what you're about to see is real real kids doing real things just thought you should know my name is Hiram granny and I was there for the whole thing so here's a question what does it take to get people to change and I'm not talking about their socks in underwear but change behavior especially when it's hard for example every year close to a hundred thousand people die from hospital-acquired infections that means people got sick at the hospital and it turns out one of the main culprits is hand hygiene that means just getting people to wash their hands could save lives so my crack research team decided to conduct an experiment to see if we could change something as difficult as hand-washing ethics only with the toughest subjects of all kids so here's what we did we took eighty munchkins and put them into groups first we gave them a challenging puzzle to put together you know kind of like the projects you adults are always busy with then we gave the kids a tempting distraction [Music] once I see that you guys have put the whole puzzle together correctly I'll raise my flag just like this and then I'll blow my whistle okay and when I do that you guys can all go and get your cupcake so what would it take to get these kids to wash their hands how about a good reason so one thing you guys should know there was a sick kid in here playing with the puzzle pieces he had a runny nose and coughed a lot so there's probably a lot of germs on everything but there's hand sanitizer over there on the table that you can use to wash up okay which will win out delicious frosted cupcakes or the fears of the typhoid Todd [Music] let's watch they finish their task and look if the threat of one sick kid wasn't enough just look at all the new germs popping up so with all those good reasons to wash what do you think they'll do okay so that was a colossal failure now what well at this point most adults would quit that's why you just keep changing the year on those New Year's resolutions with the next group of kids I change the environment by moving the hand sanitizer closer and then put up a visual cue this ought to make hand-washing easier and more obvious right in the end the motivation to not get sick plus changing the environment didn't influence a single kid yikes next I increase their ability which is another source of influence I had them all complete what is known as deliberate practice or training to increase their familiarity with good hand hygiene well adding another source of influence get these hand-washing offenders to wash up [Music] well now we're seeing some better results we're combining three different sources of influence and some of the kids are actually washing their hands it looks like we're on the right track so next I added another source of influence social influence what if somebody spoke up and said something what would happen if their bosses were in the room with them here come the cupcakes and there goes the flag will they wash oh look at them pouncing on those cupcakes like a pack of ravenous hyenas but it's not too late because something important happens at just a critical moment appear not even one of the bosses speaks up wash your hands watch the effect [Music] success at last so social motivation obviously made a difference but was it the only thing that mattered what about our other sources of influence here's what my kids had to say beside I was walking over and I get my cupcake but then someone says wash my your hands because this boy has so what's the point we often underwhelm overwhelming problems we try a couple of things and when they don't work we give up but my dad and his colleagues discovered the secret to overcoming tough problems you need to combine at least four preferably more sources of influence and it doesn't matter if you try it with kids or hospitals at the office or even at home if you use four or more sources of influence your chances for success go up ten times ten times so there it is the key to changing almost anything is to marshal the power of at least four or more sources of influence but preferably all six and heaven knows we need it [Music] [Music]