How to Get More People to Listen to You, Mr. Greenpeace Streat Team

As a few previous posts have explained, the concept of information cascades comes from the idea that an individual’s decision will be altered by the decisions they see others making. Basically, I have my own private knowledge that I use to make a decision. The resulting decision is public information. However, the decisions others are making will be public information, possibly altering my decision. I do not have access to others’ private information and cannot get access without incurring a cost of some sort. So the only information I have other than my private info is what I see others doing.

I think this concept should be used by a certain group of people we are all too used to seeing around our campus. The people I refer to our those men and women standing on the sidewalk with clipboards trying to get us to donate to their organization or at least listen to their pitch about why we need to pay more attention to what’s happening to the environment, stop eating factory farmed chickens, etc. As students hustle to class or whatever their next activity is, it is unlikely they’ll stop to sign the petition, donate, etc.. Only a few kind souls even slow down to hear what the volunteer has to say.

From anecdotal evidence we know what doesn’t work – a few friendly faces wearing colored vests, holding clipboards, trying to stop each person that passes. Knowing what we do about information cascades, we may have a strategy that works better. Instead of having five volunteers spread out across an area, have one stay in their role as organization member/advocate and the others surround them, posing as curious listeners. People are more likely to slow down and at least listen for a second to see why the crowd has gathered. It’s a lot harder to ignore a group of people intently listening to a speaker.

With your private information, you may assume that the person preaching their cause on the street is not someone you want to slow down and listen to. However, the public information (the group of intent listeners) may convince you to listen for at least a second or two. While most may still choose to continue walking after hearing what the group is listening to, just getting more people to stop should still be considered a small victory. It certainly can’t hurt. Obviously, all the kinks in this theory/game plan may not be worked out, but it would certainly make for an interesting experiment.