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Comment by hawkharris | Hacker News Reader

Signs say something interesting about the herd mentality in people.

For example, psychologist Robert Cialdini did an experiment a few years ago to get people to be more respectful of public parks. He found that negative messages actually made people more likely to take items from the park (which they weren't supposed to do). [1]

Interestingly, the most effective way to change people's behavior was to leverage peer pressure, making them feel like everyone around them was already performing the desired action. E.g. "98% of hikers don't remove rocks; please don't be the 2%"

I'm not saying these two cases are identical, but to me what makes the U.K. signs so effective is that they suggest, in a subtle way, "Hey, you should have a good time because everyone else is enjoying themselves."

[1] http://www.freakonomics.com/2012/06/21/riding-the-herd-menta...

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In the back of NYC taxis there is a PSA that often plays about wearing your seatbelt. In it, the rider is urged to buckle up and is told that "65 Percent Of New York Cab Riders Don't Buckle Up". The message is intended as 'do better New York!' but it always comes across as validation for not choosing to wear a seatbelt.

It always reminds me to not be the median dumbass, as NYC taxis used to be one of the few remaining places I didn't put mine on.

Then again I'm an elitist prick, so perhaps this wouldn't have the desired effect on the median user.

When I was a kid I remember the older kids used to drop litter on purpose, not because it was too much effort to put it in the bin but to show how rebellious they were.

If you put up something that looks like an authority that will try and punish you if you disobey then you look brave and smart by disobeying it and getting away with it.

Wondering how effective is the following sign plastered all over Dublin: http://www.flickr.com/photos/37488984@N08/3738757617/

Well, it made me want to litter. I'd say it's effective.

Cialdini's book, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, is easily one of the most interesting books I've ever read. It's not long and it's an easy read too -- I'd highly recommend reading it:

http://www.amazon.com/Influence-Psychology-Persuasion-Busine...

The UK government had a Behavioural Insights Team, also known colloquially as the "Nudge unit".

> When the unit advised the HMRC to change the wording on income tax letters, for example, it resulted in an extra £200million being collected on time. Another experiment with the British Courts Service used personalised text messages to remind people to pay their fines on time. The result? Bailiff interventions were reduced by 150,000, saving around £30million.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9853384/Inside-the-...

Each week my municipality sends out an email the night before garbage collection stating which items are to be picked up the next day (e.g. blue box, garbage, bulk items, garden bags).

Historically it was a friendly, we're-all-in-this-together sort of email sharing information about what helps the recycling process go most smoothly, maximizes taxpayer return, etc. Recently they had a change of responsible parties, and now the new emails are full of stark, accusatory statements of absolutes and rules -- the classic underlined/bold/italic "DO NOT" type list of exclusions.

It is absolutely remarkable the effect this has. Suddenly we're not all in this together, but it's factions working against each other. I and my fellow taxpayers are now suddenly trouble in someone's life.

I've always been against hostile communications where they aren't necessary, but this has absolutely opened my eyes to how much of an impact this sort of adversarial approach can have. It's purely an anecdotal datapoint, but it really struck me.

People are really ridiculously similar to dogs and other animals; the response to negative reinforcement or negative punishment is at worst uniformly negative, or at best inconsistent and unpredictable. Positive reinforcement results in a positive behavioral change without negative side-effects. Truly the best way to change behavior, yet people still believe that negativity is necessary, especially in the corporate and beaurocratic world. Mind-bogglingly uninformed, to put it lightly.

*edit: sorry for the comparison to dogs (I have some background in animal training); but I hope at least the connection of corporate policy to empirical behavioral science and psychology isn't the cause of the downvoting... anyway if you're interested, a great book is "Don't Shoot the Dog" by Karen Pryor. And on the business side, W. Edwards Deming's seminal work "Out of the Crisis." Essentially both show a proven way of dealing with any living thing that's based on positive behavior and proven statistical methods and science rather than outdated and misguided beliefs about punishment and motivation that are now known to be less effective in the long term. Simple psychology, statistics, and science.

Just to get pedantic, positive reinforcement means you are adding something to the environment with the goal of affecting behavior. Negative reinforcement means something has been removed from the environment to affect behavior. Not the same thing as reward and punishment. A negatively worded message is still technically positive reinforcement.

I'm not sure if you can consider a sign reinforcement though, because it is usually presented before the desired or undesired behavior occurs....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement

Yep, I'm fully aware of the behavioral theory behind it and the four quadrants. To the layman it's easier to talk about Reinforcement versus Punishment alone, since the two main branches share most of the common effects, and of which (at least in animal training) Positive Reinforcement with cues (clicker) appears to be the most effective. I realize I might have mixed them up above, sorry about that.

I actually think about positive wording versus negative wording to be a prime example of punishment versus reinforcement; with negative wording the interpretation (mine anyway, without much analysis) is a pre-emptive punishment directed directly at me for an undesired behavior that is an option, whereas a positively worded sign is pre-emptive positive reinforcement for good behavior that I might consider. I get rewarded/positively reinforced for good thought versus punished for bad thoughts, and it turns out the punishment (and side-effects thereof) applies whether or not I actually had the thoughts or not (citation needed, etc.). Really interesting to think about.

I'm helping take care of a preschool-aged kid with a brain injury and an unstable family situation. He has a lot of behavioral issues.

The most success we've had has been through "Positive Behavior Intervention" ( http://www.pbis.org/ ). The basic philosophy is to identify the value someone gets out of their negative behavior, set positive expectations for behaviors that provide the same value, and then provide immediate positive feedback whenever you see the positive behavior.

The adversarial approach, by comparison, tended to lead to escalating problems. It made me his enemy instead of his ally and advocate.

Quite relevant Pecha Kucha by Dan Pink related to signs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=9...

A fun sight is going to Tokyo and seeing huge amounts of bikes parked in front of "no bike parking here please" signs.

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