How to positively influence the behaviour of others...

Don’t tell them you’re recycling the office stationery.

Let me explain…..

Just when you thought you were doing your bit to save the planet, along comes a study that suggests your recycling efforts might actually be encouraging people to use more of what you’re trying to save. It’s what psychologists call ‘negative spillover effect’ and to prove the point they conducted an experiment in a public toilet. Nothing to do with missing the bowl by providing a fly as a target. This one’s about the excess use of paper hand towels.

Apparently ‘negative spillover effect’ is what happens when we engage in counterproductive behaviour caused by doing something that was meant to be productive. For example, you might go to the gym and burn off a few hundred calories but then head straight for the pub to replace them. Well, you’ve earned it, right? Or you may select a healthy salad starter so you don’t feel quite so bad about having the sticky toffee pudding for dessert. Or you work late one night so you can go home early the next. Basically, it’s robbing Peter to pay Paul.

So back to the experiment in the restroom. Jesse Catlin from Washington State University’s Business School and her colleague Yitong Wang from Tsinghua University in Beijing organised researchers to collect data on the number of paper hand towels used on a daily basis. Then they introduced a large recycling bin near to the wash basins together with signs saying that any paper towels placed in the bin would be recycled. When they compared the amount of paper towels used pre and post recycling bin, they found the presence of recycling facilities led to a big increase in the use of paper towels - about 12,500 more a year.

Naturally, the researchers were flushed with success. I mean, this was far from a bog standard experiment, right? Who in their right mind could possibly pan their findings? Can I stop making these silly jokes now or can you handle more? Okay, I’ll spare you the one about the chain reaction. It’s out of my cistern now.

So what are the implications for your workplace? Well, it seems that changing people’s behaviour positively in one area can often lead to counterproductive behaviour in another. Perhaps you should check to see if your company is using more stationery since it introduced a stationery recycling programme? (Assuming it has, of course.)

According to psychologists, doing something good often serves as a ‘justification cue’ to do something less good. So workers may subconsciously be saying to themselves “If it’s being recycled then it probably doesn’t matter if I use more”. Naturally, anyone saying this out loud should be dealt with appropriately.

So when it comes to persuading others to change their behaviour, one thing is clear: simply providing facilities that make it possible for people to make such changes may not be enough. And this is especially the case when there is little or no cost to the user of the resources being consumed.