How managers can restore faith in humanity

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Standing on a street corner, you’re running late. Cars zoom by as you wait impatiently to cross the intersection. If you move fast, you think to yourself, you might make it to your meeting on time. But as you wait, a fellow pedestrian asks you for directions. Instead of brushing them off, you take your time helping them out. And by the time you’re done, you’ve missed your light and have to wait for the next one.

By helping this stranger on the street corner, you’ve engaged in a pro-social behaviour. And, according to assistant professor Rob Glew, you just disproved a prominent economic myth: that everyone behaves in a way that’s “rational.”

“The sheer existence of pro-social behaviour, and its important role in our society, shows that not every decision is based on cost or some kind of measure that we can interact with,” Glew said on the McGill Delve podcast. He’s an expert in operations management at McGill University.

In this case, the rational choice might have been to rush off to your meeting. Your job is important, after all, and you don’t want to be tardy for fear of getting in trouble. But in choosing to stay with the stranger, you helped make the city a nicer place to be.

While they don’t always generate money, pro-social behaviours are essential to businesses and society. Donating blood to your local blood bank can save lives. Paying for your groceries at self-checkout, where it would be easy to steal food, helps keep the store open. Letting another driver into your lane during rush hour keeps traffic moving for everyone.

Pro-social behaviour is essential to a healthy, functioning society, but it isn’t always the default for people. Thankfully, as Glew and his co-author Claire Senot discovered in a recent study, there are ways to encourage it.

Hold me accountable

In the early 2020s, COVID-19 self-testing was an essential pro-social behaviour to curtail the spread of the virus. Public health authorities advised everyone to self-test and, if they tested positive, isolate themselves to avoid passing on the virus.
Glew and Senot studied a COVID-19 self-testing campaign at a UK university, where university administrators provided free self-test kits to students living on campus. The program started off strong. But after a few weeks, self-testing rates dropped by 22 per cent.

Why? Box labels.

The university mailed their test kits to students living on campus. If multiple students lived in the same household, the box had each of their names written on it. Each student was encouraged to use their kit and take appropriate action based on their test results.

But after the first nine weeks, to help with efficiency, the program’s operations managers stopped listing names on the box in favour of alphanumeric codes. This helped avoid the time-consuming process of personalizing each package and allowed flexibility in how they produced and distributed the kits.

The new packaging system was indeed more efficient. But in removing names from its box labels, the university accidentally scrapped a tool that promotes pro-social behaviour, said Glew. The printed names created a sense of accountability for students uninclined to test themselves.

“It prompts this self-image concern,” said Glew. “Someone knows my name, what I’m doing, so someone knows if I’m being bad or not.”

No one was actually checking whether the students took their tests. Printed names created a perceived risk of reputational damage, which was enough to encourage pro-social behaviour.

Big Brother wants a word

Small changes, like writing names on a box, can create a context that encourages pro-social behaviour, explained Glew. But at what point does this tactic go from “gentle nudging” to “outright manipulation?”

“That’s something that has concerned me all the way through this work,” said Glew.

But, in many cases, it’s not so much about coercion as it is about setting the right social expectations, said Glew. Something as simple as a pair of googly eyes can significantly encourage people to donate more money. Replace the googly eyes with an actual camera, there might be a marginal increase in pro-social behaviour, but not enough to justify the invasion of privacy.

“If you want to force people to follow the rules, you can create a police state,” said Glew. “But social expectations are almost as powerful as the threatening Big Brother alternative.”

Rob Glew is an assistant professor of Operations Management at the Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill University. In his recent McGill Delve podcast interview, he details how managers can encourage pro-social behaviour through accountability, self-image, and more. Listen to the interview here or search “McGill Delve” wherever you download podcasts.