Jonah Berger on How to Change Anyone's Mind

don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us.

Our guest on this episode is Jonah Burger, a professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He's an international best selling author and a world renowned expert on word of mouth, social influence consumer behavior and how products, ideas, and behaviors catch on. Today, Jonah and Eric discussed his book The Catalyst, How to Change Anyone's Mind. Hi, Jonah, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for having me.

It is a pleasure to have you on. We are going to be discussing your book, The Catalyst, How to Change Anyone's Mind, and we might even get into a little of your previous book, Invisible Influence, because there's some great things in there also. But we'll start like we always do, with the parable. There's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He said it, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always a battle.

One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second. He looks up at his grandfather says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. I like this parable a lot.

I think we always have a choice about how to spend our time, what we spend it doing, who we spend it with, and how we use the limited amount of time we have every day and every week. And I think the more we spend time in good areas of our life, as I think, the parable sort of says, we feed that aspect, it becomes more focal to us, more essential to us, It becomes what we think about

um and where we devote more attention. At the same time, the more we feed that other side of us, whether it's greed per se or other other aspects, the more it becomes is focal, the more it becomes what we think about, and the more it becomes the way we orient ourselves. And so it's a good reminder to make sure to feed the thing you want to orient yourself towards.

I think yea makes sense. I want to start very broadly with you because you're talking about in your work how people change, and an underline element I think through all of it is the extent to which the people around us, in the environments around us are shaped by that. And you know which of the decisions that we make in life are shaped by other people I think an interesting question ask is which decisions we make are not

shaped by by other people? You know, it's hard to think about it, and there are some, right, but but it's hard to think about something that isn't shaped in some way, shape or form by others. You know, our product choices, obviously, but even think about more consequential things like who we end up marrying, what jobs we end up taking. We're really not important things like what toilet

paper we buy at the grocery store. In all these diverse aspects of our life, I think others often shine through. Does that mean that others shape our entire behavior? No, but they do have an impact. But most importantly, I think we're often unaware of that impact. Right. We're not aware of the fact that, you know, the person in front of us on the toilet paper or whatever they do,

shapes kind of what we think about. We're not aware of the fact that that potential romantic partner, we're thinking about, our potential job, we're thinking about how good or bad it seems, is shaped by social influences. And so I think influence is often invisible, as we may talk about today, And that was sort of the focus of my second book, often Invisible, and so I think it's less about where influence happens and more about kind of you know where

and if it ever doesn't. And it was a little bit of a leading question, because you know, the leading question I got was, you know, why is it so hard for us to see this? Because so much of it is we are in reaction to everything. I wanted to start broadly so that we could sort swing back up to your new book, which is called Catalysts, and it's about how we change other people's minds, but I think some of it also applies to how we work

with ourselves. So I'd like to start with what's the major mistake that most of us make when it comes to trying to change behavior in ourselves or others? Yeah? So, so think about the last time we tried to change something. It might have been someone else, a boss, a colleague, it might have been ourselves. Maybe we want to get in better shape, or maybe we want to spend less time on social media or um, maybe we want to spend more time on the phone and connecting with loved ones.

We have these goals, these things that we want to change, whether internal within ourselves or external with others. We often take a particular approach to those type of goals. And so, you know, I interviewed thousands of people, both executives in a business context but also individuals about personal change, and I asked them to write down, what's something you want to change and what's some thing you've done to try to change that thing. And over of the time people

list some version of of what I'd call pushing. And what do I mean by pushing? Well, um, add more facts, more figures, more reasons, more information. Um. When we're trying to change other's minds, make one more phone call, one more power point presentation, send one more email. When we're trying to change our own behavior, you know, UM, think of reasons why we should do something, or kind of

emotional appeals that move us in that direction. We focus a lot on forces that could compel us or someone else to do something. And it's clearly why we think that. Right, If if there's a chair in the middle of a room, a physical object, and you want to move that physical object, Pushing it is a great way to get it to go. Right, we push the chair in the direction we wanted to go, and it slides across the floor, And so we often apply that same intuition to people, whether those people are

ourselves or others. We assume if if I just push that person myself or someone else in the right direction, they'll go. But the challenge, as I think we often think about, is well, what happens when others push us? Do we just slide across the floor? What happens when we push others there's just slot across of our No, they often resist, they often dig in their heels um And we do the same thing even when we're trying to change ourselves. And so it turns out we need

a different approach to change. There's nice analogy to be made to chemistry. Actually, uh and if you look in chemistry, obviously chemical change is hard. Think about how long it takes, you know, carbon to be squeezed into a diamond eons and so chemists in the lab often add temperature and pressure. They heat things up, they squeeze them together, with the idea that that extra energy will create change. But there's a special set of substances that chemists often add that

