Why Superman Backfires and People Conserve Electricity
When Freecycle first launched, one of the early members was a ninety-eight-year-old man. He
collected parts to fix up bicycles and gave them to local children. He was an “incredible role model,”
Deron Beal recalls. Tucson citizens were able to identify with the man as a fellow resident. When
they saw him give, he was a member of their unique community, so they felt more compelled to
follow his example. New York University psychologist Jonathan Haidt refers to this as elevation, the
warm feeling of being moved by others’ acts of giving, which can “seem to push a mental ‘reset
button,’ wiping out feelings of cynicism and replacing them with... a sense of moral inspiration.”
When elevated, Haidt and psychologist Sara Algoe write, “we feel as though we have become (for a
moment) less selfish, and we want to act accordingly.”
But it was more than just common identity that made this elderly man such an elevating role
model. Consider an experiment by psychologists Leif Nelson and Michael Norton, who randomly
assigned people to list either ten features of a superhero or ten features of Superman. When invited to
sign up as community service volunteers, the group that listed superhero features was nearly twice as
likely to volunteer as the Superman group. Three months later, Nelson and Norton invited both groups
to a meeting to kick off their volunteering. The people who had written about a superhero were four
times more likely to show up than the people who had written about Superman. Thinking about a
superhero three months earlier supported giving. In comparison, thinking about Superman discouraged
giving. Why?
When people think about the general attributes of superheroes, they generate a list of desirable
characteristics that they can relate to themselves. In the study, for example, people wrote about how
superheroes are helpful and responsible, and they wanted to express these giver values, so they
volunteered. But when people think specifically about Superman, what comes to mind is a set of
impossible standards, like those popularized in the TV series The Adventures of Superman: “faster
than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single
bound.” No one can be that strong or heroic, so why bother trying?
On Freecycle, givers modeled a standard that seemed attainable. When members saw a ninety-
eight-year-old man building bikes for kids, they knew they could do something too. When members
saw people giving away items like clothes and old electronics, they felt it would be easy for them to
do the same. The small acts of giving that started on Freecycle made it easy and acceptable for other
people to give small amounts. Indeed, Cialdini finds that people donate more money to charity when
the phrase “even a penny will help” is added to a request. Interestingly, this phrase increases the
number of people who give without necessarily decreasing the amount that they give. Legitimizing
small contributions draws in takers, making it difficult and embarrassing for them to say no, without
dramatically reducing the amount donated by givers.
Although most people joined Freecycle to get free stuff, this doesn’t mean that taking was their
primary reciprocity style. When people join a group, they look for cues about appropriate behavior.
When new Freecycle members saw similar others modeling low-cost acts of giving, it became natural
for them to follow suit. By making giving visible, Freecycle made it easy for people to see the norm.
It’s a powerful lesson, even more so when we realize how much the visibility of giving can affect
reciprocity styles. In many domains of life, people end up taking because they don’t have access to