Are You a Moral Manipulator?

Hi, I'm with Nir again. In your book you talk about manipulation metrics. Could you explain about that?

Yeah, so ethics is something I care about deeply. And a question I often get is, you know, aren't you teaching people how to make the bomb? Right? Aren't you giving people the tools to use our deeper psychology to manipulate people's day to day behaviors? And the answer is yes, that in fact these tools can be used for nefarious purposes. And the reason I wrote this book was because I worked in the advertising and gaming industry and I'm trying to bring these techniques that advertisers and gamers have known for quite some time, but to bring these techniques to the larger community to help people build products and services, not just in gaming and advertising, but in health care and in education and all sorts of industries where we can use the power of habits for good. And so that's really why the first reason I wrote this book is. But there's still this test that I give to someone who's concerned, hey, how do I make sure that I'm using these habit forming techniques for good? And so I provide this two part test in the form of what I call what you mentioned, the manipulation matrix. The manipulation matrix is this four quadrant matrices where on one axis you have. Do you believe that the product or service that you're working on is, is materially improving people's lives? Yes or no? That's the first criteria on the Y axis. Do you believe what you're working on is materially improving people's lives? Yes or no? And only you can answer this question, right? This isn't a test for you to judge other people or for other people to judge you. It's sincerely for this question of hey, how do I make sure that I'm using my limited time on earth, right? How do I allocate my human capital towards something that can serve a higher purpose, that can do some good in the world? So that's the first question, but that's not good enough because there's another question that I think is critical, which is am I the user? Am I the user? So there's this two part test. Now why do I make people answer that question? That's what's on the X axis of yes I'm the user or no I'm not the user. Do you happen to know the first rule of drug dealing?

Never use Close.

Yeah. Never get high on your own supply. Very good. I don't want to ask about your background, but let's just go with that right. That's the first rule of drug dealing. Never get high on your own supply. So what I'm doing by asking makers to consider this question of number one, do I believe what I'm working on is materially improving people's lives? And then number two, am I their user? I'm making them break that rule. Because if there are any negative effects to overusing this product. Right. If this product is potentially addictive as opposed to just habit forming, guess who's going to be the first person to realize it. So that two part test, I think puts you not only in a good moral position because you are the user of the product, interestingly enough, it actually increases your odds of success from a business perspective. You become what I call a facilitator. If you can answer in the affirmative to these two questions, you're a facilitator. And it turns out that the companies that we talked about earlier, Facebook and Google and Instagram and WhatsApp and Slack and Snapchat, all of these companies, turns out, were started by facilitators. Doesn't mean you can't make money or have a good business in any of those other four quadrants. It's just that I think your highest odds of success. And you're also in a good moral position if you can answer yes to those two questions.

You probably also feel very passionate if you're the user. Right?

Right, right. And you just build better products. Right. The advantage of knowing your user. Right, because you've got the user right there, you've got your customer in you, is a huge advantage. And we don't always have that opportunity. If you're working at an agency or working in a company where maybe it's servicing somebody who's not you as the user. We don't always have that luxury, but then again, we always do. Right. We could always choose what we work on and what we're going to spend our time on. And so I think that's the best place to be.

Can you give us an example of how you can use hooks for good?

Sure. So a big reason why I wrote this book is because I want people to use the psychology of habits to help people live better lives. And so I actually do a bit of angel investing when I see these hooks in products that I think can actually improve people's well being. So there are several companies that come to mind. One company that I'm a big fan of is called Pantry Labs. And Pantry Labs is trying to take on this obesity epidemic. And what the company founders realized Is that people were eating unhealthy food. Because, look, let's face it, unhealthy food is very convenient. It's cheap and it's delicious. So how do we compete with a vending machine full of refined sugars that are bad for us, that we know cause obesity and all kinds of other problems? And that's the entire vending machine. So here comes Pantry labs and says, look, we're going to take a refrigerator with a door on it, and we're going to attach kind of like an iPad like device to the front and you can open the refrigerator whenever you like. But as soon as you take something out of that machine that happens to be stocked with fresh delivered food, every day, the food is delivered fresh. It's full of salads, full of fresh ingredients that are very nutritious and healthy for you. As soon as you take out the food from the machine, it has an RFID chip attached to it and your credit card is automatically charged. So now, for the first time, healthy food in an office building is as convenient to acquire as unhealthy food. And they're really changing people's lives, their day to day habits. It turns out that losing weight, it doesn't have to be about willpower. It's not your lack of character that you can't resist these temptations. It's just that if we make the behavior easier to do, which is a big part of what I describe in the book in the action phase of the hook, if we make that behavior easier to do and we build a habit out of eating healthy food by making it as accessible as unhealthy food, that's all we got to do. We don't have to expend willpower, we don't have to do all this hard work. And that's really what's so beautiful about using habits to change behavior, is that we, when we use habits, we offload the willpower. It doesn't have to become a struggle anymore. It's something that we do day in and day out with little or no conscious thought.

So people will do the right thing if you make it easier easier and.

Make it a habit. Right. So part of what makes using Pantry lab so easy is I put in my credit card, that's the investment phase of the hook. And then I tell it my preferences. And so more of that food gets delivered to me in the future. So this refrigerator that's just a vending machine essentially gets smarter and smarter over time the more I use it.