don't require more energy. They actually create change with less energy rather than more. These substances, claim the grime on our contact lenses or their car's engine, and very simply, they're called catalysts, right, And what's interesting about catalysts in the chemical world is they reduce the barrier to change. They lower the amount of energy required to create change. And it turns out we can learn a lot about

that that analogy in the social world. When we're trying to create change, whether in our selves or others, we need to think less about well, what could I do to get that person to change, and more about why haven't they changed already? So if I'm thinking about myself, thinking about, oh, you know, I need to exercise more, well, maybe I should remind myself to exercise more, tell myself about all the reasons to exercise. Why don't I step back for a second and say, well, why aren't you

exercising more? Ready? A Right, If I'm trying to spend less time on social media connect more with with friends, why hasn't that happened ready? What are the obstacles or barriers getting in the way? And same with others? Right, whoever's mind I'm trying to change, what are the obstacles or barriers that are preventing action? And how by identifying them, can I make change more likely? And so it's a

subtle shift, but a really important one. Focus less on pushing, less on things we could do, and more about things that are already there that might be getting in the way. I think that's a great way for us to get started here and move into this. The first of those barriers to change is called the strategy is reduced. But you talk about reactants. This is what you talked to little bit about people push back. When we push on people, they push back. We all know this phenomenon in our

own lives. I'm kind of curious, though, what causes push back some of the time versus others. The pandemic is a great example I think of where we can see reactants in effect because there's wear a mask and people start pushing back against it, and yet an awful lot of people just put on the mask. What is it that's causing you know, broadly, I'm not asking you. You You don't have to comment necessarily on this issue, although you're you're certainly welcome to, and I would value your opinion

on it. But what is it that causes us in certain cases when there's a slight push in a direction to go Yeah, that's a good direction to go. I think I ought to go that way, and we go that direction versus other times we just as you say, dig in our heels. Yeah, I think there's a great discussion about the pandemic and more generally. You know, Um, the Catalyst actually came out the same week as the pandemic.

So I've thought a lot about it and talking about the book, and I wrote a for hbrum at some point last year talking about sort of applying the ideas of reactants to things like mask wearing and vaccines and things along those lines. You know, I think there are a few answers to your question. Um. So, first, their individual differences, right, some people feel reactants more than others.

But second, you know, when there's an action to be taken, Um, I think that there are ways and times to make it feel more like someone's own idea versus to make it feel like someone else is pushing you on on that idea. So let me give you a simple example. Right, Imagine you have kids and you want to get your kids to put their pajamas on. Right, let's pick something simple, really easy. It's bedtime. You gotta put your pajamas on. If you say, hey, put your pajamas on, the kids

off and say no, I don't want to. You know, if you say hey, do this, I don't want to. You know, each eat your vegetables, I don't want to. You know, then even necessarily know why they're saying no. Um, but they really just want to assert their autonomy, right, I have my own identity. If instead you say, hey, you know, which pajamas do you want to wear tonight?

Or hey, what do you want to put on first your pajama top of your pajama bottom, They're going to be more like it upon their pajamas, not because you didn't encourage them too, but because you didn't tell them to write. You encourage them too, but you set it up more as a choice, more as a guided choice

than a forced action. And so I think if you looked at mask wearing, if you look at vaccinations, if you look at personal change, if you look at social change more generally, it tends to work better when people feel like they came to it themselves. And that doesn't mean being completely hands off. Right, Um, you know, I'm not sitting there hoping that my son magically decides to put on his pajamas. Sometimes he does on his own, on his own volition. Um, but I am smart enough

to triz. Maybe I need to help him move in that direction, but not force him to go in that direction. Right, Set it up that that is the area he's focusing his attention on, without forcing him to take a particular action there, but by focusing his attention guiding that journey and moving it in the right direction. And I think the same thing is true whether you're trying to get your kids to put on your pajamas, change yourself, or

you know, change others. Really reducing reactants and allowing for agency, making people feel like they're part of that process and it's not your idea, but they have a role in it as well. Yeah, I want to come back to mask wearing in the pandemic for a second, But I want to take reactance what you just said and sort of feeling like it's our own idea and apply it

to personal change for a second. I do a lot of work with clients on changing behavior, and one of the things that I will often hear a client say something to the effect of, is I just was rebelling against myself my own rule. You know, I decided I wanted to do this thing, and yet that that natural. We all have it, like you can't tell me what to do seems to come up even when we're the one doing the telling. Do you have any thought or

