Spacing Out

Spacing Out

Perhaps the single most common mistake any of us make is simply to forget something. As with self-control problems, we all know that we have limited attention and can be absentminded. That is why we make lists of what to do and what to buy at the store, and why we have calendar apps on our phones that send us reminders. Much good can come from such cues to pay attention. This is one of many domains in which technology has made it easier to nudge, both ourselves and others. When nearly everyone is carrying a phone in their pocket that can receive a text message, as is often true even in poor countries, it is feasible to send well-timed prompts. Most businesses have learned this lesson. We get reminders of upcoming appointments with our doctors or hairstylists, as well as of restaurant reservations. We are told that a bill is due. Alas, some businesses that make money from our forgetting, such as credit card companies, which charge a steep fee if you fail to make a payment on time, do not provide these courtesy reminders unless you figure out how to ask for them. Funny how that works.

Although reminders have become ubiquitous and can work as terrific nudges, that does not mean there are not new ways of helping people keep track of their appointments and obligations. Here are just two examples.

Get out the vote: For as long as anyone could remember, campaigns used the same formula to encourage turnout on election day. Voters who were judged likely to be supporters of their candidate would be called and asked whether they planned to vote (for that candidate). If the answer was yes, the call was over. That changed after the presidential election in the United States in 2008. Political scientist David Nickerson and behavioral scientist Todd Rogers had run some experiments during the primary season in which they posed a three-question follow-up to the initial inquiry about voting intentions: 1) “What time do you expect you’ll head to the polls?” 2) “Where do you expect you’ll be coming from?” and 3) “What do you think you’ll be doing before you head out?”

The idea for these follow-up questions came from research by psychologist Peter Gollwitzer, who found that people were more likely to fulfill their goals if they had made explicit “implementation intentions.” The theory worked well in this situation. Prompting voters to make a plan increased turnout by 4.1 percentage points! Interestingly, the effect was much stronger for single-person households. Remembering is only half the battle if plans also have to be coordinated. Eliciting implementation intentions, or asking something like those three questions, can have a large impact in many domains.

Checklists: Although commercial pilots have flown hundreds or possibly thousands of times, they always go through a formal ritual before every takeoff, which is to go over a checklist of things that have to be ready before the plane leaves the gate. They don’t want to forget to top up the fuel before taking off! In his bestselling book The Checklist Manifesto, surgeon Atul Gawande details the value of a similar ritual in the operating room. The danger that Gawande wants to reduce is infections to the patient that can be introduced during the procedure. It turns out that if everyone involved thoroughly washes their hands, infections can be cut to zero, but surgeons can space out too!

One interesting key to the success of such programs is to authorize everyone in the room to remind absentminded offenders. Lower-status members of the team, such as nurses, might normally be reluctant to pipe up if a famous surgeon has skipped a step, but if it is considered part of their job, they do it. By the way, this is a completely general principle. All organizations work better if everyone is empowered to speak up when the boss is about to make a mistake. And checklists can provide a kind of choice architecture for choice architects: when he worked in the White House, Sunstein helped create a “regulatory impact analysis checklist,” consisting of just over one page, to remind government agencies of the concrete things they needed to do before they finalized a regulation.