Stop talking Phil. Oh, this is so hard. That is me. I was into an agonizingly difficult challenge, which was designed to help me go viral on YouTube. I had added a powerful psychological bias into this challenge, which was designed to make people pay attention to me and my YouTube video. And this bias, well, it could help me go viral.
Today I share my latest experiment. Can I use a psychological nudge to create a viral YouTube video? Let's find out.
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In the five and a half years, I've spent creating this podcast. I've encountered hundreds of different biases, all sorts of heuristics and shortcuts that all of us use to make decisions. Some are well known, the scarcity bias, for instance, while others are a little niche, like the noble edge effect. But there is one nudge that I think is a little bit more powerful than the rest, one that's more persuasive, more attention grabbing and more likely to change behavior.
I'll share a study which I think helps prove it. In 2013 Castro, Samuels and Harmon tried to convince chocolate-loving kids to eat veg. To do so, they took a novel approach. They gave the children and their families access to a small local garden. They gave the kids ownership over growing the vegetables in the garden and encouraged them to look after and harvest them.
Over the course of several months, the children tended to the veg, and they sunk effort into harvesting them. And all of this effort changed the children's attitudes. The children in this group, who were overweight, considerably lowered their BMI because they ate more vegetables, not just the vegetables they harvested, but all sorts of fruit and vegetables at breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Many will recognise this bias as the IKEA effect. We prefer products that we've created and children who originally loved chocolate will love vegetables that they've harvested themselves. Michael Norton in 2012 found that adults prefer self-built IKEA wardrobes over expert-built alternatives.
We love our own creations. Coacher and Wilcox took this principle further in their 2022 study. They asked some amateur golfers to assemble their own putters. These were high-quality putters, but the golfers needed to attach the grip and tweak the position.
Coachea and Wilcox sent these golfers out to play around of golf, and it turns out those who created their own putter performed better than those who used an identical pre-assembled putter. Assembling their own putter made the golfers play better than those using the exact same putter just pre-assembled.
But this nudge doesn't just affect the individual. No, merely putting effort into something changes other people's perspective as well. For example, one study cited in IELT Fishback's book Get It Done found that many people believe mouthwash that causes an unpleasant burning sensation in the mouth is better at eliminating germs than a pleasant tasting mouthwash.
When served two mouth washes, the one that caused the most burn in the mouth was deemed most effective even though it had no additional mouth washing chemicals. All of us have a subconscious link between effort and quality. If a mouth wash is more painful to use, we think it must be more effective.
I always thought dark roasted strong flavoured coffee was more caffeinated, but I was wrong. I was being influenced by this bias. The truth is that caffeine content remains the same during each stage of the roasting process. The stronger taste just takes longer to create, and it led to my inaccurate perception.
One 2009 study cited in the book Methods of Persuasion found a strange finding which makes sense when you consider this bias. Researchers Jostman, Lakenz and Schubert found that job applicants have a better chance of getting the job if their resume was attached to a heavy clipboard rather than a lighter clipboard.
Why? Well, there is this unconscious link between weight and quality. A heavier clipboard equals a higher quality clipboard, which led the recruiters to think the applicant may well be more motivated. This bias goes by many names, but in today's show I will refer to it as the input bias. Simply put, the more input you put into something the higher you and others will value it. The input bias is visible in all types of human behaviour.
Your friendship groups may have been dictated by this bias. The legendary researcher Elliot Aronson and his colleague, Judson Mills, decided to test this hypothesis. They wanted to know if individuals who went through a lot of effort to join a group ended up preferring that group over others who didn't sink effort into joining. In their studies, they found college women who had to endure a severely embarrassing initiation ceremony to gain access to a sex discussion group.
Those who went through the embarrassing initiation ceremony convinced themselves that their new group and its discussions were extremely valuable, even though Aronson and Mills had rehearsed the other group members to make the conversation as worthless and uninteresting as possible.
This is why initiation ceremonies are so important for young students. Those ceremonies bolster the commitment the group members have. One study of 54 tribal cultures found that those with the most dramatic and stringent initiation ceremonies had the greatest group solidarity. It's a bias that's visible in American college girls and ancient Amazonian tribes.
Let's use a simple example to showcase this. Say you meet someone you like, someone you want to be friends with. How could you get them to like you? Well one study suggests that you should experience something painful with them. Chip and Danheath in their book The Power of Moments share that when strangers were asked to perform a painful task together,
like submerging their hands into tubs of ice water, they felt a greater sense of bonding than strangers who performed the same task in room temperature water. It's the pain and effort that you experience which solidifies the friendship.
