“When I suggested this to friends in the Pentagon they said, ‘My
God, that’s terrible. Having to kill someone would distort the
President’s judgment. He might never push the button.’”
Throughout our discussion of the 4th Law of Behavior Change we
have covered the importance of making good habits immediately
satisfying. Fisher’s proposal is an inversion of the 4th Law: Make it
immediately unsatisfying.
Just as we are more likely to repeat an experience when the ending
is satisfying, we are also more likely to avoid an experience when the
ending is painful. Pain is an effective teacher. If a failure is painful, it
gets fixed. If a failure is relatively painless, it gets ignored. The more
immediate and more costly a mistake is, the faster you will learn from
it. The threat of a bad review forces a plumber to be good at his job.
The possibility of a customer never returning makes restaurants create
good food. The cost of cutting the wrong blood vessel makes a surgeon
master human anatomy and cut carefully. When the consequences are
severe, people learn quickly.
serve severe