🧠 The Psychology of Sitting Up, Tuning Out & Taking Risks
Welcome to our latest newsletter.
This month, we look at:
How Posture Changes Our Decisions
How “I Can’t Do This” Becomes “This Isn’t Me”
When Worthy Words Lose Their Pull
More Risk. Less Protection.
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How Posture Changes Our Decisions
The way you sit shouldn't affect the decisions you make.
Apparently, it does.
Researchers asked nearly 200 people to play a game involving decisions about risk and reward.
But first, they subtly changed their posture.
Some used a tablet raised on a stand, naturally encouraging them to sit more upright. Others used the same tablet on a low desk, causing them to lean forwards.
The upright group took greater risks, but they weren't simply more reckless. They also performed better overall, earning larger rewards. They reported stronger feelings of pride too.
Most participants didn't even realise their posture was being manipulated.
The effects were modest, but they raise an intriguing possibility for businesses.
Our physical surroundings don't just determine what we see and do. By changing how we hold our bodies, they may also subtly change how we feel and decide.
Practical Business Takeouts:
Raise the screen when confidence matters. If customers are making decisions involving uncertainty or calculated risk, test an eye-level screen against one that encourages them to hunch over it.
Design upright decision points. For consequential decisions in branches, showrooms or face-to-face sales, test seating and screen positions that naturally encourage an upright posture.
Test posture when presenting unfamiliar options. The upright participants were more willing to take effective risks. When asking customers to consider something new or uncertain, test whether an upright physical set-up changes their willingness to try it.
Don't accidentally design a hunch.
Low touchscreens, tablets lying flat on counters and badly positioned kiosks may encourage the posture associated with lower risk-taking in the experiment.
How “I Can’t Do This” Becomes “This Isn’t Me”
A difficult task can change people’s perception of themselves. A recent paper explores this.
In a creative problem-solving experiment, participants given a difficult task subsequently identified less strongly as creative. Struggling affected their judgement of their own creativity.
This raises the possibility that a difficult customer experience might take someone out of the entire category. Someone wrestling with an investment platform might conclude that investing simply isn’t for them.
For example, a confusing software trial could reinforce the belief that they are bad with technology.
Engineering an experience that helps customers feel they are mastering a skill might strengthen their sense that the activity is for them.
Practical Business Takeouts:
Give customers a first achievement, above and beyond a completed setup. Difficulty affected participants’ identification as creative. For a design tool, guide newcomers through making an invitation they can actually send, rather than ending onboarding with an empty account.
Keep the customer in the driving seat. If experience can influence self-perception, doing everything for someone may miss an opportunity to build it. In a software demo, let the prospect build their first report with guidance, then change a filter themselves. They leave knowing they can operate it.
Build up to the intimidating task. A difficult encounter may encourage an unhelpful judgement about capability. Let a new investor explore a worked example and explain their choice before navigating a full investment journey. Introduce complexity after they have some grounds for confidence.
Make progress attributable to learning. The opportunity is to influence what customers conclude about themselves. After a guided budgeting exercise, explain what they have accomplished: “You’ve worked out what you can save each month.” Give them specific evidence of capability, rather than a generic “Well done”.
When Worthy Words Lose Their Pull
A moral message can attract attention. More moral language does not necessarily attract more.
Researchers analysed over 1.6 million observations across Twitter, Reddit and 8chan, distinguishing how strongly content related to moral concerns from how concentrated its moral language was.
Moral relevance was associated with greater engagement. But when that relevance was held constant, more concentrated moral language was associated with less engagement.
For brands, this raises a useful distinction. Explaining how a product reduces waste gives customers a meaningful reason to care. Filling the message with declarations about responsibility and virtue might have a negative effect.
Practical Business Takeouts:
Give different messages different jobs. The findings suggest moral relevance need not saturate every sentence. In a finance campaign, explain the fairness of an offer where customers first encounter it. Use subsequent messages to clarify eligibility and costs, rather than repeatedly declaring the brand’s commitment to fairness.
Let the consequence carry the moral weight. Relevance and concentration had different relationships with engagement. A food brand could test replacing “Make the responsible, ethical choice” with a concrete explanation of how its packaging reduces waste. Keep the reason to care; change how it is expressed.
A worthy cause does not require worthy language throughout. Higher moral density was associated with lower engagement at comparable relevance. For a charity appeal, state why the cause matters, then explain exactly what a donation provides. Give readers useful information between appeals to their values.
Audit adjectives before abandoning the proposition. A poorly performing sustainability campaign may still address something meaningful. Try a version that retains the environmental benefit but removes repeated claims such as “ethical”, “responsible” and “conscious”.
More Risk. Less Protection.
Surely people take more precautions when they have more to lose?
Not necessarily. In a study of almost 130,000 journeys made by around 1,000 drivers, seatbelts were less likely to be worn in riskier circumstances.
The circumstances of the journey explained far more variation in buckling up than age, sex or where people lived. An available, familiar safeguard was used less on faster journeys and after dark, when it could matter most.
For anyone selling insurance or security, that challenges the assumption that greater exposure creates a more receptive customer.
Your highest-need audience may still be unconvinced that protection is relevant to them. Simply pointing out more danger could miss the reason they dismiss it.
Try addressing the reason protection feels unnecessary, make the gap visible, and build the protective action into the experience.
Practical Business Takeouts:
Make risk salient. Greater exposure did not reliably prompt greater caution. Show customers which of their files are publicly accessible, beside a “Restrict access” button. Make the risk visible and personal at the point they can act.
Reduce the intention–action gap. Available protection went unused. Help customers back up their first folder during onboarding, rather than asking them to activate backups later. Turn interest in protection into a completed protective action.
Use timely prompts. Seatbelt use varied with journey circumstances. Offer a permissions check when a customer invites an external collaborator. Tie the prompt to the event that gives protection immediate relevance.
Reinforce protective behaviour. A separate Penn trial increased seatbelt use with incentives and streaks. Give customers visible progress towards “Account protected” as they complete security steps. Test whether that feedback encourages them to finish.
😓 Tough business challenge? See if we can help. We probably can.
James, Patrick and Dan
We practically apply the science of the human mind for hard, commercial results
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