All of us value things more when more effort goes into it. We prefer vegetables that we've picked and origami figures that we've created ourselves will like job candidates who print their resume on expensive weighty paper and golfers will decrease their handicap if they assemble their own clubs.
This same bias could affect your friendship groups. Your devotion to your college friends may stem from that simple yet embarrassing initiation ceremony. Perhaps even your partner is a result of this bias. Many couples discover love by experiencing pain together, putting up with a particularly horrible boss being part of the same grueling CrossFit club, or perhaps sitting together while cramming through a difficult exam. Effort changes are perspective.
But what does all of this have to do with going viral? Will any of this actually help me achieve my goal of creating a viral video? Or maybe? See, I've always believed that this bias could be used effectively in marketing. Back in January 2022, I ran my own experiment to test it.
I created two reddit ads spending $100 promoting both and targeting them at people in the UK. The posts were remarkably similar, both promoted my podcast, both contained the same image, a picture of my 5 star reviews and my logo, and both contained the same link to my podcast.
The only difference was the headlines on the post. I slightly tweaked one of the headlines to emphasize the effort I'd made in creating the podcast. It said, I've spent 480 minutes listening to marketing experts over the past year. Here are the six best marketing lessons I've heard. The control read, learn six memorable marketing lessons with Nudge, the podcast that simplifies the science behind great marketing.
two exceptionally similar posts, but one that showcased the effort I'd made, the 480 minutes I'd spent interviewing experts. So, did this input bias variant perform better? Well, it did, dramatically so. Redditors were 46% more likely to click on the input bias variant, so stating that I'd spent 480 minutes listening to experts basically made the ad 46% better.
showcasing effort works in marketing. It makes your customers more likely to pay attention and more likely to engage. But this cheap and quick Reddit test isn't really enough to draw lofty conclusions. I can't be sure that the input bias alone will help me create a viral YouTube video.
So, to test my assumptions, I decided to experiment on some friendly nudge fans. I interviewed a number of nudge listeners to see how impactful this nudge really is. All of that coming up after this quick break.
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So can you start by introducing yourself? Um, yeah. Hi, my name's Olivia. Hi, my name's Adam Castro. Hello, I'm Joe. Uh, hello, my name is Kaushia.
All of these four people listened to Nudge. I showed all of them the exact same things, a piece of music, a radio ad, and a TikTok video. The only thing I changed was how long I said the content took to create. This would help me learn if the input bias really could be used to create a viral video. So to start, I played all of my interviewees a short bit of music.
Morning light shines through Whispering sky so blue Dreams unfurl the new Rise and boom it's true
For half of the subjects, I said this. The only thing you need to know about this piece of music is that it was created by AI, and it took me literally three seconds to create. For the other half, I said this. It's created by a Finnish music producer, and it took about three years to create a whole album, and this piece of music is part of that.
Okay. I played the song and after I asked them a few questions. So, how would you rate that song out of 10? Those who heard it was created by AI, well, they didn't love the song. Seven? Well, I really like music and I'm into music a lot. That's like a 1.5.
That's an average of 4.25 out of 10. But what about those who heard that a Finnish composer spent three years working on the music? What did they think? Like a four or five? It's definitely something I wouldn't mind listening again. So I would say seven. They rated it at an average of 5.75 out of 10. I also asked them if they'd be upset if they never heard that music again.
And would you be upset if you never heard that song again? No. Two no's from the AI group there. But what about the Finnish composer group? No. It's nice. It's nice. I wouldn't mind hearing it again. So it would be sad if it wasn't around to be fair.
Yeah, it has a nice quality about it, so I think there's potential for it to be there. One no and one yes. It's not a dramatic difference, but the input bias group did seem to prefer the music more. But do we feel the same way about ads? To test that, I played all four of these nudge fans the same radio ad.
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However, before playing the ad, I told half of the participants this. Before I send it to you, all I need to let you know about this is it is a radio ad. It aired in the UK and it cost just £450 to create. I then asked them how they would rate the ad. How would you rate that ad out of 10, with 10 being it's the best ad you've heard and one being it is the worst? Like five.
Okay. Maybe a three. Now, the other two participants were told the ad costs considerably more to create 10 times more. I said this. The only thing I need to let you know about this ad is it costs around £4,500 to create. Does saying that the ad cost 10 times more change how people viewed the ad? Well, no. How would you rate that ad out of 10?
like a four or five? It's not the worst, but it's uninspiring. I would say it's a three maybe. The group told that it took £450 to create, rated it at four out of 10. The group who were told it took £4,500 to create, rated it at 3.75 out of 10, actually a 7% drop in ratings.
wasn't too surprised by this. £4,500 for an ad is still fairly cheap and the ad wasn't great. But it did show that I needed to do one more test to really see if input bias would work. So I tested it out on one of my videos. I showed the listeners one of my TikTok videos. Here's a clip from that video.
petrol prices like these are weirdly precise, sometimes down to two decimal places. And we think this is because petrol closely follows the price of crude oil, except it doesn't closely follow the price of crude oil. No, some petrol stations charge more, some charge less, and all take a decent chunk of profit. The video was promoting an episode of Nudge. It was recorded outside a petrol station all in one take. I told half of the participants this.
And again, I'm going to just play this video. I'll ask a few questions about it. The only thing that's important to let you know is that these videos, not many people know this, but these videos take me about a week to create in terms of memorizing the script, filming on the location, editing, putting them together. And they responded favorably. Here's how they rated it out of 10. I go like a seven or an eight.
Well, I'm never going to give a 10 because, you know, there's not a 10. So sorry. Sorry. Um, I would say it was a, it was a really strong 8.5. That's an average of eight out of 10. For my other group with Adam and Olivia, I said this, these types of videos take me 10 minutes to create a really quick to create. So they're not much effort.
Adam and Olivia who heard that this video took much less time to create, they were slightly less positive about my video.
That's a 0.5 drop in average rating and a drop of around 7%. It's not massive, of course, but it is suggesting that ratings improve when I say the videos take longer to create. But this probably wasn't the smartest test to run as all four of these lovely people are big nudge fans and all of them said they would listen to the episode after watching the TikTok. Would that piece of content encourage you to listen to the podcast episode? Yeah.
preaching to the converted there, yeah. Yes. Yes. Oh, yeah, 100%. So, look, this isn't a very scientific discussion, and the results don't show a massive swing. But on average, saying that these things took longer to create led to an 11% swing in favourability, which led me to wonder.
Could the input bias be used to help me go viral? Could I use this bias on the general public? Could I use it to become YouTube famous? Well, I wanted to give it a try. But coming up with my experiment was hard. I can't exactly tell everyone on YouTube, hey, I spent a lot of time working on this video. That's not really how the algorithm works. Instead, I would have to show them. I'd have to create a video which showcased all the effort I put in to creating it.
I had a number of ideas, a video of me learning to play guitar over several months condensed into one minute, or perhaps a video of me performing more and more elaborate dart trick shots, but I'm rubbish at darts and I've never picked up a guitar, so I had to pick something more realistic.
And then I remembered GeoGuesser. GeoGuesser is a game I first discovered 10 years ago. It is really incredibly simple, annoyingly hard, and pretty good fun. In GeoGuesser, you get dropped in a random location on Google Street View. This could be anywhere in the world. You could be in Dakar, in Senegal, or Great Yarmoth, in Norfolk. Using just the imagery on Google Street View, you have to guess where in the world you are.
this game is very hard. The wildlife in Australia looks remarkably similar to the wildlife in South Africa, and rural Colombia can look a lot like southern Malaysia. Because it's so hard, some very talented Geoguesa players have become quite famous. Trevor Rainbolt is probably the best known. He can look at a street view location for just 0.1 of a second, and accurately guess where he is.
This talent has landed him over half a billion YouTube views. His videos definitely go viral. So, could mine? I decided to set myself a challenge. I'd try to beat my high score on the UK version of Geoguesa. That is, I'd be dropped somewhere in the UK and I'd have to pinpoint exactly where I was on the map to within around 20 kilometres.
I'd have to do this four times out of five in order to get a high score. This is very hard. But to make it even more challenging, I would not be allowed to move. I couldn't move the Google car up and down the road or on the street. I had to stay where I was. And that made it a very tough challenge. But to really leverage the input bias, I'd have to make the YouTube viewers appreciate all of the effort that it took.
To do that, I made the challenge even more difficult. I decided that I wouldn't sleep until I succeeded. Here's what I said on the video. It's around 8.30 in the evening, and I will not be going to bed until I beat this score. So let's see how long it takes me. All right.
