1 00:00:00,812 --> 00:00:08,586 So, we said we have self-control problems, and we need self-control solutions. 2 00:00:08,586 --> 00:00:15,722 And the first type of solution we identify, we call reward substitution. 3 00:00:15,722 --> 00:00:21,202 The second type of solution I want to talk about it what we call self control 4 00:00:21,202 --> 00:00:25,542 contracts, or Ulysses contracts. And you probably remember the story of 5 00:00:25,542 --> 00:00:29,190 Ulysses and the sirens. And the story is that Ulysses knew that if 6 00:00:29,190 --> 00:00:33,060 the sirens will sing, he will follow them. So what did he do? 7 00:00:33,060 --> 00:00:37,524 He asked the sailors to tie him to the mast, and not to let him go, and he asked 8 00:00:37,524 --> 00:00:41,812 the sailors to put donag in their ears. And if you think about it, those are two 9 00:00:41,812 --> 00:00:45,623 different solutions that are very different from reward substitution. 10 00:00:45,623 --> 00:00:50,349 Ulysses himself wanted to hear the sirens, but not to be tempted. 11 00:00:50,350 --> 00:00:54,537 And the sailors, you want them not to be tempted at all. 12 00:00:54,538 --> 00:00:59,023 If you think about it in modern times, it's as if Ulysses himself put his cell 13 00:00:59,023 --> 00:01:03,709 phone in the trunk so he could hear his phone ringing but he couldn't approach it 14 00:01:03,709 --> 00:01:06,870 while driving. And for the sailors, he basically turned 15 00:01:06,870 --> 00:01:09,230 the phone off so they were not even tempted. 16 00:01:09,230 --> 00:01:12,229 And you can think to yourself which one is the right one for you. 17 00:01:13,290 --> 00:01:18,583 But what's important here is that it is very different from reward substitution 18 00:01:18,583 --> 00:01:22,571 because you know up-front that you're going to be tempted. 19 00:01:22,571 --> 00:01:28,409 You know that something will get you to turn you from the rightful path and you're 20 00:01:28,409 --> 00:01:33,890 willing to do something now that would bind your future self to not be able to 21 00:01:33,890 --> 00:01:39,332 behave badly. So think to yourself for a minute, can you 22 00:01:39,332 --> 00:01:46,094 think about cases in which you have done something that basically made your future 23 00:01:46,094 --> 00:01:50,574 self unable to behave badly? Here are some examples that I, I hear from 24 00:01:50,574 --> 00:01:53,326 people. So, for example, often people, when they 25 00:01:53,326 --> 00:01:57,480 make an appointment with a personal trainer i the gym, they prepay them and 26 00:01:57,480 --> 00:02:01,902 the condition is that you can't cancel it and many people said that if they could 27 00:02:01,902 --> 00:02:06,458 cancel their appointment with the gym trainer, they would call 10 minutes before 28 00:02:06,458 --> 00:02:10,679 and say, you know what, I don't want to show up today give me my money back, but 29 00:02:10,679 --> 00:02:13,665 the fact that they have paid for it, forces them to go. 30 00:02:13,666 --> 00:02:18,714 Similar, people sometimes buy these 100 calorie cookie packs. 31 00:02:18,714 --> 00:02:20,200 Why? They're really expensive. 32 00:02:20,200 --> 00:02:23,432 Why not buy the big bag? Well, we think that if we buy the big bag, 33 00:02:23,432 --> 00:02:27,741 we'll eat many cookies. But if they'll buy small packs, maybe 34 00:02:27,741 --> 00:02:33,790 we'll eat just a few. And similarly, my undergrads. 35 00:02:33,790 --> 00:02:38,300 They often tell me that when they get to exam week, and they want to make sure that 36 00:02:38,300 --> 00:02:42,720 they study and not play on Facebook, they give their computers to a friend and they 37 00:02:42,720 --> 00:02:46,815 ask them to log in to their Facebook account and to change their password and 38 00:02:46,815 --> 00:02:50,670 not to tell them what the new password is until after exam week is over. 39 00:02:50,670 --> 00:02:52,971 This way they basically prevent themselves. 