insight on that? I just I'm always kind of curious, Like what I do is remind people like, well, no one's telling you what to do. You are you. You always have the choice, and so to sort of to your point to try and ease react and is to say, like, this is not being imposed by someone else. This is what you decided, and to remember that. But I'm curious if you've got any thoughts on that. I like the

way you framed it a lot. And we can think about motivation, the motivation to take an action to do something as being internal or external, being more kind of intrinsic within the self, or being more extrinsic outside of the self. And even take something like exercise, right, I may be exercising because I want to exercise. I love exercising. So I'll talk about me personally. I love playing basketball, like it's a lot of fun for me. I enjoy playing it. I'm terrible at it, but I just enjoy

doing it. It's fun. Um, you know, I love it. I like it a lot of run around outside. Don't care whether I win or lose. I just care whether I get a chance to play. And so that's intrinsically motivated. I'm not doing it as a means to any end. I'm just doing it as as an end itself. I

enjoy the process of doing it. Contrast that with how I feel sometimes about running, or how some other people may feel about exercise in general, where I feel like, man, you know, I'm not doing this maybe because it's the most fun, but I'm doing this because I feel like I should do it because it's a good way to get exercise, because it would be smart to get out there and do something. Um. And so it's still coming from me in some sense. But it's also not right.

There's a should rather than than a want. And so I think I really like the way you framed it. You know. I don't think we need a lot of encouragement if we want to do something, but I think we feel like if we should do something, then there's that external thing where it's not an end in itself, it's a means to something else. I should exercise because that will help me do something else. I should do this thing because that will help me achieve something else.

And the more it's a should rather than a want, the more we may not feel like it's coming from from within. Um. And so I think just as you nicely said, you know, encouraging us to realize, well, hey, this is coming from within, or finding an intrinsic reason to do it. Right. Maybe you don't love running, but you love being outside. Well, great, that's an opportunity to do something you want and allow you to do that

thing you want and mix it with something else. You know, people talk about temptation bundling sometime if you want to do something but you don't want to do something else, you link the two together. So you know, this is an opportunity to do the thing that you want while also doing something else. And so I think that can be a great way to motivate ourselves, to help us realize that, yes, we are in control. And even something that seems like I should, if we can make it

more of a want, will will be more effective. Excellent. So, going back to the pandemic and mask wearing and vaccine, I think, as you were saying, you know, reactance is one of it. But if I jumped down to another of your catalysts, one of them is distance, right, And this seems to really for me be framing up what a lot of the pandemic is. You know, you talk about the zone of acceptance or rejection. Can you share a little bit about that, and do you think that's

what's playing in here? Is where vaccine and mask wearing is falling into people's zone of acceptance or rejection. So let's start with a simple example, and then then we can make it more complicated. So so basically, anything we do, any attitude, any behavior, any domain of our life, we can array our beliefs, our opinions are thoughts towards it on a football field. So let's take politics for a second, because it's really easy to see, right. We know some

people are staunch conservatives, others are strongly liberal. We can imagine putting those in two ends of a football field. Let's make the conservatives the far right, and let's make the liberals, you know, on the left, and then you can put yourself anywhere on that field. So you might be the five yard line of the conservatives, you might be the fifteen yard line of the liberals, or you might be midfield fifty yard line, you're exactly moderate in

between the two. And so it turns out that while we have a position on the field where we put ourselves, there's also what's called the zone of acceptance, which is around where we are that we're willing to consider. So let's say I'm on the fifty yard line, for example, I am willing to listen to things that are fifty yard line exactly moderate. But I'm also want to listen to things that are five or ten yards in each direction, but thirty yards in each direction probably not. And that's

called the region of rejection. When we get too far from where someone is currently, it's so far from where they are that they're unwilling to even listen to the possibility of being changed because that information is so different from how they see themselves at the moment. You know, your listeners may be familiar with the idea of the confirmation bias, but you know, not only do we look for information that confirms our existing belief but we filter

new information based on those existing beliefs. And so if I'm on the fifth yard line of the field versus let's say the five yard line of the field. Information that's on the twenty five yard line looks very very different, right, How I see that same information. While it's objectively the same information, how I see it maybe quite different. And so let's take that to the vaccine and personal change

as well. You know, I think part of the challenges if you come up and ask someone to do something that's so far from where they are currently, they're unwilling to even listen to the possibility of being changed. You know, if I'm vaccine worried, but I'm close, then I'm willing

to move because it's in the zone of acceptance. But if if you're asking me, if I'm a you know, staunch, staunch conservative, and you're asking me to get vaccinated, which maybe seems like somehow more on the liberal side for some reason, Um, if that falls in the region rejection, I'm unwilling to listen and it may even push me back in the opposite direction. And so often what we need to do is we need to kind of ask

