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Advances in Experimental Social Psychology (vol. 10), New York: Academic Press. Echoes of the Fundamental Attribution Error are found in the conventional wisdom of many fields. Marketers talk about finding the right psychographic for a consumer good. Health psychologists talk about the importance of targeting people who are “ready” to stop smoking. Human resources people talk about getting the right people on the bus. Change experts talk about classifying the three types of people in any change effort: Believers, Fence Sitters, and Resisters. But social psychology is filled with examples that show situations trump personal attributes. For example, the food-drive study discussed in section 2 of this chapter says that you’re three times better-off with a food-drive Resister with a map than with a true Believer without one.

Marriage therapist Michele Weiner-Davis. See Weiner-Davis (1992), Divorce Busting, New York: Simon & Schuster, p. 42. The kind of thinking fostered by the Fundamental Attribution Error has been shown to hurt marriages. Research has shown that couples experience more distress when they insist on attributing their relationship problems to traitlike characteristics of their partner that are global and stable. These attributions lead to more negative conversations and serious fights when couples try to work through their problems. See Norman Epstein, Donald H. Baucom, and Lynn A. Rankin (1993), “Treatment of Marital Conflict: A Cognitive-Behavioral Approach,” Clinical Psychology Review, 13, 45–57.

Distinguish “saints” from “jerks.” The food-drive study is described in L. Ross and R. E. Nisbett (1991), The Person and the Situation: Perspectives of Social Psychology, New York: McGraw-Hill, pp. 132–133.

Peter Bregman. The source of this account is Bregman’s blog, “The Easiest Way to Change People’s Behavior” (March 11, 2009), http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/bregman/2009/03/the-easiest-way-to.html, and an interview between Chip Heath and Bregman in May 2009.

Becky Richards … “medication vests.” This story is based on an interview between Chip Heath and Becky Richards in June 2008 and a conference presentation by Richards at the BEACON collaborative in San Francisco in April 2008.

“Sterile cockpit” rule. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sterile_ Cockpit_Rule (accessed July 23, 2009). The rule was developed by the FAA in 1981 after investigations showed that some aircraft crashes during the 1970s were caused when flight crews were distracted from their instruments by idle chatter in the cockpit.

The IT group … “sterile cockpit.” See Leslie A. Perlow (1997), Finding Time: How Corporations, Individuals, and Families Can Benefit from New Work Practices, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. The quotations about the results of the “quiet hours” experiment are on p. 126. Perlow conducted this study for her graduate school dissertation. As an outsider to the company, and only a student at the time (she’s now a senior professor at Harvard), Perlow was responsible for a simple intervention that the division vice president declared “a new benchmark”!

Amanda Tucker. This story is based on an example Tucker recounted in May 2009 in a Stanford Graduate School of Business class on “How to Change Things When Change Is Hard.” Used with her permission.

Haddon Matrix. For an overview of the Haddon Matrix, see a presentation online produced by the San Francisco Department of Health (which in turn draws on work by Carolyn Fowler at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health): http://www.ccsf.edu/Resources/Faculty/jeskinne/documents/HAD 2Complete.pdf (accessed June 14, 2009). Our thanks to Carolyn Fowler and Eric Tash for their insights on the Haddon Matrix.

Rackspace. The Rackspace story and quotations are from two interviews between Dan Heath and Graham Weston, conducted October 2007 and February 2009. Revenue growth data from internal company data were supplied to the authors.

Chapter Nine

Mike Romano. Mike’s name and a few irrelevant details were altered to protect his identity. The information comes