I want to take you to some laboratory experiments so that we can develop a model a way of thinking about influence so at our labs a couple of years back we brought a whole bunch of munchkins together a bunch of kids sixth and seventh graders we want them to be old enough to understand money and be motivated to some degree by it so we brought a number of children into the lab and we gave them an opportunity to earn 40 dollars by completing four simple tasks ten dollars each over a period of ten minutes so easy money simple tasks brief amount of time and we hoped that they would save their money to go do something useful with it later in order to help them save their money we asked them to anchor their commitments to some goal so listen in as they describe what they want to do with their money so they got a goal right they've all got something to anchor their there their intentions now the question is how do they do now remember for easy tasks ten minutes forty dollars the only temptation we offered them was the opportunity to buy things at what we called our change anything store so we set up a little table and we had goods price at five to ten times what these kids knew you would pay in the store so not a temptation at all you'll see for example a candy bar available for ten dollars right or a tiny little hard candy for two dollars so all these kids knew this was not a particularly good deal how did they do in dealing with that modest temptation let's have a look bummer well let's look at the statistics out of a potential $40 in savings the average person took home $13 not a good outcome we were absolutely blown away they spent like crazy in fact some of the kids went into debt in in a ten minute period of time now you and I can sympathize so the question becomes why why now here's the problem you and I particularly with a religious perspective so often believe that the reason people do what they do is because they lack commitment they lack resolve we describe these as personal motivation problems this is a naive view of the view of the world and in fact what it causes us to do is when somebody fails we deliver another sermon which often isn't what's needed so Jane makes a commitment to make an matin to make and keep small commitments to improve our incomes and savings and she fails what do we do do we give her a motivational talk well we do if we don't understand influence so what I want to do is unpack that experience I want to pull back the curtain and show you what we did to these kids but first I want you to test whether they were aware of what we did so we asked them to explain their failures listen to their explanations I'm not sure if I should answer that question neither am i all right so so they're baffled you know why did I do this I I wanted to save and I've got no money left you know what happened to me well here's what happened and this is where you need to start taking notes because there were intentional influence systems put in place the same that Jane is subject to if she goes out to try to keep the commitments she made to increase her income and savings first of all as each of the kids came in we gave them a taste of their favorite candy we did what psychologists call putting them in a hot mode we wanted them in a hot impulsive mode so he just gave him a little taste and here's a free sample of what you have available on the table second we gave them no skills so we put him into novel circumstances and we didn't skill them up to deal with some of the novel challenges that they'd face third we subjected them to social influence so you'll notice how the model is organized these are the repeatable learn about intentional sources of influence they embody all of what the social sciences have been repeatedly demonstrating for the past 70 years about why you and I do what we do a large reason is because we're socially motivators socially enabled in fact to the degree that you and I are naive about how profound these sources of influence are let me show you how modest the intervention was from a social perspective all we did was get accomplices Confederates in at least to the control condition to come in and make a small statement a small suggestive statement to the subject at the point that they were observing the store that's it that's it a guy in a red shirt saying dude right that's all it takes source five we tried to manipulate structural incentives as well all we did here was say just spend as much as you want will deduct it from your earnings later we gave him a credit account gave him a credit card would that make a difference six we surrounded the room with decorations the decorations were pictures of children enjoying candy just gave him a few little cues and what happens $40 goes to 13 in 10 minutes now this wouldn't be particularly compelling unless we had an experimental condition right so as good scientists in the room what you ought to be asking is all right well if you change those would behavior change well let's do it so let's on the first case from a personal motivation perspective let's not put them in a hot mode no taste of the candy we're gonna remove that second well just give them a 60 second little practice opportunity for how to keep track of your savings and spending so you can keep a mental tally third and fourth we'll ask those accomplices those Confederates to take a different role just give them a different phrase to use [Music] again modest little adventure kid I've never met babbling about saving his money would it have an influence on me source 5 we're going to take them off the credit account and pay them in cash that way as they surrender the cash they'll experience the loss and 6 we're gonna take down the wallpaper so what happens if all of those change let's have a look now anecdotally it looks like things were much different let's look at the data so where's the kids in the first condition walked out with $13 those in the second condition walk out with 34 this is a modest difference this is a 270 percent difference you know in academics we can get a PhD for finding a 5 to 10 percent difference in behavior this is huge shifts so if we've got 800,000 Jains that we want to influence how do we think about that problem here's the take away leadership is intentional influence what we know is that if you amass a strategy that includes all six of those sources of influence people change that's how it works