Many people sign up for dating websites, but then drop out because they find the process to be emotionally draining
The third form of friction is related to the first two. People don’t just pursue the path of least resistance when it comes to things involving effort. They pursue the path of least resistance when it comes to their emotions. Loran cites the example of a challenge faced by US army recruiters. Loran Nordgren: Much like the Beach House case, army recruiters want more recruits, they want better recruits. And they’re mostly targeting junior and seniors in high school. And very often you see these people who are excited by the idea and army life for the right person is heavily fueled. There’s patriotism, so meaning comradery, connection, professional advancement opportunities. You see these people who are clearly intrigued, excited by the idea, but many of them, a significant proportion of them, never enlist.
And a reason why is because they’re afraid to tell mom and dad, and for many of them, it’s the anxiety around what parents will say, how they’ll respond that leads them to simply never follow their dream. Shankar Vedantam: Now you can try to push harder on the idea of joining the army. This is the fuel based approach, but remember the people the army wanted to persuade were already sold on the idea. That wasn’t what was holding them back. Lauren says the army came up with a different approach to reduce emotional friction. Loran Nordgren: The army https://kissbrides.com/fi/kuuma-belize-naiset/ recruiter has scripts that can help the student have that conversation. Anecdotally, we’ve heard cases of recruiters even volunteer to have that conversation or be in the room when that conversation takes place.
Shankar Vedantam: So people experience emotional friction, even when it comes to doing things that they’re highly motivated to do. Can you talk about this idea and how some companies have tried to find ways around this particular form of friction? Loran Nordgren: A great story around emotional friction is thinking about, so the emergence of online dating, the first generation platforms, for example match, and the second wave, Tinder being the best example. And Tinder, specifically that second wave, quickly became the dominant model.
And a reason for that is because Tinder could spot a friction that was embedded in the first generation website
So when you talk to people on say, match, there are emotional frictions embedded in that process. There are several, but a big one is rejection, right? So imagine you find the person that checks every box. This could be the one. So now what do you have to do? You have to craft the perfect email, funny, but not too funny, serious, but not too serious, et cetera. That is its own form of effort, that other friction, but now you write the perfect email. You’ve made your friends look at it, et cetera. You send it off. And what happens? While people hear responses like you’re too short, you’re not in my age range, I don’t date Republicans. Or worst of all, you don’t hear anything at all.
And so seeing that, Tinder came up with a very compelling and elegant friction removal solution; mutual matching. So if you’re familiar with the Tinder platform, you swipe on people you are potentially initially interested in, but you are only matched with people who signal initial interest in you as well. In other words, there isn’t this act of putting myself out there only to experience rejection. I’m only paired with people who signal interest with me. Shankar Vedantam: So we’ve looked at how our desire to follow the path of least resistance to prefer the status quo and to reduce emotional costs are three forms of friction. You also talk about a fourth way that friction manifests in our lives. You cite the example of mandatory seatbelt laws.