Page 211 - The Power to Change Anything
P. 211
200 INFLUENCER
paper can outweigh the powerful urge to use cocaine, but it
makes sense in terms of what we know about why people use
drugs.”
Obviously, vouchers alone wouldn’t be enough to keep
cocaine addicts clean. However, when used with subjects who
are already morally and socially invested in giving up cocaine,
and when they’re combined with traditional methods, those
who were given incentives benefited from the motivational
boost. Of the patients who were given vouchers, 90 percent fin-
ished the 12-week treatment program, whereas only 65 percent
of non-voucher subjects completed the program. The long-
term effects were similarly impressive.
To show how small incentives can be powerful motivators
for almost anyone, take a look at your luggage. If you’re like
millions of other travelers around the world, you’re sporting a
plastic tag that touts your status in your favorite frequent-flier
program. It’s almost embarrassing to acknowledge the way
these programs have reshaped our behavior.
For example, a friend of ours recently took a trip from Salt
Lake City to Singapore. If you were to take out a globe and
draw a route from Salt Lake to Singapore, you’d pass through
places such as San Francisco and Hawaii. But neither destina-
tion appeared on our friend’s itinerary. Instead he first flew
two hours east to Minneapolis, Minnesota, before flying back
west to Anchorage, Alaska, and Seoul, Korea, on his way to
Singapore.
Our friend added hours to his flight because it maximized
his frequent-flier miles. This enormous inconvenience proba-
bly earned him a whopping $30 worth of benefits. But he
wanted those miles. He needed those miles. In fact, flyers have
become so obsessed with maximizing their miles that the dol-
lar value of unused frequent-flier miles on the planet now
exceeds all the cash circulating in the U.S. economy.
If you’re still not convinced that small rewards can affect
behavior, consider the following example. In a group home for