This blog focuses upon all things persuasion and to a casual reader it might seem that “all things persuasion” includes “everything.” A great story illustrates that not all changes come from persuasion and highlight the difference between word-based change and other forms.
Hey, didja know that driving and texting is dangerous?
Of course, you did. And, to a lesser extent, driving and using a cellphone. And, just about anything that distracts your attention, especially visual, while driving. Yet, people persist with distracted driving despite a lot of yada-yada talk-talk (some of it even persuasion) from all the Gang of Usual Suspects (see bottom of this post for a great bad example). So, persuasion seems to have limited impact.
Any alternatives?
Consider this from two stories in the Wall Street Journal.
Key2SafeDriving, a Windows Mobile service that deactivates the cellphone screen when the car is in motion, was created after its inventor was run off the road by a cellphone-using teenager, said Mike Fahnert, chief executive of Safe Driving Systems, the company producing it.
Safe Driving Systems Corp. is building a system that takes over a cellphone’s display when its owner starts driving. Calls and text messages are received but can’t be accessed, though users can place emergency calls. The system includes an electronic “key” that is installed in the car and emits a Bluetooth signal that disables the keypad while the car is running.
Another start-up, Vancouver-based Aegis Mobility Inc., is developing DriveAssist, a software program that uses a phone’s GPS to detect when it is moving at driving speed and intercept incoming calls and texts. It also blocks outgoing messages, though the owner can override it to make emergency calls.
Notice that the change intervention does not use persuasion in the way I blog about it, but instead employs an engineering solution. Put a kill switch on a key function and an automatic sensor that identifies a dangerous situation that automatically activates the kill switch.
I am wildly in favor of these engineered change solutions for a variety of reasons even though it replaces my beloved persuasion. The point is the change, not the means of the change, right?
To illustrate, let me now mock foolish persuasion efforts to address the problem of distracted driving.
CBS News runs this dramatic story of a “terror on the highways” safety video shot in Britain, south Wales.
Its writer and director - who cast his own son Henry in the video - makes no apologies.
“Yes it is violent, but the reality of a fatal road accident is much more gruesome, is much more violent,” said writer-director Peter Watkins Hughes. “My position on this is that if you are old enough to drive, if you are old enough to want to drive, you are old enough to be aware of the real and serious risks one places yourself in every time you get behind the wheel.”
And, you ask, does this slasher film actually change people? Here’s the proof!
“As you know, this video has been viewed around the world now by 1.5 million people, and we have had e-mail after e-mail after e-mail from people saying, ‘I will never ever text and drive again’ - from young people,” said Gwent police chief constable Mick Giannasi.
Yeah, right. Gory shock films (fear appeals) sure are effective. Everyone knows that. Except if you look at anything remotely approaching a scientific standard of testing, you know that these persuasion tactics have little or no effect on actual behavior leading to fewer accidents and deaths. They just make the folks doing the scolding feel good about themselves - “There, now I’ve scared the little buggers and THEY’LL NEVER DO THAT AGAIN!”
Even without a zillion dollar outcome study, just consider the common sense evaluation between Katic Couric’s choice - fear appeals in Wales - versus the WSJ stories on engineered solutions. Even if there was great evidence of a sustained, enduring, and large behavior change from those silly fear appeals, how could it compete with an app in the device that always senses speed in a vehicle and shuts itself off? Which approach will always “remember” to work: the device or the driver?
Not all change is the same and not all change is produced by the same method. Work smarter. Sometimes persuasion is the smart play and sometimes something like engineering is the smart play.