for less and then ask for more. We need to start closer to where people are ready, Start with an assets within that region of acceptance, move them a couple of yards down the field and then ask for more. There was a doctor I was talking about that was dealing with an obese patient. Was a trucker who was drinking three leaders of Mountain Do a day morbidly obese, right, And the tendency there is to say, stop drinking Mountain Do right. Quick cold turkey makes a lot of sense, right,

you know, quick cold turkey be better for you. But the problem is that ask is so far from where that person is currently. It's so far it's in the region of rejection. They're gonna be unwilling to listen to even the possibility of changing. And so what does she do? What? Rather than telling him to quit cold turkey? She says, hey, um, you know, I know you love Mountain Do. I'm not going to ask you to quit, but would you mind going from three leaders to two leaders a day? And

he grumbles. He doesn't want to do it, of course, but he goes, Okay, you know, I'll give it a shot, and comes back a few weeks later and is able to do it. Then's just great, good job, Now go to one right, and he grumbles again, doesn't want to do it, but he ends up doing it, and months later he comes back and ses now go from one to zero and the guy loses over thirty pounds. Right, not because she went right away for what we wanted what she wanted, but because she asked for less and

asked then asked for more. She kind of took that big change, broke it down into more manageable chunks um and helped him move down the field and in the right direction. And so I think the same thing is true for personal change. Right. So you know, if I'm a writer and I want to write something that's really big, and I'd go, okay, well, i gotta start by writing, you know, five thousand words a day. Not only is that a lot period, but particularly I'm starting from zero,

it's gonna be really hard to achieve. Same with exercise. I want to exercise more, okay, but you know, if I try to go from zero to seven days a week, it's probably gonna get overwhelming and I'm gonna give up. We sort of shoot for intensity. Some research shows we kind of go quickly to intense ways to achieve our goals. But because we go for intense ways, we often fail. They're so intense that we give up because we can't

hit them. And so it's often better to start with something all all right, say, look, I'm going to exercise two days a week, right, and then I'm gonna go from two to three. I'm gonn exercise ten minutes a day. I'm gonna go from ten to fifteen and fifteen to twenty. I'm gonna move myself there and kind of in some sense, um, it's stepping stones, breaking big change down into small stepping stones,

moving in the right direction, step by step. Eventually getting there may take more time, but it's going to be more effective. We end up talking on this show in so many different ways about that idea of small steps. If we circle back to reactants for a minute, I want to talk about one strategy for reducing reactants, which is highlighting a gap. So I was wondering if you could share a little bit about what highlighting the gap means. And there's a great story about smokers and Thailand that

I think just sums this up so so well. Yeah, so maybe I'll tell the story and then I'll explain that the broader principle. So this goes back to the idea of you know, the best way to change someone is not by telling them to change, but is encouraging them to want to change themselves. And so this is what a group called the Thaie Health Promotion Foundation was dealing with a few years ago. So they were trying

to get people to quit smoking. They're kind of a pro social group to encourage people to quit smoking, and they're having trouble. People aren't calling the quit line, and so they think, okay, well, let's give people information. Let's you know, tell them all the reasons why they should quit. But what they realize is if they push smoker, smokers is going to push back. Right, stop telling me what to do um. And this is often true more generally, not just about smokers. Right. We tend to think that

problems are information problems. We tend to think that if we just give people more information, they'll come around. Rarely are problems information problems. Often there's something else going on that we don't realize. We're so egocentric. We just think, oh, if people had access to the information we had, they would change. But often people have a different perspective on that same information. And so the Health Promotion Foundation ended

up doing something really really clever. Rather than telling smokers to quip or giving smokers information, they had little kids walk around the city and ask smokers for a light. Okay, So imagine you're smoking on the street. You're watching a smoker smoking on the street, and an eight year old kid comes up to that smoker and says, can I get a light? The smoker looks at the kid and goes, what are you talking about? No, no, I'm not going to give you a light, right, of course not. And

not only do they say no, but they say why. Look, don't you know the smoking causes lung cancer and emphysema and strokes. Don't you want to run and play right? You're so young? Why would you want to do this to your body? All these different things? And so as the smokers are talking, the kids are sitting there going, okay, that's a good point. That's a good point. And at the end of the interaction and say okay, thanks, thanks a lot. And by the way, here's a sheet of paper.

