The Popcorn Experiment

One Saturday, some unsuspecting moviegoers showed up at a suburban theater in Chicago to catch Mel Gibson’s action flick Payback. They were handed a soft drink and a free bucket of popcorn and were asked to stick around after the movie to answer a few questions about the concession stand.

The popcorn though, had been carefully engineered to be wretched. Some got their free popcorn in a medium-size bucket, and others got a large bucket. The researchers were interested in a simple question: Would the people with bigger buckets eat more?

Both buckets were so big that they couldn’t finish their individual portions. So the actual research question was a bit more specific: Would somebody with a larger inexhaustible supply of popcorn eat more than someone with a smaller inexhaustible supply?

The researchers weighed the buckets before and after the movie, so they were able to measure precisely how much popcorn each person ate. The data showed that people with the large buckets ate 53% more popcorn than people with the medium size. –
A data analyst looked at this study and put together a graph with two data points, the number of people and how much they ate, with no mention of bucket sizes.

Upon looking at the data you would quickly jump to the conclusion that some people simply ate too much and you would perhaps want to think about ways to motivate people to adopt healthy eating habits.

But in fact there is a much more simple solution available at hand which is to reduce the bucket sizes.

* Source : Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard by Chip Heath and Dan Heath

Share this article:Share on FacebookTweet about this on TwitterShare on LinkedInEmail this to someone


Why the QR Code? The answer is in the request below we received from a regular blog reader.

"I attended your story telling course some time back. And I've enjoyed keeping up my knowledge with your blog. You may not have realised however, that the Whole of Government is implementing Internet Seperation. Hence I'm not able to access the links to read your articles. Could I suggest including a QR code in your emails so that I can use my mobile to scan it and gain immediate access to the article? It would be most helpful"