If Governor Cuomo really wants to get through to New Yorkers, he needs to use these tricks from cognitive psychology

There is a simpler way to change people's behavior

As New York slowly opens up, Governor Cuomo has been trying to encourage better social distancing (AFP via Getty Images)

At every stage of the pandemic, Governor Andrew Cuomo has overestimated the average New Yorker’s willingness to buy into an abstract public good. In press conferences and on Twitter, he has communicated based on political gut instinct instead of using proven methods for persuasion.

When Covid-19 first took root, Governor Cuomo urged New Yorkers to act selflessly and reduce social density, and we responded by hoarding toilet paper. This left him no choice but to use Executive Orders to enforce closures and quarantines, and while both were initially effective, they are now a blunt tool against the sudden appeal of warm weather following 100 days indoors.

Last weekend, our governor looked like a frustrated father threatening to turn the car around on vacation as he retweeted a photo of packed partiers in St Mark’s Square with the warning, “Don’t make me come down there” — but with three children of his own, he ought to know how kids interpret such ultimatums as powerlessness.

Instead of empty rhetoric, it’s time for Cuomo to turn to four time-honored principles drawn from cognitive science, an interdisciplinary field that studies the mind and its processes to better understand our behavior.

Priming, for example, is a principle that explains how information is influenced by the environment in which it is presented. Consider Governor Cuomo’s press conferences, the majority of which he delivers from a dais in Albany backstopped by monotone PowerPoint slides. Most New Yorkers recognize this as typical political imagery and instinctively tune it out long before the governor has a chance to make his heartfelt pleas. To truly focus his audience on how Covid-19 remains a killer, he should broadcast with a more urgent backdrop, ideally in front of a hospital with critical coronavirus patients inside.

Priming can also build compliance through stacking requests to make them appear more doable. Imagine if in front of that hospital the governor soberly held a heavy clipboard and asked New Yorkers if we considered ourselves helpful people who wanted to stop the spread of Covid in our state. Instinctively most would say yes, and affirming this simple appeal in such a serious environment primes us so that when we are subsequently asked to wear a mask it no longer feels like such an imposition. In this way, New Yorkers, who are notoriously resistant to being told what they can and cannot do, interpret mask-wearing as a consistent extension of our character, and suddenly it makes us feel good about acting on our small, prior commitment to be helpful people who want to keep New York healthy.

Similarly, Cuomo must carefully consider how he frames our expectations. His press conferences are often lengthy soliloquies that play well with historians but do little to influence immediate action. On March 27th, he waxed for an hour about how the fight against Covid would be a “long deployment” lasting “weeks and weeks,” not something we can “go out there for a few days” and defeat.

While eloquent, the governor would have been better served shortening his message and emphasizing easy steps to take today. Cognitive scientists know people respond more enthusiastically when asked to complete simple tasks, so he should frame requests with statements like, “This is what we can do right now.”

And still there’s even more Governor Cuomo could do to encourage healthier behavior among his 2.2 million Twitter followers. Recall the earlier admonishment towards revelers in St Mark’s Square, in which his retweet included a photo of young people having what looked to be a really great time. Imagine if he had utilized the concept of anchoring to focus the conversation towards behavior worth emulating instead, such as a picture of a mask-wearing group enjoying an outdoor activity with a caption like, “Can’t wait to join these hikers for a beautiful afternoon at Riverbank State Park.”

By anchoring on the positive, Governor Cuomo could take advantage of his followers’ subconscious reliance on the availability heuristic to base their own actions on recently observed examples, as well as the generally strong need of all humans to conform to acceptable group standards, and the bandwagon bias that encourages additional people to join others who are enjoying themselves. That’s four cognitive principles for the price of one tweet, and the governor should know by now how much New Yorkers appreciate a really good deal.

Finally, despite having a daughter who recently graduated from college, Cuomo often seems at a loss when attempting to communicate with healthy young adults who do not see themselves as belonging to Covid’s greatest risk categories.

Right now the governor has only given Gen-Z a binary option – either wear a mask or don’t – and most everyone understands how little he would actually want law enforcement to enforce this order when the police are already under such intense scrutiny. Instead, Cuomo would be smart to utilize the decoy effect, a technique in which an additional, undesirable option is presented in order to make earlier alternatives seem more palatable. He could hypothetically muse that for the next two months he is planning to require the use of full plastic faceguards as society reopens. It seems crazy, but the beauty of cognitive science is that when confronted with the possibility of sweating inside a plastic shield during July and August, New Yorkers might decide the original mask option seems breathable after all.

Our governor loves to rely on data, and when it comes to compliance, the science is solid. A little proven persuasion in his messaging would go a long way towards saving many more lives.