And on that sheet of paper it says you worry about me, why not yourself? If you're interested in learning more about quitting smoking, call this quit line. Doesn't tell people to quit, It just highlights a gap between attitudes and actions. And this is true more broadly, right. We want our attitudes and actions to line up. If I say I care about the environment, I better recycle. If I say I'm a big fan of a certain sports team, I better watch their games. Whatever I say, I should

do the same thing. And if my attitudes and actions don't line up, a negative emotional reaction caused cognitive dissonance occurs. Right, and I do work to reduce that dissonance. I either have to say I don't care as much about the environment. I've got to do more work recycling. And that's exactly what the Health Promotion Foundation did to smokers, right. They've encouraged smokers as Wait, I just told this kid not

to smoke, but I'm smoking myself. Maybe I should think about doing something about that, which is exactly what people did, right. They are you're going to tell the kid to smoke? No, you're not. Are you going to quit smoking? Of the people who got this piece of information did of them ended up calling the quit line, big increase in calls to the quit line video the campaign go viral. But I think the insight is is a powerful one. Right. We don't often realize that we're being inconsistent. We are

inconsistent all the time. Right, things we say and things we do often don't match up, but we don't see that they don't match up. Right, But if someone highlights that gap, or we encourage ourselves to highlight that gap. Well, I say I care about getting in better shape, yet every time I go to the grocery store, you know, I'm buying a bunch of unhealthy food. Like, what do I think I'm not going to eat the unhealthy food? Well,

why why am I buying it? Then? Right? Or you know, I say that i want to spend less time on social media, yet I'm still doing this thing. Or I say that I want to be more diligent at work and achieve this particular goal, yet I'm doing this other thing that's inconsistent with it. Drawing attention to those inconsistencies encourages us to do the work to change them, right, because it puts sort of attitudes and actions next to one another and highlighting that gap and encourages folks to change.

And so just since we talked about the pandemic, you can apply that same idea that the pandemic. Right, I mean, imagine you're trying to talk to a vaccine skeptic someone who's not wearing a mask. We often come across in some you know, public place, there's someone who should be wearing a mask but isn't, and I think a tendency to tell them wear a mask, why aren't you wearing a mask? Wear a mask? Or a person who's not vaccinated, you should get vaccinated. But if we do that, they're

going to push back. Right, there's obviously reasons they feel like that's not for them. But what if instead we imagine saying, Okay, hey, you know, I noticed you're not wearing a mask, right, I heard you don't want to get vaccinated. You know, let's say your elderly grandparents was around, or your young kids were around, would you want people around them not to be vaccinated? Would you want people

around them not to wear masks? Or if you'd say, well, yeah, you know, I would like people around my young unvaccinated kids to be wearing masks or vaccinated. Okay, interesting, do you think you might want to get vaccinated? Then? Right, encouraging them to go Await, I'm saying that I want people around my kids to be careful, Yet I'm not being careful. Maybe I should think twice about being careful. And so you can bring a horse to water, but

you can't force them to drink. But if you show them some really nice water, you encourage them to think about making the decision that they should have made all all along. Yeah, I think there's so much subtlety and how we do that because highlighting the gap is great, except we all know situations where someone highlights the gap for us and we move into reacting. So that's why I love that tie story. I also would love to know somewhere sooner or later, somebody had to be like, yeah, kid,

here's here's a light, here's a cigarette. Like you're gonna run into somebody who's a character out there. But it's such a beautiful idea. Yeah, and so I didn't run this campaign, but I've heard that nobody, nobody gave the kids cigarettes and and also everyone threw away their cigarette, but they kept the piece of paper. I think it was what you highlight though, which is important is it has to be done the right way, right. So I talk a lot about asking questions, I talk a lot

about highlighting a gap. I talk a lot about giving people choices, but like, let's go back to the you know, giving your kid choices, right. It's not about just giving them choices. Right. If you say, hey, do you want to you know, eat ice cream for dessert or eat your broccoli, They're gonna go, oh, it's a no brainer. I wanted ice cream, right. And so it's not just about choice. It's about the right choices. It's not just

about questions. It's about the right questions. And so, as with any strategy, we have to think about the right way of doing it. But the goal is key. Right. What am I trying to encourage someone to do? How can I lead them there or guide them there, but help them feel like they got there on their own, directing their attention but not forcing them down a particular path. YEA. Doing coaching work, you just realize how powerful questions are, Like you have to really work on questions. Yes, a

big part of the art. I think. The other thing that gets in the way of change, another barrier to change that you point out is something known as endowment. Share a little bit about what that is. Yeah, I think a good way to talk about endowment is actually to to talk about a study that was done a number of years ago. They ask people, they say, Hey, which do you think hurts more a minor injury or

