[These blog entries are my notes and takeaways from Jonah Berger’s amazing book, The Catalyst as I apply them to Universal Healthcare.]
Prime example here is of a substance abuse intervention. The corroborating evidence is supplied by the overwhelming number of attendees who are there to tell you about your problem and how it affects them. Further examples are provided about taking advice from people about cars or contractors and how corroboration from knowledgeable sources or disinterested sources increases the value of the input. The size of the decision matters also:
“How much weight, or proof, you need depends on how heavy the thing is that you’re trying to move. If you’re trying to lift a pebble, you don’t need much. Add a little evidence and it moves right away. Change happens. But if you’re trying to move a boulder, much more effort is needed. More proof is required before people will change.”
HCR Lessons: Clearly healthcare reform is a boulder. A really big boulder.
The Translation Problem
When people get recommendations, they try to translate that recommendation into what it means for them personally. Is the recommender similar? Prior recommendations? Validity of prior recommendations?
Strength in numbers. Multiple sources of information helps. It is helpful to consider which sources are most impactful, should they be spaced out over time, and how are they best deployed, especially when trying to change minds on a larger scale.
- Which Sources Are Most Impactful?
- People like me.
- Respected people in the community.
- People you know. Especially people you know well or with whom you have multiple connections.
- Also people from diverse areas improve corroboration. The more independent sources are better.
- This also goes for organizations. Substitute organizations for people in the above lines.
- When?
- Sometimes, all at once like in an intervention.
- Closely spacing asks or invitations is more impactful.
- When to Concentrate or Spread Out Scarce Resources: sprinklers or fire hoses?
- For weak attitudes (pebbles), the sprinkler system works best. It is not as hard to move a pebble.
- For stronger attitudes, boulders, the fire hose strategy is best.
HCR Lessons: We should be able to marshal sources in all of the ways described above. I think it is especially true that we do this with doctors and nurses. We have the stories. With some work, we may also be able to marshal organizational sources similarly. I do not think we should discount that businesses who are not profiting within the medical industrial complex are being scalped by the medical industrial complex.
Firehose: I think the Kefauver commission events would be amazing fire hoses. See my previous chapter summary about this.
Sprinkler: given the magnitude of this boulder, I think both techniques will be required in a sustained manner over a long period of time. I have been thinking a lot lately about sending ourselves in two conservative gatherings, or at least mixed gatherings like Rotary, Kiwanis and other such groups. Also on campus groups like the young Republicans and other conservative groups. Op-ed’s in traditional papers, alternative media, university media.
Again, all this is going to take a lot of resources and a lot of time and a lot of commitment.
Pebble or Boulder? How expensive, time-consuming risky or controversial is the thing?
Case study is about getting people to eat organ meats during World War II. They reduce uncertainty by providing recipes and suggesting be part of a larger family dish. To shrink distance they ask people to just try it occasionally. To reduce reactance they had small group discussions with housewives. These discussions provided corroborating evidence from similar people.
HCR Lessons: I totally agree that the campaign will have to be multipronged and this is a long game.
Berger, Jonah. The Catalyst: How to Change Anyone’s Mind (p. 181). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.”
