April 13, 2017

The Expectation EffectDesign Principle #36

Helen MeyersSr. Digital Content Writer

Design Principle #36 – Expectation Effect

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Expectation Effect“A phenomenon in which perception and behavior changes as a result of personal expectations or the expectations of others”

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Today’s horoscope…Cancer June 22 - July 22

It's important to make a commitment today. If you are looking for an excuse not to move forward, forget about it. The time is right to get active. Research and planning are indicated, but you may be getting too caught up in the minutiae. If you have any doubts, just use your imagination to come up with ideas or choices that will fill in the blanks and keep you going! If you need to make revisions, you can always work them out as you go along.

Virgo August 23 - September 22

Today you'll be placed in a complimentary if not overwhelming leadership role. Amid the craziness, don't forget to check in with yourself and make sure you keep a level head. If at any point you feel inundated, ask for help. This is not the time to let your ego get in the way and make decisions for you. No one is perfect, and no one expects you to be! Turn to that trusted co-worker or friend you know you can count on when things get rough. Do not go it alone.

PresenterPresentation Notes“The expectation effect is the idea that perception and behavior change as a result of personal expectations or the expectations of others. Once a person believes something, the belief alone creates the possibility it will happen”

This effect helps to explain the ongoing popularity of horoscopes, psychic readers, and Tarot cards. Keeping the claims and outcomes vague helps “sell” the validity, a believing person is biased to interpret ambiguous effects in accordance with their beliefs.

From Dr. Richard Wiseman’s book The Luck Factor. “Our expectations have a powerful effect on the way in which we think, feel, and act. They can influence our health, how we behave toward others, and how others behave toward us.”

There are several subsets of this phenomenon…

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Placebo EffectPatients experience treatment effects based on their belief that a treatment will work.

PresenterPresentation NotesMost common expectation effect we are familiar with is the Placebo effect, where patients in a controlled drug trial are divided into groups, one receiving the drug and the other group receiving a placebo. However, they found that even the patients who received the placebo had treatment effects based on their belief.

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Halo EffectAn employee’s performance is rated better based on overall positive impressions and not specifically their performance.

PresenterPresentation NotesHalo effect named by psychologist Edward Thorndike in reference to a person being perceived as having a halo. From The Luck Factor “Managers with high expectations about their subordinates motivate the people around them to perform well, while those with poor expectations cause their staff to become despondent and unproductive.”Also applies to brand marketing—from Dan Ariely’s Predictably Irrational, he points out “that’s what marketing is all about—providing information that will heighten someone’s anticipated and real pleasure.”

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Coca-Cola vs. Pepsi?

PresenterPresentation NotesClassic example was the “Pepsi challenge” where in a blind taste test people preferred Pepsi, yet Coke also could claim people preferred Coke. Why the disparity? Coke’s market research was based on when consumers could see what they were drinking—including the famous red Coca-Cola trademark. “The advantage of Coke over Pepsi was due to Coke’s brand, which activated higher-order brain mechanisms. These associations then, and not the chemical properties of the drink, gave Coke an advantage in the marketplace.”

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Hawthorne EffectEmployees are more productive based on their belief that changes made to the environment increase productivity.

By Western Electric Company

PresenterPresentation NotesHawthorne Effect—named for a series of experiments managing factory workers carried out around 1924-1933 at the Hawthorne works of the Western Electric Company in Chicago.

Manipulated various conditions like light levels, rest breaks, etc., to see if productivity rose. The important effect though was that the feeling of being studied itself improved productivity

From The Luck Factor “Our expectations can cause us to interact with others in a way that makes our expectations a reality.”

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Pygmalion EffectStudents perform better or worse based on the expectations of their teacher.

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“The difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she is treated.”

PresenterPresentation NotesNamed for the Greek myth of Pygmalion, the sculptor who fell in love with his statue.

More familiar to us as George Bernard Shaw’s play “Pygmalion” and subsequent movie “My Fair Lady,” which is a modern retelling of the myth where the underclass flower seller, Eliza Doolittle, is changed into a lady by the phonetics teacher Henry Higgins.

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Rosenthal EffectTeachers treat students differently based on their expectations of how a student will perform.

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PresenterPresentation NotesSimilar to the Pygmalion effect is the Rosenthal effect.

Named for Robert Rosenthal who conducted a famous experiment at an elementary school south of SF in 1963. He was trying to determine if teachers would react differently towards certain students if told that a select number of students were expected to learn more information more quickly than the pupils in their class.

Teachers subconsciously influenced the experiment when told about the “academic bloomers” by giving them more encouragement, smiles, etc.

From Predictably Irrational “Expectations also shape stereotypes. A stereotype, after all is a way of categorizing information, in the hope of predicting experiences.”

Consumer doesn’t understand word or network engineer understands more simple language.

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Demand CharacteristicsParticipants in an experiment or interview provide responses and act in ways that they believe are expected by the experimenter or interviewer.

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PresenterPresentation NotesTwo famous negative examples of this effect are the Stanford Prison experiment and the Milgram experiment.

Stanford prison experiment—subjects were divided between prison guard and prisoner roles—via a coin flip. The guards eventually began humiliating and psychologically abusing the prisoners. The prisoners became submissive and depersonalized. The experiment was terminated after 6 days. The experimenter, Philip Zimbardo, participated as the prison superintendent, thereby influencing the behaviors of the test subjects.

In the Milgram experiment, Stanley Milgram studied the willingness of participants to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts conflicting with their conscience, basically increasing the level of electrical shock to the other participant in the study. Some re-interpretations of this experiment suggest that the participants acted as they did (increasing the shocks) because they had a desire to support the scientific goals of the researcher.

Thankfully our business user research doesn’t involve prison or electrical shocks, but we still need to be aware of this bias. When we are doing user research or gathering feedback about our designs, we may unconsciously bias the results by influencing test subjects through our words or actions, or we may decide to omit certain results or comments in order to corroborate our expectations—and test subjects often respond by seeking to meet the expectations communicated to them.

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Expected to view a page of current offers, instead I got a page with no content.

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This example is from a user research study. Because I forgot to add a “Contact us” link to the order update, the customer’s preconceived notions about the company kicked in and their assumption was that they couldn’t contact anyone about their order.

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Expectation Effect“A customer’s perception of quality relies on expectations and performance. After a purchase is made, the performance of the offering must surpass the expectations for the customer to be satisfied. If performance is better than expectations, the perception of the offering will be high. Do whatever you can to provide something that unexpectedly delights your customers”

Josh Kaufman “The Personal MBA”

Design Principle #36 – Expectation Effect

Thank you!

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