Illustrating both progress and loss are two twin techniques of effort manipulation where you both:

• Make something seem as if it’s already in progress, which makes it sound less effortful;
• Illustrate negatively how it would be to actively stop this now, which makes it seem more effortful to stop;

In short, if the person is in the process of buying, for example, you don’t make the purchase seem like a big step that comes out of nowhere. You make this seem like a progress that is mostly done, and the purchase is just the natural continuation, requiring no effort.

Underlying Psychology/Biases

This works because you are changing the perceived effort of both continuing and stopping:

• You are making a purchase/doing your ask seem like less effort, because it’s not a manual action, starting, out of nowhere, it’s just a natural continuation, which is less effort;
• You make stopping seem like something big, active, manual that the person must do, versus being something natural;

There are two types of biases that empower these principles:

• Availability bias is the bias triggered by illustrating progress.
  • When you make it seem like the person has already progressed, it seems the purchase is more available. It’s closer to them. It’s just the next step, versus something big;
  • There’s also a small element of streamlining here. When you make a process more structured, it does seem simpler, so the person is more likely to buy (you’re reducing uncertainty – it’s 3 steps versus ??? steps);
• Loss aversion is the bias triggered by illustrating loss (the person will be afraid to lose all they’ve achieved so far);
  • And to some extent, the sunk cost fallacy (“I started it, so I may as well finish it”) as well as the endowment effect (the person likes this relationship/progress more because they’ve already put effort into it);

Sub-Techniques

• To illustrate progress
  • You want to bring structure into the progress;
  • There are two similar ways to do it:
    • Number of steps progressed
      • “We are already at step 2 of 5!”;
    • Percentage progressed
      • “We are already at 35% of the way there!”;
    • Both make it seem like the person has already made progress, so the purchase seems like less effort, and stopping seems like they are wasting their progress;
    • There is a mental trick related to the 50% mark;
      • When the progress is less than 50%, focus on what has been done;
      • When it’s more than 50%, focus on what is left;
      • “We’ve already taken 3 out of 7 steps“;
      • “There’s only 1 out of 7 steps left“;
• To illustrate loss
  • Ask about stopping in an accusatory way (a technique to remove exits called “inquisitorial confirmation“);
  • “John, do you really want to stop now and waste all this work?”;
  • “Richard, do you really want to throw this all away and choose another product?”;
  • It won’t prevent the person from leaving if they really want to, but it will make it a lot harder;
  • An interesting angle to use is the exclusivity one
    • By making it seem not a lot of people get to this point, they are being excluded from this group by leaving;
    • “Are you sure that you want to leave? Not a lot of people make it to this point. Do you want to leave this exclusive group?”;
    • It’s illustrating loss paired with exclusion confirmation;

Examples

In UPP

• “You’ll lose progress”
  • Every time that you try to quit a videogame or document without saving, it will ask, “Are you sure you want to quit? You’ll lose progress”;
  • It’s an example of both illustrating loss and removing exits;
• “We’re almost there”
  • What parents say to children to (hopefully) get them to calm down;
  • Illustrating the progress done so far and the little that remains;
• “Are you sure?”
  • Asking if the person wants to quit or leave using an accusatory tone is a great technique, known as inquisitorial confirmation;
• Letting go of all
  • In movies or TV shows, the protagonist will want to change their life at some point and leave it all behind;
  • And someone, usually a family member or friend, will ask, “Are you sure that you want to leave this all behind?”;
• “You won’t find better”
  • Usually said by people during breakups in relationships;
  • The technique itself is well used here, but in this case, there is usually so much baggage that the question itself doesn’t do much at this point;
• “Not many get here”
  • Using the exclusivity angle to illustrate loss;
  • Not just illustrating what they lose, but them being removed from an exclusive group;
  • “Not a lot of people make it to this stage. Are you sure that you want to quit?”;

Others:

• Gym reps
  • Intelligent training programs (and videogames like Ring Fit Adventure) will illustrate progress differently;
  • There’s 40 reps to do
    • Until you reach 20, you will hear, “You’ve done 1/2/3”;
    • After you’ve reached 20, you will hear, “Just 20/10/5 left”;

Commercial/Known Uses

Key Takeaways

• Both illustrating progress and loss change the mental effort associated with something;
  • When something seems to be in progress, it’s easier to continue it;
  • When something is in progress, it’s also harder to actively stop it;
  • These work by triggering a powerful cocktail of biases;
    • While both trigger mental effort bias – and possibly the endowment effect – illustrating loss in specific also triggers loss aversion and the sunk cost bias;
• You can illustrate progress using both a percentage of progress or the number of steps;
  • Remember the 50% rule. Before progress hits 50%, illustrate what has been reached, and when it’s more than 50%, illustrate what is left;