Henckell is my favorite cafe in Frederiksberg, Copenhagen. It is a local place with great coffee and sandwich. I feel cozy inside. It has only four small tables.
There is a tip jar next to the credit card machine on the counter table. Interestingly, it has a smiley face, two arms, and two legs. One day out of curiosity, I kept watching how many guests tipped in this human-looking tip jar. Afterwards, I also asked a server whether guests liked it. Surprisingly, I noticed that a few guests hesitated putting coins into this jar for an unknown reason. The server even told me that not few guests complained about the tip jar because its mouth is too small to insert coins.
When human flavor is added to an object, people like the object. It is supported by academic studies about anthropomorphism. For instance, when a car is anthropomorphized and its characteristics are congruent with the proposed human schema, people evaluate it positively (Aggarwal and McGill 2007). When a garbage bin is anthropomorphized (e.g., “feed me”), people follow the message and show prosocial behaviors (Ahn, Kim, Aggarwal 2013). When an innovative, uncertain product is anthropomorphized (e.g., “this little guy”), people tend to adopt this product (Jiang, Hoegg, and Dahl 2011).
However, anthropomorphism might backfire if the usefulness of the product is sacrificed. When I come back to this cafe, I want to draw a different character with a bigger mouth and see what happens.
People are often reluctant to comply with social causes because doing so may involve personal sacrifices of time, money, and effort for benefits that are shared by other members of society. In an effort to increase compliance, government agencies and public institutions sometimes employ financial tools to promote social causes. However, employing financial tools to induce prosocial behavior is expensive and often ineffective. We propose that anthropomorphizing a social cause is a practical and inexpensive tool for increasing compliance with it. Across three prosocial contexts, we found that individuals exposed to a message from an anthropomorphized social cause, compared with individuals exposed to a message relating to a nonanthropomorphized social cause, were more willing to comply with the message. This effect was mediated by feelings of anticipatory guilt experienced when they considered the likely consequences of not complying with the cause. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.
In this study, we adopted a food-waste composting campaign. A total of 104 undergraduates (54% female and 46% male; mean age = 19.8 years) participated in return for course credit. Participants in the anthropomorphism condition were exposed to a campaign poster showing a garbage bin with humanlike features of eyes, a nose, and a mouth alongside the caption, “Please feed me food waste only!” Participants in the nonanthropomorphism condition were shown a campaign poster in which the garbage bin lacked humanlike features and was accompanied by the caption, “Please put food waste in only!”. Participants completed a measure of expected compliance with the campaign (α = .89) using response scales from 1 (very unlikely) to 9 (very likely). In addition, we employed a 4-item measure of anticipatory guilt adapted from Cotte, Coulter, and Moore (2005). The four items assessed the degree of guilt, shame, responsibility, and accountability, respectively, that participants would feel if they did not comply with the campaign and were administered with 9-point scales (α = .89).
As expected, we found increased compliance in the anthropomorphism condition (M = 6.99, SD = 1.62) compared with the nonanthropomorphism condition (M = 6.24, SD = 1.80), β = 0.22, SE = 0.34, p < .05. Moreover, anticipatory guilt was higher in the anthropomorphism condition (M = 5.16, SD = 1.39) compared with the nonanthropomorphism condition (M = 4.49, SD = 1.64), β = 0.22, SE = 0.30, p < .05, which in turn resulted in an increased level of compliance, β = 0.45, SE = 0.10, p < .001. When we controlled for anticipatory guilt, the direct effect of anthropomorphism on compliance was no longer significant, β = 0.12, SE = 0.32, p = .17, Sobel z = 2.04, p < .05, which suggests that anticipatory guilt mediated the effect of anthropomorphism on compliance.
Chinese government tries hard to reduce plastic waste. Recently, it banned plastic waste import. According to financial times, half of the UK plastic waste need to find alternative places desperately.
In contrast, Chinese people seem to overuse plastics. In Shenzhen, for instance, plates are often wrapped with plastic packages. We should tear it down and throw it away. Sometimes, plastic gloves are provided at the restaurants. We wear the gloves when eating bread.