a major one. A minor injury being like you sprain a finger, you have a lower back injury, you have sort of a little bit of a problem with your knee that flares up once in a while, And a major injury would be like, you know, you shatter your kneecap, you have a heart attack, you break your arms, something like that, And people think about it and they go, oh, man, that that's obvious. I mean, a major injury hurts a lot. Minor injuries don't hurt very much at all, So major

injury must be a lot more painful. And it's clear why we think that, right, Major injuries do hurt a lot, But it actually ends up that our intuition is is wrong. Minor injuries end up causing us more pain than than major ones. And the reason is because we never get minor injuries fixed. Right, So so major injuries you get, you shadow your kneecap, you're gonna go and and get a cast on it in physical therapy and all the things. You get a heart attack, you see a specialist, you

would stent put in whatever it might be. You do the work to fix it. But if there's a minor injury. If it's just a little bit below the threshold for action, we never make the change. Right. We end up sticking with something that's not great, but then it caused us a lot of pain over time. It's only a small amount of each period, but add up those periods over a lot of time, and it causes us more pain than the major pain over just one period or two. And so that same intuition taps into what I would

call endowment. Right. We are attached to old things in part because old things aren't terrible. Because if old things were terrible, we would get rid of them. Right. If your job was terrible, you get rid of it. If you're dating someone and they're terrible, you would stop dating them. Right. If you're married to them and it's terrible, you get divorced. Right. If something is terrible, we fix it. But if something is just not great, we never end up getting it fixed. Right.

You can almost think about this is like you know, if your house is infested with cockroaches, you call an exterminator, but if like every week, you get a couple of ants, or once a month you get a cock roach, you never end up calling because it's not above the threshold for change, but you end up stuck with that problem for a long time. And so this is kind of the challenge of change. If something was terrible, it would have been changed ready. But if something's just okay, it's

never never changed. And so um Jim Collins talks about this a lot and good degrade. He talks about, you know, why do we have good schools? Why don't we have great schools because we have good schools? Why don't we have great this because we have good this and in some sense they're good is the enemy of a great um. And so I don't want to say that, you know, the person someone is dating is good and that's not good enough. For a job is good, and that's not

good enough. But I think the key insight is things that are okay can get in the way of better things. And so one thing we need to encourage people to do is to highlight the cost of an action. Write them to make them realize that, yes, over one period that bad, that minor injury doesn't hurt, but over a long time it would probably be worth getting it fixed. And so I'll give you just an example of this.

I had a cousin every time he would send an email, would basically type out his email signature, so he would say, you know, best Charles or whatever it is in his email signature, and and this frustrated me forever. Right, I was like, God, you know everyone has an automated email signature, now, why don't you just automate your email signature? Is like, what are you talking about? I don't know how to do that, And it doesn't take that long to write best Charles. I just throw it at the bottom of

the email, right, It's it's no work at all. And so to him, right, think about it, it's good, not great. It's the couple bugs once in a while, it's not a house infested with the cockroaches. And the work to do the new thing is hard, right, The work to figure out how to install that email signure is gonna take ten or fifteen minutes. And so the cost today is bigger than the benefit today, so we don't take action. So what did I do? So? I said, Okay, interesting,

I got it. It It takes a long time. How many emails do you write a week? He said, I don't know, a few hundred emails. How many seconds does it take you each time that you write your email signature goes I don't know, you know, a few seconds. Okay, So how many minutes a week do you spend writing your email signature? And he thinks about it, and then he types in right, how to automate an email signature because he's just realized, Right, what I've done is I've highlighted

the cost of it. Actually, I've made him realize. Yes, in the moment, today's moment, the cost of change is bigger than the benefit of change. You're right, But even if we go a week, the cost of change becomes less than the benefit of change. And so it's about encouraging people to realize that doing nothing that good? Is it maybe the enemy of the great That doing nothing may not be as cost as it seems. Encouraging to

realize that. Yes, and a given moment, it may be hard to change, but in the long run they are better off in making that change, as humans were so bad at present cost versus future cost, or present benefit

versus future benefit. It's why it makes so many of these changes so hard, because we are wired to do what is easier, feels better now, even though we know the long term and so I love that idea of highlighting the costs over the long term, thinking about like, what does this really mean over a period of time. Often what happens is those costs are adding up and we get the bill at the end, and then we go, oh, shoot,

I should have changed, right. So but if we got an invoice each week that showed the cost still on it, right, like, we'd be like, oh boy, this is really adding up. I might want to do something. I like the way you said that instead of just like getting a total bill at the end and you're like, oh, I can't pay this. Yes, we are focused on the invoice at the moment of change. And by the way I talked about in the book the cost benefit timing gap, what do I mean by that? The cost of change almost

always come due before the benefits of change? Right. I love I love the way you phrase it is an an invoice, right. So you know, let's take a simple example. I want to buy something. I want to buy a new lawnmower or I don't know, you know, a new computer. I got to pay that money upfront. I want to learn a new skill. I want to take one do class or learn to cook, or learn a language or install a new software package. Is going to take a

lot of time and effort to do those things. There's a benefit to those things, right, I have a better lawnmower or a better computer. I've learned a language, I get in shape, I do all these things. But those benefits are often in the future and they're uncertain, and the costs are often now and they're they're certain, And so we just end up saying, well, look, I'll just stick with what I'm doing because it's easier. Right, there

was moment to moment costs and benefits are misaligned. And so, as you nicely said, by encouraging us to take a longer viewpoint, making those invoices at the weekly level rather than at the daily level, but also not at the six month level, it encourages us to rise maybe actually should change. The benefits are going to be bigger than

the costs over that period. Yep. And as I was reading that section in your book, I could not help but think about, like the injuries in my life, and which of them actually prompt me to go get help, you know, And it's it's usually after I have ignored it just as long as I can. And then I'm finally like, all right, this just isn't working. You know, I've had I've got a shoulder thing, and I know how to fix the shoulder, and I will stop doing

the exercises until I feel the shoulder to inge again. Now, luckily, I've gotten a little bit wiser that when I feel it, I'm like, Okay, I know what to do, and I start doing them and it never gets really bad again. But that is such a true statement. You know, when is it bad enough to do something about it? Yeah, it's almost like, you know, we should do preventative maintenance, but we never do right because oh, you know, I don't need to do it, and then well, it ends

up you'd be better off if you've done it. Ye. I want to talk about something now. I'm sort of shifting into invisible influence for a second, but I want to talk about this idea of identification and differentiation. How as people, sometimes we really want to identify with a certain group, or sometimes we want to differentiate ourselves from a certain group. And I've always found this fascinating to be like, what is it that causes people in some

cases to identify or differentiate? And then often right, I'm identifying with one group while I'm differentiating from another group, and you talk eloquently about some of the factors that go into that, and I just thought that was really fascinating. Yeah. Sure, so. So I think, as you very nicely pointed out, it's not that we do one or the other. We're constantly doing both, right, We are constantly looking to identities that we want to hold. People would often call these aspiration

groups or aspirational identities. It maybe a person, it may be a group of people. You know, we look to them and go, God, I would love to be like them, um, and so I'm going to engage in things that will make me more like that and like them. Maybe I see an ad and you know, the product that people using it just looks so cool and fun, and so I maybe buy that product so I can be more like them. Or you know, I see an action that someone's taking and so I want to do something like

them to you know, be part of that group. At the same time, they're also called sort of disassociative groups or avoidance groups, UM, identities that we want to avoid. Right. We look at them and go, God, you know, I don't I don't want to be like that, and so well, maybe I should avoid doing things that those type of people are doing, And so we constantly have sort of these polls were oscillating between between how does what I'm doing make me look? And really, who does it make

me look like? If it makes me look like the type of person I want to look like, I'm more likely to do it. And if it makes me look like the type of person I don't want to look like, I'm less likely to do it. So we ran a study, for example, many years ago, your listeners maybe remember these famous bands, Live Strong bands. These yellow wrist bands were popular, and so right at the moment they became popular, we sold them on I was a PhD student at Stanford.

We sold them to a group of student at Stanford a dorm of Stanford students, and looked at whether they wore them or not, and they did, and then we sold them to another group of people. And if the ideas look more is better. You know, people just want other people to be doing something. They should be happy to continue wearing them, and they like the wristband, so the fact that other people wearing it doesn't give them

more information about the bands. But we picked the group we told to second on purpose, we picked sort of the geeks on campus, so imagine sort of an academic focus dorm. They take extra classes, they do extra work. And we wondered what would happen to the initial group of wristband wears when the geeks started wearing it, and we found sure enough is when the geeks started wearing it, those initial people stopped doing it. Right. It's not that

the band is actually any better or worse. Functionally, it's still the same, but because it's associated with a group, they don't want to look like they stopped doing it. And so you see these motivations working together all the time. Right, I want to be like these people and not like the others. And even if I want to be like a certain group, I don't want to be identical to them. Right. So you know, look at a group of I don't know i'm gonna I'm gonna stereotype here, but fourteen to

eighteen year old girls are ways right. You often see groups of friends that are dressed very similarly. Now they're not just identically, right, um, but they're wearing the same brands, are the same styles of clothes. They're not learning literally the same shirt and literally the same pants. But you can figure out what group someone belongs to based on their choices, but you can also get a sense of how much they care about standing out of that group.

