Jonah Berger

If someone asks me to help, yeah, I know I should help, but maybe I don't want to or I'm busy, but if they ask me to be a helper,

well if i'm a kid now helping is an opportunity to show everybody i'm a helper i'm more likely to do it similarly in a voting context i know i should vote but maybe you know it's difficult to get to the polls but if voting is an opportunity to see myself and show other people that i am a voter well now i'm more likely to do it and so by turning actions into identities we can make people more likely to take those actions the same thing is actually true on the opposite side for for negative things right there it works the same way but in the opposite direction

Losing is bad.

Being a loser is even worse.

Cheating on a test is bad, but being a cheater is even worse.

Research shows that one way to get students to cheat less is just by telling them, well, cheating would make them a cheater.

There's an old littering campaign that says, don't be a litter bug.

Same idea.

If we want people to do something or not to do something, don't just think about actions.

Think about identities.

We can use those identities to motivate people to behave in the way we're hoping

I'll stick with one thing you just said, though, that stuck out at me.

Think about if there are two people.

One person says, hey, I run, or I run sometimes.

And the other one says, I am a runner.

I go running versus I am a runner.

Well, if someone says they are a runner, you'd probably say, well, they run more often.

Someone who drinks coffee, yeah, they like coffee.

If someone's a coffee drinker, they must drink coffee a lot.

And so we can even use this with ourselves.