I suspect Chinese people are addicted to plastics probably because they consider plastics cleaner and safer than water or napkins. If we aim to reduce plastic consumption in China, we should consider the Chinese psychology about plastics seriously.
We now see a wide variety of floor signage. In Singapore, there is a yellow-painted footstep on the right side of the paved road at the Marina Bay. Since this road is crowded by runners, this signage probably helps them run on the right side of the road.
In Shenzhen, China, there are orange-colored lines at the subway stations. Since many people are in a hurry, these lines help them not to rush forward when the train is coming, and wait for the next train if they cannot get on.
Although floor signage is visually salient, I wonder whether this is needed to change our behavior, because we learn rules naturally. We learn how to avoid bumping into other runners when running on a narrow road and we also learn how to navigate a huge crowd to get on a train. Although I am a strong supporter of behavior economics and nudge, I believe some nudges interfere with learning. Not surprisingly, some people argue that behavioral economics are not always as effective as thought (Why nudges hardly help)(The dark side of nudging). We need to study more about which specific nudges are ineffective and how we can modify these nudges.
In Copenhagen, Denmark, many people use bicycles. Many Danes I met have more than three bicycles; one for commuting between home and train station, another for commuting between train station and workplace, and the other for weekend. Some trash cans are even angled in this city so that bicycle riders can throw away their empty water bottles on the wheel.
In Singapore, we should pay fine when behaving inappropriately in subway: S$500 when eating or drinking, S$1000 when smoking, and S$5000 when using flammable goods. Interestingly, eating durians is also inappropriate but the fine amount of doing so is not clarified. I suspect that Singapore government seems to know intuitively that people follow rules if they see a set of three escalating numbers.
People often use verbal signs to give instructions to others. The store owner posts a sign on the window saying, “This is a window, please use the door.” Government officers paint “Look Right” at the pedestrian crossing. However, I have observed numerous store visitors and pedestrians mistakenly push or slide the window and look left before crossing the road. In these cases, a visual signage might work better to attract their attention and guide their behavior.
People often do things while drunk that they regret when they sober up. Opening expensive wines is one of them. In order to solve this problem and, more academically speaking, to overcome the hot-cold empathy gap (proposed by George Loewenstein), I adopted traffic light system.
I place red sticky notes on the definitely expensive wines that I should NOT open while drunk. Yellow sticky notes go for the relatively expensive wines that I stop and, hopefully, think once more while drunk. Daily wines have no sticky notes. Thanks to this simple traffic light system, I regret less in the morning. 🙂
We want to voluntarily participate in recycling but do so only when it is easy. Here are the two bin boxes available at a university in Seoul. Unfortunately, their colors and their names are not matched: the left one has a blue cover and its green panel says “recycled” whereas the right one has a green cover and a blue panel says “disposable.” The mismatch among name, cover color, and panel color led me to give up choosing one for my empty coffee can. Instead, I threw it away somewhere else. Indeed, behaving in a sustainable way requires huge mental resources. Therefore, things need to be designed carefully in advance.
**
Reference
White, K., Hardisty, D. J., & Habib, R. (2019). The elusive green consumer. Harvard Business Review, 11(1), 124-133.
People say they want sustainable products, but they don’t tend to buy them. Here’s how to change that.
Choosing right color is difficult for car buyers. Tesla store in Toronto helps visitors make decisions by allowing them to see and touch a few samples. In the store, two working vehicles stand in the middle and they are surrounded by a wide variety of color samples. Many visitors carefully view them.
Tactile paving is a system of textured ground surface indicators. It aims to assist pedestrians who are blind or visually impaired (see Wikipedia) and is also called truncated domes, detectable warnings, Tactile Ground Surface Indicators, or detectable warning surface. In Seoul, Korea, some of the tactile pavings light up at night. Interestingly, its color turns the same color with the traffic light; it turns red when the traffic light is red, and it is green when the traffic light is green.
This lighting system will not only benefit visually impaired pedestrians; it will also enhance the safety of the pedestrians who are distracted by their own tasks (e.g., listening music by earphones or sending text messages by their smart phones)!
