Change and identity
More from Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard by Chip Heath and Dan Heath: "Rare's success [in the previous chapter the author's told about a conservation organiztion which saved the St. Lucia parrot by creating a sense of identity and responsibility for the parrot in the St. Lucia population] in motivating people in fifty countries suggests that something universal is at work here. Confirmation of that comes from the research of James March, a professor of political science at Stanford University. March says that when people make choices, they tend to rely on one of two basic models of decision making: the consequences model or the identity model. The consequences model is familiar to students of economics. It assumes that when we have a decision to make, we weigh the costs and benefits of our options and make the choice that maximizes our satisfaction. It's a rational, analytical approach. This is the approach that Paul Butler knew would fail with the ...