‘Sometimes you might need to motivate people to do more good’: Erez Yoeli

He then explains the three ways to make people do good deeds. “In our collaboration with governments, nonprofits, companies, when we try to get people to do more good, we harness the power of reputations. We have a simple checklist for this. In fact, you already know the first item on the checklist. It is to increase observability, to make sure people find out about good deeds.”

He further talks about the second way, which is to eliminate excuses. He goes on to elaborate with an example — some people with tuberculosis don’t take their antibiotics and don’t complete treatment. So, his team, working with a health startup to support patients undergoing treatment for tuberculosis, reminds them to take the medication and eliminate the excuses given by the patients by repeatedly checking in on the patients. “Our approach, which admittedly, uses all sorts of behavioural techniques, including as you probably noticed, observability, was very effective,” he says.

To communicate expectations is the third way he elaborates on. “Sometimes we are expected to do good and sometimes not, and it means that people are really sensitive to cues that they are expected to do good in a particular situation. Here is a simple way to communicate expectations; simply tell them, ‘Hey, everybody else is doing a good deed’.”

He concludes by saying, “Many of you are working on problems with important social consequences, and sometimes you might need to motivate people to do more good. The tools you learnt today can help you with this. And these tools, they don’t require that you raise additional funds or that you develop any more fancy technologies. They just require harnessing reputations by increasing observability, eliminating excuses and communicating expectations.”

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