information about what others are doing. Just a few months after Freecycle got off the ground,
Cialdini worked with a team of psychologists to survey more than eight hundred Californians about
their energy consumption. They asked the Californians how important the following factors were in
shaping their decisions to save energy:
It saves money
It protects the environment
It benefits society
A lot of other people are doing itThe Californians consistently reported that the most important factor was protecting the
environment. Benefiting society was second, saving money was third, and following the lead of other
people was last. Cialdini’s team wanted to see whether people were right about their own
motivations, so they designed an experiment. They visited nearly four hundred homes in San Marcos,
California, and randomly assigned them to receive one of four different types of door hangers:
Save money by conserving energy: According to researchers at Cal State San Marcos, you could
save up to $54 per month by using fans instead of air conditioning to keep cool in the summer.
Protect the environment by conserving energy: According to researchers at Cal State San
Marcos, you can prevent the release of up to 262 lbs. of greenhouse gases per month by using
fans instead of air conditioning to keep cool this summer.
Do your part to conserve energy for future generations: According to researchers at Cal State
San Marcos, you can reduce your monthly demand for electricity by 29% using fans instead
of air conditioning to keep cool this summer.
Join your neighbors in conserving energy: In a recent survey of households in your community,
researchers at Cal State San Marcos found that 77% of San Marcos residents often use fans
instead of air conditioning to keep cool in the summer.Cialdini’s team conducted door-to-door interviews at each household, without knowing which
door hangers they had. When asked how motivating the door hangers were, the residents whose
hangers emphasized joining their neighbors reported the lowest motivation. They reported 18 percent
lower desires to conserve energy than residents with the protect-the-environment hangers, 13 percent
lower than residents with the future-generations hangers, and 6 percent lower than residents with the
save-money hangers.
But when Cialdini’s team looked at the residents’ energy bills to see what people actually did,
they found something surprising: the residents were wrong about what motivated them. During the
following two months, the residents whose door hangers emphasized joining their neighbors actually
conserved the most energy. On average, the “join your neighbors” hanger led to between 5 and 9
percent fewer daily kilowatt-hours of energy used than the other three hangers—which were all
equally ineffective. Knowing that other people were conserving energy was the best way to get
residents to follow suit.
But perhaps it was the people who were already conserving electricity in each neighborhood who