Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die

by Chip Heath

The researchers believed that the smaller donations for the statistical letter could be a result of what they called the “drop in the bucket effect.” If people felt overwhelmed by the scale of the problem, their small donations might have seemed meaningless. But here’s where things get even more interesting. The researchers decided to give a third group of people both sets of information—the statistics and the story about Rokia. The researchers wondered whether people who got all the information would give more, on average, than the $2.38 that had been given by the Rokia group. Perhaps the combination of statistics and stories—the power of individual need coupled with the statistical scale of the problem—would inspire a whole new level of giving. Nope. The people who received both letters gave $1.43, almost a dollar less than the people who got the Rokia story alone. Somehow the statistics—evidence of massive human suffering in Africa—actually made people less charitable. What was going on? The researchers theorized that thinking about statistics shifts people into a more analytical frame of mind. When people think analytically, they’re less likely to think emotionally. And the researchers believed it was people’s emotional response to Rokia’s plight that led them to act.