40 00:02:52,972 --> 00:02:57,658 From misbehaving. Undergrads also tell me that instead of 41 00:02:57,658 --> 00:03:02,833 working in their dorm room, where they have quiet and flexibility, they sometimes 42 00:03:02,833 --> 00:03:05,928 go to the library or to a public space to work. 43 00:03:05,928 --> 00:03:08,418 Why? Because they think that if other people 44 00:03:08,418 --> 00:03:12,576 watch them, they will not feel as free either to sleep or to do things that are 45 00:03:12,576 --> 00:03:16,010 not work-related or study-related. On the computers. 46 00:03:16,010 --> 00:03:20,840 In a very domain, different domain by the way, eh, my MBA students, the females, eh, 47 00:03:20,840 --> 00:03:25,390 told me a couple of times that if they go on a date and they don't want things to go 48 00:03:25,390 --> 00:03:29,730 too far out of hands, they wear very ugly underwear which also inhibits the 49 00:03:29,730 --> 00:03:33,356 probability that something bad or something unplanned. 50 00:03:33,356 --> 00:03:38,166 Would happen down the road. So think about all of those self control 51 00:03:38,166 --> 00:03:41,614 contracts. Those are all kinds of things that we do 52 00:03:41,614 --> 00:03:45,465 naturally. Now,[cough] before we go and think further 53 00:03:45,465 --> 00:03:50,673 about this, I want to go back and I want to tell you a little bit about some old 54 00:03:50,673 --> 00:03:57,032 experiments about pigeons and rats. So imagine you're either a pigeon or a rat 55 00:03:57,032 --> 00:04:01,700 and imagine that I teach you two things. I teach you that if you see a green and 56 00:04:01,700 --> 00:04:05,210 you press on it, you get one pellet of food immediately. 57 00:04:05,210 --> 00:04:09,818 But if you see a purple button, you have to wait ten seconds and then you get ten 58 00:04:09,818 --> 00:04:14,426 pellets of food and you study this for a very, very, very long period and you know 59 00:04:14,426 --> 00:04:18,496 it very, very well. And now all of a sudden I show you both of 60 00:04:18,496 --> 00:04:23,606 them together, which one do you chose, one immediate or you chose to wait ten seconds 61 00:04:23,606 --> 00:04:27,824 and get ten pellets of food? And before you make your prediction, I 62 00:04:27,824 --> 00:04:32,829 should just tell you that ten seconds for a pigeon and a rat is like a week for us, 63 00:04:32,829 --> 00:04:36,160 well maybe not a week but its a long, long time for us. 64 00:04:36,160 --> 00:04:39,079 So its a really tough decision, so what do you think they chose? 65 00:04:39,080 --> 00:04:43,145 They choose the green. They choose the immediate reward and they 66 00:04:43,145 --> 00:04:46,490 forgot the larger delayed reward. It gets likely worse. 67 00:04:46,490 --> 00:04:51,170 You start a trial, the problem button comes up and they press on it. 68 00:04:51,170 --> 00:04:54,660 A little bit of time passes and then the green button tap, comes up. 69 00:04:54,660 --> 00:04:58,377 If they can only hold off, if they can only you know, sit on their paws, resist 70 00:04:58,377 --> 00:05:02,557 temptation, do something. They would get the ten pellets of food, 71 00:05:02,557 --> 00:05:03,766 but can they? No. 72 00:05:03,766 --> 00:05:08,916 They pressed the green button and they forego the ten pieces of food for the 73 00:05:08,916 --> 00:05:12,950 benefit of getting one immediate now. But here's the most interesting thing. 74 00:05:12,950 --> 00:05:18,326 The trial starts, the purple button appears and it's a little time after that 75 00:05:18,326 --> 00:05:23,954 a red button appears and the red button is not connected to food but the red button 76 00:05:23,954 --> 00:05:28,281 could turn off the green button. Now it takes a while to learn that that's 77 00:05:28,281 --> 00:05:31,401 what it does. But the red button turns off the green 78 00:05:31,401 --> 00:05:33,688 button. That's theorisist's contract. 79 00:05:33,688 --> 00:05:38,254 That's the question of when the rats and pigeons will put effort into something 80 00:05:38,254 --> 00:05:42,827 that they don't like In order to prevent their future self from being tempted. 