Give and Take: a revolutionary Approach to Success pdfdrive com

Why Superman Backfires and People Conserve Electricity
When Freecycle first launched, one of the early members was a ninety-eight-
year-old man. He collected parts to fix up bicycles and gave them to local
children. He was an “incredible role model,” Deron Beal recalls. Tucson citizens
were able to identify with the man as a fellow resident. When they saw him give,
he was a member of their unique community, so they felt more compelled to
follow his example. New York University psychologist Jonathan Haidt refers to
this as
elevation
, the warm feeling of being moved by others’ acts of giving,
which can “seem to push a mental ‘reset button,’ wiping out feelings of cynicism
and replacing them with . . . a sense of moral inspiration.” When elevated, Haidt
and psychologist Sara Algoe write, “we feel as though we have become (for a
moment) less selfish, and we want to act accordingly.”
But it was more than just common identity that made this elderly man such
an elevating role model. Consider an experiment by psychologists Leif Nelson
and Michael Norton, who randomly assigned people to list either ten features of
a superhero or
ten features of Superman
. When invited to sign up as community
service volunteers, the group that listed superhero features was nearly twice as
likely to volunteer as the Superman group. Three months later, Nelson and
Norton invited both groups to a meeting to kick off their volunteering. The
people who had written about a superhero were four times more likely to show
up than the people who had written about Superman. Thinking about a superhero
three months earlier supported giving. In comparison, thinking about Superman
discouraged giving. Why?
When people think about the general attributes of superheroes, they generate
a list of desirable characteristics that they can relate to themselves. In the study,
for example, people wrote about how superheroes are helpful and responsible,
and they wanted to express these giver values, so they volunteered. But when
people think specifically about Superman, what comes to mind is a set of
impossible standards, like those popularized in the TV series The Adventures of
Superman: “faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able
to leap tall buildings in a single bound.” No one can be that strong or heroic, so
why bother trying?
On Freecycle, givers modeled a standard that seemed attainable. When
members saw a ninety-eight-year-old man building bikes for kids, they knew
they could do something too. When members saw people giving away items like

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clothes and old electronics, they felt it would be easy for them to do the same.
The small acts of giving that started on Freecycle made it easy and acceptable
for other people to give small amounts. Indeed, Cialdini finds that people donate
more money to charity when the phrase “
even a penny will help
” is added to a
request. Interestingly, this phrase increases the number of people who give
without necessarily decreasing the amount that they give. Legitimizing small
contributions draws in takers, making it difficult and embarrassing for them to
say no, without dramatically reducing the amount donated by givers.
Although most people joined Freecycle to get free stuff, this doesn’t mean
that taking was their primary reciprocity style. When people join a group, they
look for cues about appropriate behavior. When new Freecycle members saw
similar others modeling low-cost acts of giving, it became natural for them to
follow suit. By making giving visible, Freecycle made it easy for people to see
the norm.
It’s a powerful lesson, even more so when we realize how much the visibility
of giving can affect reciprocity styles. In many domains of life, people end up
taking because they don’t have access to information about what others are
doing. Just a few months after Freecycle got off the ground, Cialdini worked
with a team of psychologists to survey more than eight hundred Californians
about their
energy consumption
. They asked the Californians how important the
following factors were in shaping their decisions to save energy:
It saves money
It protects the environment
It benefits society
A lot of other people are doing it
The Californians consistently reported that the most important factor was
protecting the environment. Benefiting society was second, saving money was
third, and following the lead of other people was last. Cialdini’s team wanted to
see whether people were right about their own motivations, so they designed an
experiment. They visited nearly four hundred homes in San Marcos, California,
and randomly assigned them to receive one of four different types of door
hangers: