively) new cafe on 12th Main, Indiranagar. It is unlike the regular cafes that seem mostly empty, with inviting interiors and where one can spend many hours just looking outside the window.
Instead, this one has a crowd of people not less than 50, on weekends it could easily go up to 100 standing outside, jostling for space for their share of their morning idli. Whenever I passed by, I always wondered what is so special about their idli? Turns out, many others think like me. I had a neighbour who travelled 12 km one Sunday morning to unravel this mystery. She did not come back with any revealing insights. The idli was the same as any other. Many days later, I happened to make a pit spot there. I noticed the cafe operates from a space that was 200 sq. feet. They have a partially open kitchen and a cash till. So by default, anyone who is a customer is standing in the outside space. They save on high street rents and also pull the crowds by the sheer number of people crowded there. Because monkeys see - monkeys do. Their crowds spill over onto the 12th Main. I guess that must have prompted them to rent out the space occupied by Naturals next door. A win-win for both. One business gets space, the other gets footfalls.
Coming back to the ‘social nudge’ - what makes it such an interesting idea is while it is powerful, to unravel the power of a social nudge to create a desirable outcome, one has to wade through the sticky terrain of social norms, before one can taste sweet success. In some cases, like for the cafe business owners it could have been happenstance. How do we create this intentionally?
Norms become hardwired and become like the holy cow that no one questions. They are right because everyone is following them and because everyone is following them, these ideas start to seem even more right. Is there a circuit breaker that we could use to initiate behaviour change?
There is a school of thought that believes if we dig deep and think hard, we will stumble upon that one disruptive thought that would somehow create a behaviour change. I am not from that school of that and hence I don't believe there is a secret sauce that will do the trick. What instinctively makes sense to me and what I have seen over and over again is that like the wheels of time, the wheels of change also turn slowly.
Overnight changes do happen but those are triggered by disasters staring at us in the face. We all learnt to wash our hands and wear a mask. People still do, which reveals another aspect of behaviour - that once behaviour change takes on a certain momentum it is difficult to expect a sudden halt or reversal.
So what can break a default thinking/doing pattern? I got this answer from a Potato Trader in Agra who shared his native business wisdom as part of the interview I did with him. Stay with me!
The business of trading in perishables is not for the faint-hearted. Fortunes are made and can get wiped out overnight. What set him apart from the rest was his mindset. He said, “If I suffer a loss of 2 lakhs today from my potato business, I will find a way of recovering the money from the same business.” It sounded over simplistic at first but when he explained how; it made complete sense. He was living the maxim problems and opportunities are two sides of the same coin.
The potato-trader logic made me realise - If any aspect of social behaviour has got intensified due to norms, the way to initiate momentum in a new direction would also come from creating new social norms.
It cant be just information or a catchphrase that creates the shift. If that were the case we would all have coloured hair by now because we are all worth it!
The social behaviour comes from a belief (not a fact)
Fact: 90% of Brain Growth Happens Before Kindergarten.
Belief: Brain = learning and learning = read/write/recite numbers and words
Behaviour: Making children read and write as early as 3
The fact points to the idea that at that age play and exploration contributes to brain development. But the mental model (how we make sense of the world) that is based on a bouquet of beliefs gets in the way.
Mental model:
Some of the mental models around learning that we have internalised over the years
- Memory strengthens by retrieval. Retrieval only works if there is something to retrieve. This is why we need books, teachers and classes.
- Knowledge grows exponentially. How much you’re able to learn depends on what you already know. (If my child learns the alphabet and numbers before entering school, once he is there he will be able to build on this foundation)
- Practice at a task makes you better at it. (Hence make the child do the same reading and writing again and again)
- Success is the best teacher. We learn from success more than we do from failure (hence stick to the tried and tested and do not venture into unchartered territories)
Unsurprisingly, despite so much information about brain development in early years linked to play, parents and even schools still make little children read and write. And while a large majority operate in auto-pilot mode, there are always cracks in everything and that is how the light gets in. The crack could be making an occasional change, testing the waters and building on that success. Or it could be thinking about the possibilities that fall between the two extremes. While dirt is generally associated with bad and clean is considered good, Surf decided to use ‘mother earth’ to make a point that there is something between the two extremes that straddles the two worlds of dirt and good. The cracks could come by accidents but the stories could be amplified for others to follow.
In her talk on ‘The Secret Life of Social Norms’, Michele Gelfand points to an important truth. “culture is not destiny, harness norms that are getting loose and loosen up norms that are getting too tight. Humans invented norms to better their lives and we need to go back to that truth”.
#socialnudge #behavioralscience #socialnorms #earlychildhoodeducation
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