To take the most advantage of this bias, I titled the video no sleep until I beat my high score, Geogueser UK, accompanied with a thumbnail of me looking very tired playing the game. To totally showcase my effort, I also recorded a timelapse of me playing the game so people could literally see all of the hours I sank into creating the video. Here's some clips from the video. I mean even 85 yards and your miles off.
Stop talking Phil. Oh, this is so hard. After a few hours, I had done it today. I had finally beat my high school. Absolutely smashed it. Well, that was quite painful, quite difficult. Can't be more happy with that school. Took a fair bit of time on that last day, but glad I did. All right, I think that's it. Thank you everyone for watching. Cheers. Have a lovely day.
Now obviously I wouldn't just put two hours of footage onto YouTube. That would be dull. That definitely wouldn't go viral. So I paid an editor to cut it down to just 17 minutes. I asked the video editor to show fast forwarded sped up versions of all my hard work, including a time lapse video of me playing and add some compilation clips of all my agonizing misses. I really tried to show all of the effort that went into the video.
And I was happy with it. I hoped it would go viral, but I didn't want to just hit publish on its own. That wouldn't be a great test. Any video can go viral. Charlie biting his brother's finger has 818 million views. So to test how effective this bias was, I created a second video using the same footage. This video showed the same end result, me beating my high score, except it wouldn't show any of the effort.
I wouldn't show all of the hours I put in, I wouldn't show the time lapse of my 120 minutes of work, it would just show the final round where I beat my high score. I titled the second video, breaking my UK high score, my first geogus of victory. This would be my control. Even if I didn't go viral, I was sure that the input bias video would get more views than the control video.
So on the 11th of September, I created two completely new YouTube accounts, one called Geoguesa Quest, and another called Geoguesa Grind, and I published both videos at the exact same time. Then I waited. I gave it nine days to see which would end up with more views, more subscribers, and more comments. But...
After the nine days, I was pretty disappointed. Neither of the videos had performed well at all. Both of the videos didn't get any comments. They didn't drive any subscribers. The longer, effortful, input bias video did get more views, but it's such a tiny amount that I don't think it's relevant at all. The effortful video got 13 views and the effortless video received six views. It was, I think, a total failure.
But perhaps it's a good lesson. I'm extremely confident that the input bias works. I think it can help creators go viral. But like with everything in behavioral science, these biases work as an amplifier, not a catalyst. The input bias could help an already proficient creator improve. That I truly believe. But it won't make a brand new channel go viral overnight. The input bias alone isn't enough.
To go viral on YouTube, you'll need great video design and engaging script to click Wavy thumbnail and a reliable account. YouTube probably won't show brand new videos from two completely brand new channels to many people. In a way, this test was doomed to fail from the start. There are too many variables at play to really test if the input bias would work here, but I couldn't help myself. I wanted to test it out.
And look, the test isn't over, it's only been 9 days and there is still a small part of me that thinks my effortful input bias video could still take off. I've left links to both of the videos in the show notes below and I do suggest you go give both of them a watch one because I think you'll find it interesting to see how I've used the input bias.
also to see how many views the videos are on right now. See, I'm sort of hoping that once both videos get a few hundred views, the YouTube algorithm will start to share them on people's feeds. And once that happens, I'm hoping that viewers will value the input bias video more. I hope they'll click on it more, watch it more, engage with it more. And if they do, there still is a chance that it could go viral.
So, after this, go and watch the videos. You never know. I might have gone viral after all. That is all for this week folks. I really hope you enjoyed this episode. You will not be surprised to hear me tell you that this episode took a lot of time to create. So, if you liked it, please do share it with a friend. Make sure you're following the show and perhaps even leave me a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
Massive, massive thank you to Olivia, Adam, Joe and Kaushia who agreed to be interviewed on nudge. If you want to be interviewed in a future episode, just let me know. The easiest way to do that is to sign up to the newsletter, just head to nudgepodcast.com and click newsletter in the menu, then send me an email saying you want to join. I'll be conducting many more experiments like this in the future, so do sign up if you're keen to take part.
As I mentioned, if you want to watch those YouTube videos, you can both are linked in the show notes. And if you're a YouTube fan, do search for my YouTube channel. Just search nudge podcast on YouTube. I share a lot more content on there. Finally, if this input bias video does go viral, I will share it first on my newsletter. So if you are keen to learn, if this test ever does eventually pay off, make sure to be subscribed to the newsletter.
Alright folks, that is all for this week, as always I've been your host Phil Agnew, thank you for listening and I'll be back next Monday with another episode of Nudge. Bye bye!