81 00:05:42,828 --> 00:05:45,707 So what do you think? Would rats and pigeons do it? 82 00:05:45,708 --> 00:05:49,722 Would they invest energy in something they don't like to prevent their future self 83 00:05:49,722 --> 00:05:52,347 from misbehaving? The answer is yes. 84 00:05:52,348 --> 00:05:56,518 They don't do it all the time, but they do it quite frequently, and I think this is 85 00:05:56,518 --> 00:06:00,814 incredibly optimistic. First of all, if rats and pigeons can do 86 00:06:00,814 --> 00:06:03,060 it, maybe we can do it too. That's the first good news. 87 00:06:03,060 --> 00:06:08,244 The second good news is it is all about thinking about the world in terms of red 88 00:06:08,244 --> 00:06:11,209 button. If you take a pigeon and you tempt it, 89 00:06:11,209 --> 00:06:15,295 it's going to be temped. You get a rat, you tempt it, it's going to 90 00:06:15,295 --> 00:06:17,812 fail. And I saw the same thing, we are just not 91 00:06:17,812 --> 00:06:21,804 good in temptation. But, sometimes we are going to think 92 00:06:21,804 --> 00:06:26,927 up-front and we are giving the right tools, we might behave well. 93 00:06:26,928 --> 00:06:31,896 By the way, when we think about temptation, we sometimes divide people 94 00:06:31,896 --> 00:06:36,072 into two types. What we call naive and sophisticate. 95 00:06:36,072 --> 00:06:39,170 The naive people are people who don't think they are going to be tempted. 96 00:06:39,170 --> 00:06:43,391 They are people who say oh, I have no problems with procrastination and self 97 00:06:43,391 --> 00:06:47,746 control and overeating when they get to that situation and the way to ask me if I 98 00:06:47,746 --> 00:06:51,466 want the chocolate souffle dessert, I can easily say no to them. 99 00:06:51,466 --> 00:06:56,511 The sophisticated people are the ones who say, I know that when the time will come, 100 00:06:56,511 --> 00:07:01,395 I will be tempted and because of that, I am willing to take steps now to prevent my 101 00:07:01,395 --> 00:07:05,812 future self from being tempted. And if you think about it maybe if we 102 00:07:05,812 --> 00:07:11,350 educated people to a higher extent, about our self control problem, and created more 103 00:07:11,350 --> 00:07:15,637 red buttons, created more ways for us to bypass our temptations. 104 00:07:15,638 --> 00:07:18,257 Maybe people would behave much, much better. 105 00:07:18,257 --> 00:07:24,319 So let me give you some examples for this. The first example is this alarm clock 106 00:07:24,319 --> 00:07:27,359 called Clocky. And Clocky is an alarm clock designed by 107 00:07:27,359 --> 00:07:31,866 one of the students in the media lab. The one on the left was, the original 108 00:07:31,866 --> 00:07:34,670 version. And the one on the right is a commercial 109 00:07:34,670 --> 00:07:37,970 version. A little less cuddly, but still useful. 110 00:07:37,970 --> 00:07:41,114 And you see the red. The, the big, the big wheels. 111 00:07:41,115 --> 00:07:45,929 And what happens with clock is, has two big wheels that run in slightly different 112 00:07:45,929 --> 00:07:47,787 speeds. Now what happened? 113 00:07:47,788 --> 00:07:52,222 When you go to sleep you set up your alarm clock for 6 o'clock in the morning and in 114 00:07:52,222 --> 00:07:56,577 your mind you're the kind of person who gets up at 6 o'clock in the morning and go 115 00:07:56,577 --> 00:08:00,254 for a run before you go to school or before you go to work. 116 00:08:00,255 --> 00:08:04,787 But what happens when 6 o'clock in the morning actually comes around? 117 00:08:04,788 --> 00:08:07,940 The reality is that you're probably no longer that person. 