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“;
- Number of steps progressed
- 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;