Take in a Saturday matinee or put in a shift at the soup kitchen? Buy a louder sound system or donate a bigger chunk to charity? Inhale a box of Fruity Pebbles or fletcherize a bowl of bran? The ancient struggle between what we want to do and what we should do besets our species at every turn. And in the clinch, virtue often loses to desire.
But researchers Todd Rogers and Max H. Bazerman have discovered one way to help people choose their shoulds over their wants: Don’t make them act now. Instead, let them choose now to act later. “When you give people the opportunity to make binding choices that will go into effect in the future,” says Rogers, “they are much more likely to do what they think they should do, rather than what they want to do.” The researchers call this tendency the “future lock-in effect.”
In one study, for example, Rogers and Bazerman asked participants how strongly they supported legislation that would reduce gas consumption— something many people think they should do—by raising gas prices—something few people want to do. Half the participants read that the legislation would take effect in a few years, and the other half read that it would take effect as soon as possible. The researchers found that more participants supported the legislation when they understood that it would launch in the distant future than when it would launch soon.
“People think about the future differently from the way they think about the present,” explains Rogers, who conducted the research at Harvard Business School as part of his doctoral dissertation. When considering the future, “people think about high-level goals: What is this action good for?” he says. “But in the present, they think about concrete outcomes: What are the immediate consequences of this action for me?”
To get people to lay aside their pressing desires and pursue their loftier goals, “you have to get them out of thinking for the moment,” says Rogers. In four studies with more than 900 participants, he and Bazerman did just that. Their studies explore a range of scenarios, from policies that would reduce over-fishing (a should) while increasing the price of fish (an undesirable), to plans that would make automatic retirement account contributions (a should) while reducing take-home pay (an undesirable). Across these studies, they show that getting people to commit to future actions, rather than to immediate ones, increases their ability to do as they should, rather than as they want.
Rogers points out that nonprofits can readily apply his findings to fundraising. When appealing to donors, “emphasize that their contributions will be implemented in the future,” he says. “With credit cards and checks, that’s easily doable.” Indeed, the work of another scholar, Anna Breman of the University of Arizona’s Eller School of Management, shows that donors to a nonprofit in Denmark upped their regular donations more when asked to do so in the future, rather than in the present.
“People struggle to make the choices they know they should make and, at a profound level, wish that they did make,” says Rogers. By designing appeals and policies that emphasize the future rather than the present, nonprofits, foundations, and legislators can help the shoulds beat out the wants.
Todd Rogers and Max H. Bazerman, “Future Lock-In: Future Implementation Increases Selection of ‘Should’ Choices,” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 106, 2008.
Read more stories by Alana Conner.