And so we simultaneously have these motives to fit in and stand out, um to signal desired identities and avoid signaling undesired ones, And the choices we make are based on those motivations, allowing us to communicate desired identities to ourselves and and to others. I think this is such an interesting point. We had an author on Luke Burgess who wrote a book about a concept of memetic desire. You know, the desire is imitative, which is I think

obvious that it is. But the question of what causes us to imitate certain ones versus others I find really fascinated. And when you start unwinding this back to kind of where we started, which is that so much of what we do is influenced by others. How do we know what we really want? You know, what does that even mean? If I've been being influenced since the moment I was born by what's around me, whether it's identifying or differentiating from everything. You know, how do we get to what

is for us, and I'm just kind of curious. How do you think about trying to unravel that enough? I mean, I don't think you can completely unravel it to my point, but how do you unravel it enough to start to go okay? I think I'm making decisions based on what I want, not without so much influence. So imagine you took a business trip to a city you've never been to before, and your plane touches down and it's you

go to the hotel and it's dinner time. You don't know anybody there, but you want to figure out where to go out for dinner. Imagine you couldn't use something like yelp. Imagine you couldn't ask the concierge for advice. Imagine you just had to walk around and find a place on your own. And you couldn't even use, by the way, the time tested trick we often use, just how many people are in the restaurant. You couldn't even

be that as information, right. Think about how difficult it would be to pick a good place to go for dinner. It'd be super difficult, right, You have no idea if the place is good or not. It would be bad and so you you talk about, well, you know, we want to make our own choices, but we don't always want to make our own choices, right, A lot of times,

you know, our own choices. I want to end up at a good Thie restaurant, and I want to use other people as a way to help me figure out which is the good Thai restaurant to to go to, And so influence by itself isn't bad, you know. I think influence is often a four letter word in some people's mind. They say, I don't want to be influenced, particularly in our American culture. You know, we see ourselves as individuals, special people. You know. We go to Burger King,

we have it our way. We go to Starbucks, they make our latte exactly how we want. You know, we are completely different from everyone else. It's okay to be like other people, right, It's okay to be part of a group. It's okay to rely on others for information. I think what I do agree with very much with what you said is is we want to be more

aware of influences so we can choose our influence. It's one thing to be influenced, it's another thing to be influenced negatively, and so I think we need to be more aware of how influence works so we can pick our head up and go wow. You know, I didn't

realize that the fact that I often compare myself. You know, I'm often on social media and I'm looking at my friends, and by looking at my friends, you know, I'm making myself unhappy because I'm looking at, you know, a varnished perspective in their lives, which is not what happens in every day but the best moments, I'm looking at their greatest hits, and I'm comparing my average life to their greatest hits. And no one's average life compares to someone

else great as greatest hits. Right, That's why the greatest hits. But if I don't realize that, I'm sitting there going, man, you know, my life just isn't as exciting when when in reality, all our lives are filled with both exciting

moments and less exciting moments. And so I think that's really what the goal of invisible influence is all about, is to help us be more aware of what those influences are so we can choose our influence, so we can decide, look, you know I'm gonna do this because I am choosing to be influenced by others, or you know, I'm going to shut off these channels because I want to make a completely independent decision, but recognizing that that requires more work. Yeah, yeah, I think that's so true

that it's inescapable. So to your point, I think it's it's about not being influenced in ways we don't want to be. Or I think the other is just not to have it happening so sort of subconsciously, you know, it's to have the awareness of, like, Okay, as a human being, I'm going to react, whether identify, or differentiate to everything that's around me all the time. It just happens.

And you know, all that makes me think about sort of all the way back to where we started, kind of about the wolf parable right, that feeding the good Wolf is often about. Are we surrounding ourselves and being influenced by people who are doing something similar? Yeah, And

you know, someone said it very nicely. They said, you know, you are the sum of your five closest others, whether that's a spouse, whether that's your kids, whether that's you know, your best friends, and so pick your influence carefully, right, think about who you are surrounding yourself with. If those are the types of people that you want to be surrounded with, great, but recognize that those folks are going

to influence you and make sure you're choosing them carefully. Yeah. Well, Jonah, thanks so much for taking the time to come on. It has been a real pleasure talking with you, and I really enjoyed both the books and I find your work just fascinating. Well, thanks so much. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a monthly donation to support the One You Feed podcast. When you join our membership community. With this monthly pledge, you

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