All Googly-Eyed
Want to know one way you can increase compliance when the honor system is at play? Hang up a set of eyes.
There was once a vendor who stocked office break rooms with pretzels. He'd leave the pretzels, along with a locked box, and then leave for the day. People were supposed to take a pretzel and put a dollar into the box. At the end of the day, he'd come back and collect the money from the box.
Given a system that's so easy to cheat, you might be wondering how many people took pretzels without leaving a dollar. Turns out, most people were pretty honest, but there was always some theft occurring. (Interestingly, this theft increased as Christmas approached.)
What he found (Lord only knows how he thought to test this) was that if he hung up a set of eyes close to the pretzels, the amount of theft dropped dramatically. It didn't matter whose eyes they were. The mere presence of eyes, even cut out of a magazine, made people more honest.
We seem to behave better when we feel that someone is watching us.
A few days ago, I stumbled across this blog that features pictures of googly-eyes glued in random places and to random things. It's a great idea for a blog, the pictures are hilarious, and if you're on Windows XP, I recommend you download your favorite ones and make your screensaver a slideshow of them. (I'm a little peeved at myself for not thinking of the idea first.)
But it occurred to me that this is a pretty silly little game that most of us can play. You can buy these googly-eyes at just about any craft store, or if all else fails, you can buy 125 self-adhesive googly-eyes on Amazon for less than two bucks. (The shipping charge is a little outrageous, but arguably worth it.)
I bought five packs of these and am going to descend upon my town with them. I'm going to put them everywhere. I think it's a fun little creative exercise: what can you make look like face with some silly eyes?
And I don't know how effective googly-eyes are at changing people's behavior, but maybe we can get people to behave a little better.
There was once a vendor who stocked office break rooms with pretzels. He'd leave the pretzels, along with a locked box, and then leave for the day. People were supposed to take a pretzel and put a dollar into the box. At the end of the day, he'd come back and collect the money from the box.
Given a system that's so easy to cheat, you might be wondering how many people took pretzels without leaving a dollar. Turns out, most people were pretty honest, but there was always some theft occurring. (Interestingly, this theft increased as Christmas approached.)
What he found (Lord only knows how he thought to test this) was that if he hung up a set of eyes close to the pretzels, the amount of theft dropped dramatically. It didn't matter whose eyes they were. The mere presence of eyes, even cut out of a magazine, made people more honest.
We seem to behave better when we feel that someone is watching us.
A few days ago, I stumbled across this blog that features pictures of googly-eyes glued in random places and to random things. It's a great idea for a blog, the pictures are hilarious, and if you're on Windows XP, I recommend you download your favorite ones and make your screensaver a slideshow of them. (I'm a little peeved at myself for not thinking of the idea first.)
But it occurred to me that this is a pretty silly little game that most of us can play. You can buy these googly-eyes at just about any craft store, or if all else fails, you can buy 125 self-adhesive googly-eyes on Amazon for less than two bucks. (The shipping charge is a little outrageous, but arguably worth it.)
I bought five packs of these and am going to descend upon my town with them. I'm going to put them everywhere. I think it's a fun little creative exercise: what can you make look like face with some silly eyes?
And I don't know how effective googly-eyes are at changing people's behavior, but maybe we can get people to behave a little better.