Are you falling short of expectations?

Our brains are wired for mental shortcuts, to save time and energy thinking. One of them is Expectation Bias– this occurs when an individual’s expectations about an outcome influence perceptions of one’s own or others’ behavior.

Here is an example of how it plays out and how strangely a behavioural economics organisation went against it.

A few weeks ago I signed up (on my phone) for the Ogilvy Nudgestock festival, an 8+hour event of online, behavioural science presentations.

I expected to get a confirmation email and intended to share the event with my Changemakers Mentees. It was only when a colleague reminded me about the event, I realised it was not in my diary and I didn’t have an email confirmation.

So I signed up again on my computer, still nothing. So I emailed the support desk to ask how I would know how to join.

Then the third time I registered, I finally read the final landing page. It told me to bookmark this page and come back on the morning of the event and that there would not be a confirmation email.

On the day of the event, it wasn’t till 11 am that an email was sent to say the event was live and to join.

I have emailed the organisers to see if they were doing some kind of experiment to see how many people actually read web pages and how many people didn’t show up as they didn´t do any reminders or prompts. I’m still waiting for a response.

The takeaways from this

Understand what people are used to in a situation to ensure their expectations or biases are addressed

• Prompts and reminders are important tools for engagement
• The more automated modern life becomes the more convenience people expect
• People do not read (well I don’t)

Can you think of a situation where you were expecting something and it didn’t deliver OR where people have expected something of you as that is the norm?

Watch for yourselves

Head to the Nudgestock link here