Rugs Direct earns an A+

I bought this pretty new rug recently.  (It has 44 likes on Instagram so far.)

I ordered it from Rugs Direct online on May 23rd, thinking it would take several weeks to arrive. 

Instead I received an email that it had shipped the next day.  According to the tracking information  it was due to arrive on May 29th. Instead it arrived on May 26th.  Wow.

Of course my husband says that the reason it arrived so quickly was because I had stalked it so much for the month before I finally decided to buy it that they had one wrapped and ready to go with my name on it just waiting for me to finally commit.

I wonder if he could be right.

 

Some nudges work better than others.

If you have traveled lately you may have seen a sign in your hotel room urging you to reuse your towels.  What you may not know is that the wording of that sign greatly impacts whether or not you will comply. 

In a 2008 article published in The Journal for Consumer Research, three message variations were tested with the following results.

1. Reuse your towels because it is good for the environment = 35% compliance

2. Reuse your towels because other guests in this hotel do = 44% compliance

3. Reuse your towels because other hotel guests who stayed in this room did = 49% compliance

(Goldstein, Cialdini, Griskzvicius, 2008)

Nudging works because it uses what is called ‘social proof” or “consensus” to pressure non-participants into joining the crowd – something that most of us want to do.  And as the research demonstrates that the best result comes from the most specific reference to the individual’s immediate situation.

In The New York Times Visionaries section published on 5/27/18, Nathaniel Stinnett of Environmental Voter Project, was profiled based on his efforts to get the 16 million environmentalists who did not vote in 2014 midterm elections to show up this fall.  His weapon of choice? Nudges.  An example from a sample mailer – “Did you know that last time there was a City Council election, 87% of your block voted and you didn’t?”  Hmm.  That certainly demonstrates an understanding of the importance of matching a person’s immediate situation. (Schlossberg, 2018)

Similarly, when I recently considered booking an airline trip, the following message was added to the question about whether or not I wanted to buy trip insurance – “66,929 American Airlines customers protected their trip in the last 7 days.” 

Interesting, although I couldn’t help wondering how many customers they had in the past 7 days and where they were going.  Perhaps they would have been more persuasive if they had said “75% of the people who booked this trip in the past 6 months bought trip insurance.”  The research certainly suggests it.

Goldstein, N., Cialdini, R., Griskzvicius, V. (2008, October) A Room with a Viewpoint: Using Social Norms to Motivate Environmental Conservation in Hotels. Journal of Consumer Research. Retrieved June 13, 2018, from https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/586910?seq=6#page_scan_tab_contents

Schlossberg, T. (2018, May 24) Taking On Climate Change. nytimes.com. Retrieved June 11, 2018, from,  https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/24/science/taking-on-climate-change.html

I’m stressing out – please pass the Reece’s Cups.

Normally I don’t have much of a sweet tooth.  But our apartment was flooded and we had to move out while they redo our floors. 

We had to put all our stuff in storage, while separating out what we would need for the next two months.  And did I mention that we have lived in the apartment for 28 years?  You accumulate an awful lot of stuff in 28 years.

As a result, I have been making lots of difficult decisions for months.  What to keep, what to toss, what to move to the rental apartment. 

And making decisions is exhausting.  The more you have to make, the worse it is.  The more choices you have, the worse it is.  Do you have any idea how many 8 x 11 rugs are available on the Internet these days?  The choices are infinite.

At this point, I am definitely suffering from decision-making fatigue and it shows.  I have made bad decisions by focusing on limited criteria, impulsive decisions that I have regretted immediately and done nothing when I should have acted.  (Tierney, 2011)

But mostly, I have been eating donuts, cookies and candy.

So I wasn’t surprised to read that research has shown that when we are stressed it alters the decision circuits in our brains.  There is more activity in the part of the brain that is linked to seeking immediate rewards and less in the part that affects long range planning. (Reynolds, 2015)

But knowing that doesn’t seem to help much. 

Todd Hare, one of the authors of the study, which was published in Neuron, suggests finding an action path that will improve your choices, like taking a walk.  (Maier, Makwana, Hare, 2015)

I think I’ll give it a try.  But I’ll have to be careful not to walk past a candy store. ;-)

Tierney, J. (2011, August 17)  Do You Suffer From Decision Fatigue?  nytimes.com.  Retrieved June 5, 2018, from  https://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/magazine/do-you-suffer-from-decision-fatigue.html?_r=0

Reynolds, G. (2015, August 20)  Candy Brain nytimes.com  Retrieved June 5, 2018, from

https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/08/20/candy-brain/

Maier, S., Makwana, A., Hare, T. (2015, August 5)  Acute Stress Impairs Self-Control in Goal-Directed Choice by Altering Multiple Functional Connections within the Brain’s Decision Circuits.  Neuron  Retrieved June 5 2018, from  https://www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273(15)00627-3