Jonah Berger

And other students are asked to be a helper.

Now, the difference between help and helper is infinitesimally small.

It's two letters different.

It's not even a different word, really.

It's an addition of two letters to the end of that word.

Yet people who are asked to be a helper, rather than just help, were 30% more likely to help clean up.

And it's not just kids in classrooms.

A more recent study done with adults and voting found that rather than asking people to vote, asking people to be a voter led them to about 15% more likely to go ahead and vote.

And there, it's not even two letters.

It's one letter, right?

Vote to voter is just a single letter.

And so what's the deal, right?

Why is helper more motivating than help?

Why is voter more likely to motivate folks than vote?

And the answer is we all want to see ourselves positively.

We all want to see ourselves as smart and efficacious and attractive and athletic and all these different things.

And so we engage in actions that help us feel that way about ourselves, right?

If I want to feel I'm athletic, I got to go for a run once in a while.

If I want to feel like a nice person, I need to do nice things once in a while.

We're also busy, and so we don't have time to do everything, but by turning actions into identities, we're more likely to take those actions as a way to claim the desired identity.