Today’s interviewee is Dr. Jonah Berger, a professor at Wharton who is an expert on social influence and social contagion. I ask him about a paper he wrote on the power of using identiy to motivate people to make healthier lifestyle choices. And I ask him how to apply the insights of his paper towards a problem that I care deeply about: how to wake up earlier.

Identity vs. Information

“Often when we think about changing behavior, we think about information,” says Berger. “If want people to eat healthier food, tell them how good vegetables are for them or how bad cheeseburgers are for them.”

But information is not as effective as the power of identity. “People smoke because of what it communicates about them,” says Berger. “It says you’re a little bit of an outsider, a little bit edgy.” Berger explains we often make the decision to do something based on who else is doing it.

To test this hypothesis, Berger posted flyers in freshman dorms of Stanford University encouraging students to not binge drink. For the experimental group, the researchers posted flyers linking drinking to “sketchy grad students”. (Apparently at Stanford, graduate students are perceived as socially awkward and intense, and the undergraduates generally don’t want to be associated with them). For the control group, they posted informational flyers explaining the health hazards of binge drinking.

The results? The experimental group had a 50% reduction in the amount of alcohol consumption compared to the control group.

Give waking up early a “cool” factor

Berger’s work is consistent with my own challenges with becoming an early riser. No matter how many informational benefits I listed out the night before: “If I wake up early, I’ll have time to exercise, meditate, eat a healthy breakfast, etc.”, none of it works. Rather what hits me the hardest is hearing statements such as, “Michael Jordan wakes up at 5am everyday to practice.” Suddenly I feel a visceral urge to wake up early because MJ does it.

So in the spirit of Berger’s binge-drinking posters, I put together a wake-up-early poster: