How can nudges boost motivation?

911 call dispatchers have very difficult jobs: they encounter traumatic situations on a regular basis and often lack the level of support, benefits, and recognition their colleagues receive. As a result, they have high rates of burnout and resignation.

In one randomized controlled trial, roughly 500 dispatchers were divided into either a control group or a treatment group. Those in the control group received a short, generic email that asked for stories or thoughts about being a good dispatcher. Those in the treatment group received six emails over a period of six weeks, which more actively sought to strengthen their professional identity and boost their sense of social support. One particularly vivid email described a horrific domestic abuse case and read: “What we do can be very stressful, sad, and some calls are seemingly unbearable, but what other job allows you to just listen, type, and save a life? Not many.”

Several months later, individuals in both the treatment and control groups took a survey related to how burnt out they felt. Included were questions like “How often do you think: ‘I can’t take it anymore?’” and “Do you have enough energy for family and friends during leisure time?” As hypothesized, the results showed that the treatment lessened the level of burnout. Even more impressive, though, was its effect on resignation rate. Individuals in the treatment group were about half as likely to quit their job compared to those in the control.

Call center workers also have tough jobs: their work is often boring and repetitive and entails frequent rejection and harsh feedback.

One randomized controlled trial was conducted on a particular set of call center workers who were tasked with contacting alumni of a university to ask for donations for a scholarship fund for needy students. In the experiment, one group read and discussed a letter written by a scholarship recipient that expressed appreciation for the call center workers’ efforts. Another group read the same letter but then had an in-person conversation with the author.

Researchers were interested in how this personal interaction affected two variables. The first was the amount of time the callers spent on the phone, which was seen as a proxy measure for level of effort. The second was the amount of money that the callers raised, a proxy for their performance.

Interestingly, these metrics didn’t budge for the first group, but shot up for the second. The callers who had a personal interaction with the author spent about 2.4 times more time on the phone and raised about 2.7 times more money, compared to their baseline levels.

The third study deals with a group of people notoriously unmotivated by their work: high school students. Experimenters reasoned that many students know how they could perform better in school—e.g., by not waiting for the last minute to write a term paper, by paying more attention in class, etc.—but they chose not to. The problem isn’t lack of information; it’s lack of motivation.

So instead of giving tips to students who already knew them, the researchers decided to have students give scholastic advice to others. In a randomized controlled trial, they asked students in a treatment group, but not those in a control group, questions like “What is your one best tip for how to prepare for a big test?” and “What’s your advice about listening to music while studying?”

Then, they looked into which group performed better months later. As it turns out, the advice-giving students did. They got higher grades in math and a class they had previously identified as wanting to improve in, compared to students who had not given advice.