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One simple way you could make your message more persuasive | Nudge Newsletter

Published about 2 months ago • 1 min read

Unit Asking

​Read online​

Which of these articles encouraged Brits to donate more?

Research by Christopher Hsee¹ found that donors gave nearly twice as much when first asked to consider the needs of a single person before being asked to donate to a larger cause.

This “unit asking” strategy made contributions feel more reasonable and personal.

And it explains this² rather bizarre study:

The study looked at the success rate of donation requests on the r/Random_Acts_Of_Pizza subreddit (where individuals ask for a free pizza).

Here are the study details:

  • The dataset contains 5,671 requests from the subreddit between December 8, 2010 and September 29, 2013.

The dataset documentation reports an “average success rate” of 24.6%.

That's incredibly high. Most donation appeals at best receive just a 2% return.

Why were requests on Random Acts Of Pizza so successful?

Unit asking. Individuals shared their own, individual story.

The takeaway? To persuade, showcase a recognisable individual, not an abstract group — Phill ​

P.S. Hacking The Human Mind is easily one of the best behavioural science books I've read this year. I can't recommend it enough.

P.P.S Next Monday I'm releasing something that took six months of work (stay tuned!).

¹Hsee, C. K., Zhang, J., Lu, Z. Y., & Xu, F. (2013). Unit asking: A method to boost donations and beyond. Psychological Science, 24(9), 1801–1808.

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²Althoff, T., Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil, C., & Jurafsky, D. (2014, May). How to ask for a favor: A case study on the success of altruistic requests. In Proceedings of the Eighth International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (pp. 102–110). AAAI Press.

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As a behavioural science practitioner, I believe in the peak-end rule.

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Nudge Newsletter

Phill Agnew

I spend 18 hours each week turning marketing psychology into readable newsletters.

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