Right now, I’m waiting at the airport. In front of me is a little girl riding a Shaun the Sheep suitcase.
I’ve never seen one of these before. It’s got a cool design (S. the Sheep on top, Union Jack below, suitcase inside). It also has wheels and works as a push bike. That’s how the little girl is using it now.
I was so impressed by the suitcase and by how much fun the girl was having, that when she rode by the first time, I stared at her and smiled. (That’s not a weakness I normally indulge in.) The girl spotted me smiling at her and looked away, embarrassed.
She kept rolling around, going in circles.
But I had stuff to do. I started checking my phone. I then got out my laptop to write this email.
Meanwhile, the girl kept passing in front of me, making ever more elaborate attempts to retrieve my attention. I cruelly kept writing. She kept riding around, until she finally stopped in front of me flailing her arms.
I’ve read this is a fundamental truth about human behavior.
In general, if you want to instill a new behavior, negative reinforcement can work, though not terribly well.
Positive reinforcement works much better.
But what works best of all is intermittent reinforcement. As Robert Sapolsky once put it, you never get more behavior out of an organism than when you introduce a “maybe” into the outcome.
That’s something to keep in mind when you’re trying to influence, in real life or online.
But maybe writing about influencing a 5-year-old human organism sounds a little callous, even for me. So I’ll wrap up this email here, and get back to admiring this girl’s suitcase-riding skills.
One more thing:
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