Thread by @matseinarsen

Conscience Accounting

After violating a moral norm, people have an increased likelihood to act prosocially. Can you provide an outlet for the good behavior? Can you remind people of previous bad deeds to encourage a good deed?

#Convert2Good #advent 1/24

Vicarious Moral Self-licensing

We see our actions as more prosocial if we regard ourselves as part of a group with a good prosocial record. Even onlookers do. Be careful about how you talk about group membership.

#Convert2Good #advent 2/24

Social Inclusion

Social exclusion reduces a wide range of prosocial behaviors. It increases aggression, risk taking & procrastination and reduces cooperation and analytical reasoning. Can users feel included or excluded in your system? What cues exist?

#Convert2Good 3/24

Prosocial disobedience

If breaking a rule is perceived to be for a greater good, people tend to regard it as a positive. However, people tend to follow unethical requests, while strongly over-estimating their ability to do disobey.

#Convert2Good #advent 4/24

Omission bias

The tendency to judge a harmful action as worse than an equally harmful inaction. How is inactivity handled in your system? What are your default settings?
(link.springer.com/article/10.100…)

#Convert2Good #advent 5/24

Moral nudges

People shape their behaviour after moral norms, so try to invoke those if you can. Try just asking people to consider what a moral action would be.

Dr. Sreedhari Desai have some more specific nudges:
rework.withgoogle.com/blog/nudge-peo…

#Convert2Good #advent 6/24

Awe

Feelings of awe increase ethical decision making, generosity and prosocial behavior. Can your product amaze your users enough? Can you reach them at a moment of awe?

Bonus insight: Awe creates a perception of having more time available.

#Convert2Good #advent 7/24

Bystander effect

Individuals are less likely to take action in an emergency the more other people are present. Can you clarify responsibility in your system? Can you reduce the perception of bystanders?

spmoodle23.aisgz.org/pluginfile.php… …

ethz.ch/content/dam/et… …

#Convert2Good 8/24

Mood

Positive and negative moods can both increase and decrease prosocial behavior. Pay attention to the mood of your users and rigorously check your assumptions.

#Convert2Good 9/24

ei.yale.edu/wp-content/upl…

Overjustification Effect

Rewarding a behavior might reduce intrinsic motivation to do the behavior. This might lead to an long-term reduction in the reinforced behavior. Do you tie positive outcomes to individual actions?

princeton.edu/~rbenabou/pape…

#Convert2Good #advent 10/24

Invoking self-identity

People always look to affirm their identity positively. Refer to identity rather than actions to make people take a positive action. For example, praise your kid for being a "helper" rather than "for helping".

#Convert2Good #AdventCalendar 11/24

Legitimate Peripheral Participation

New community members often start by contributing in simple or low-risk ways. People are more likely to help in an emergency if bystanders are able to assist if necessary. Can your users contribute on different levels?

#Convert2Good 12/24

Emotional Contagion

Mood is contagious in both offline and online systems. Knowing mood affects likelihood to behave in a prosocial way, what is it like in your system? Can you influence the group mood?

Notorious Facebook mood exp: pnas.org/content/111/24…

#Convert2Good 13/24

Guilt relief

Inducing guilt can increase pro-social acts and charitable giving, but if too strong it can lead to an counter-arguing effect. If people can't find prosocial relief, they might use less adaptive solutions like self-punishment. A dark pattern?

#Convert2Good 14/24

Religious Priming

Cues about religion is a robust way of increasing pro-social behavior with religious users. A potential drawback to be aware of is that it can increase racial prejudice, and might be limited to other members of the same religion.

#Convert2Good #Advent 15/24

Empathy-altruism Hypothesis

The hypothesis that people help others out of empathy in ways that can't be explained by self-interest. Consider if you at all need to provide an instrumental reward to motivate contributions.

victorkumar.org/uploads/6/1/5/…

#Convert2Good 16/24

Moral self-licensing

Past good deeds can make people feel liberated to take less prosocial actions. Focus on rewarding commitment and consistency. Be careful about how you frame previous actions.

#Convert2Good #Advent 17/24

Negative State Relief Model

People seek relief from negative moods, and this drives prosocial behavior towards others in need. This is a competing model to the empathy-altruistic hypothesis and aims to explain prosocial acts without relying on altruism.

#Convert2Good 18/24

Fear of Negative Evaluation

People with a high fear of other's judgment are less likely to take any action in social situations. Can you create both social and non-social paths to contribute in your system?

#Convert2Good #AdventCalender 19/24

Intertemporal Choice

People tend to value a reward now higher than an equal reward in the future. This also works in reverse: a donation now is a bigger request than an equal donation in the future.

#Convert2Good #AdventCalendar 20/24

Social Desirability Bias

A tendency to answer survey and interview questions in a socially desirable way. Quite a few techniques exists to mitigate this, including asking indirect questions, using a social desirability scale, or increasing cognitive load.

#Convert2Good 21/24

Pluralistic Ignorance

To mistakenly believe most others hold a different opinion or belief than you. For example, people believe others are less concerned with avoiding embarrassment than they actually are.

psycnet.apa.org/record/1987-34…

#Convert2Good #AdventCalendar 22/24

"Sweet Wins"

People tend to feel increased well-being and behave more prosocially after a competitive win. However, for a win achieved with the help of others the effect is even stronger. Have you helped anyone win recently?

ac.els-cdn.com/S0022103117301…

#Convert2Good #Advent 23/24

Moral disengagement

People tend to use 1 of 7 techniques to excuse their immorality: Moral justifications, Euphemistic labelling, Advantageous comparisons, displacement/diffusion of responsibility, misrepresenting consequences or dehumanization

Merry Xmas! #Convert2Good 24/24

Not the easiest concept to capture in a single tweet, to be honest.

The wikipedia page is ok:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_dis…

Albert Bandura discussing Moral Disengagement:

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