118 00:08:07,941 --> 00:08:12,437 Now you're a person who kind of looks for the snooze button, but if you have Clocky, 119 00:08:12,437 --> 00:08:16,620 Clocky also starts running around. The moment the alarm starts up it runs 120 00:08:16,620 --> 00:08:20,210 around the room and you have to go and chase it and run after it. 121 00:08:20,210 --> 00:08:24,448 It's unpredictable because there's a random component to it and not only that. 122 00:08:24,449 --> 00:08:29,592 But the snooze button is really, really, really below the clock and you, you have 123 00:08:29,592 --> 00:08:33,478 to find it and flip it over and find where the snooze button is. 124 00:08:33,478 --> 00:08:37,454 And by the time you find clock and you hunt it down, you know what? 125 00:08:37,454 --> 00:08:41,176 You are awake. And therefore you might actually go for a 126 00:08:41,176 --> 00:08:43,910 run. The design flaw, what I think is a fatal 127 00:08:43,910 --> 00:08:49,002 design flaw of clock, by the way, is that by the time you're Up, and you found clock 128 00:08:49,002 --> 00:08:52,107 and you hunted it down, you're also pissed off. 129 00:08:52,108 --> 00:08:56,085 So if you do an image search online, you'll find lots of pictures of clocks 130 00:08:56,085 --> 00:09:00,635 with the wheels torn off which of course, don't represent very well this benefit for 131 00:09:00,635 --> 00:09:05,022 self-control. And now I think that they're going to an 132 00:09:05,022 --> 00:09:10,190 earlier design by another friend of mine which basically made more of an egg shape 133 00:09:10,190 --> 00:09:13,160 version which could basically not be broken. 134 00:09:13,160 --> 00:09:16,174 No parts to break when you're angry with the clock. 135 00:09:16,174 --> 00:09:20,930 There's another version I like even more. This is a version that never became 136 00:09:20,930 --> 00:09:24,819 commercial, but the idea is great. It's an alarm clock called snooze and 137 00:09:24,819 --> 00:09:28,542 lose. And it's an alarm clock that is connected 138 00:09:28,542 --> 00:09:31,899 to your bank account. And not only to a bank account, but it's 139 00:09:31,899 --> 00:09:36,652 connected to a charity you hate. Now here it is, you get this alarm clock 140 00:09:36,652 --> 00:09:40,468 and you set it up. Now what would happen if you connected it 141 00:09:40,468 --> 00:09:43,770 to a charity you liked? Now if the alarm clock goes off, you could 142 00:09:43,770 --> 00:09:47,235 say to yourself, ooh, I get to snooze, plus I get to give money to trees, let's 143 00:09:47,235 --> 00:09:50,670 say. But if you're sophisticated, you 144 00:09:50,670 --> 00:09:55,025 understand how self control works, then you might sell it to give to, to a charity 145 00:09:55,025 --> 00:09:58,050 you really hate, and now there's no way you can snooze. 146 00:09:58,050 --> 00:10:01,956 There's no way you can sleep, and think to yourself that every second you're 147 00:10:01,956 --> 00:10:05,924 sleeping, some money, even very, very small amount, is going to somebody you 148 00:10:05,924 --> 00:10:09,550 really, really hate. There's other examples for this. 149 00:10:09,550 --> 00:10:12,541 One of those is a website that I really like called Stickk. 150 00:10:12,541 --> 00:10:18,564 And I highly recommend that you try and visit it and try experimenting with it. 151 00:10:18,564 --> 00:10:23,750 Now, we did a couple of experiments on this. 152 00:10:23,750 --> 00:10:29,210 One of them included a Chinese restaurant called Panda Express, in which we tried to 153 00:10:29,210 --> 00:10:34,202 see whether people are willing, in advance, to limit their ordering in order 154 00:10:34,202 --> 00:10:38,609 to force their future self to eat less. And the answer was that yes, that people 155 00:10:38,609 --> 00:10:42,120 were doing it quite successfully. We looked at whether people would be 156 00:10:42,120 --> 00:10:46,216 willing to pay in advance For medical procedures, in a way that they would get 157 00:10:46,216 --> 00:10:50,312 the money back if they showed up for the medical procedure, but not if they got 158 00:10:50,312 --> 00:10:52,900 late, and so on and people are willing to do it. 159 00:10:52,900 --> 00:10:57,784 So I think there's a lot of opportunities to think about how this would work out, 160 00:10:57,784 --> 00:11:00,979 and introducing such mechanisms into the market.