An Interview with Author and Behavioral Scientist, Richard Shotton

One of the most consistently effective principles in all of behavioral science is the idea of reducing friction: Make the desired option as easy as possible. How can we apply this idea to our own lives? And when might adding friction be to our advantage?  

In this interview, I speak with author and behavioral scientist Richard Shotton about his new book, The Illusion Of Choice: 16 ½ Psychological Biases That Influence What We Buy. As Shotton’s book explores, this principle of reducing friction is applied often, and to great effect within marketing and consumer psychology. 

As we’ll see, however, friction applies equally to our own everyday lives. By understanding the psychology of friction, and its impact on our own decision-making, we can encourage our own behavior change as well. Especially when it comes to our consumption of champagne. 

One of my favorite examples from the book is the “Press for Champagne” button. What is the “Press for Champagne” button, and what does it teach us about our consumer psychology?

There's a fancy restaurant in London called Bob Bob Ricard, which was founded by an ex-creative from Ogilvy named Leonid Shutov. He comes to London, sets up a restaurant, and thinks, how can I make this restaurant as profitable as possible? His general idea is straightforward: to try and get people to order as much champagne - the highest margin product, as possible.

Now if you gave 99.9% of people this challenge, what they’ll try to do is make the champagne as appealing as possible. They would, for example, get the waiters to expound at length about the glorious flavors. All in an attempt to increase its perceived value and the likelihood that someone would order it. 

But what Shutov did was take a very different angle. It wasn't about how you motivate people to want the champagne. But instead, how do you make it as easy as possible to order the champagne?  

This, it turns out, is key. Even though it seems like it's very, very easy to order champagne in a restaurant, there are tiny bits of friction that make it difficult. If you're in a group, you have to stop the conversation. That's a bit of friction. If you are socially awkward, you have to wave your arm around to get the waiter's attention, and you might be worried about being ignored. That's another bit of friction. 

So what Shutov did is at every table, he put up a brass plaque with a big button that reads “press for champagne.”

A built-in, “press for champagne” button. It’s simple. It’s frictionless. And it appears to be incredibly effective. I’ve spoken to the waiters there, and they say that about 95% of the patrons who sit down there press the button. And at least according to Shutov, the restaurant sells more champagne than any other restaurant in the country. 

The champagne button is a great case, and a perfect example of the “make it easy” principle, that you describe in your book. How do you think people can apply this principle to their everyday lives?

This has broad applications in everyday life, especially for behavior change. Consider healthy living, for example. if you think about how most people try and lose weight, or be healthier, the idea is to focus on really pumping themselves up and generating high levels of motivation. But you can also apply a bit of friction to unhealthy options, therefore making it harder to indulge in them. Put simply, don’t ever keep them in the house. 

You may still want that bag of chips, or that candy bar, but now you’ll have to go across the road. Adding in that bit of friction is likely to have a more positive effect than giving yourself stern talking to us or listening to uplifting stories about why we should exercise or eat better. It’s hard to talk ourselves up. It’s much easier to simply make decisions in advance that serve as barriers for our own undesired behavior. 

As the champagne button illustrates, charting an “easy” path can be very helpful. At the same time, there’s power in adding friction. This seems like a paradox. How can we reconcile these?

Humans are phenomenally complex. If someone tries to tell you there is a magic solution that can help you sell more, or that will change your life, and it will work every single time, and it's always going to be perfectly effective, I think you should be suspicious.

Put simply, the context matters, and the goal matters. 

If you want to change someone's behavior, 99 times out of 100, removing friction is the right thing to do, and will likely have a larger-than-expected effect. And as we spoke about dieting and exercising, adding friction to the behaviors we don’t want to engage in will make it less likely that we’ll do them. 

However, behavior change isn’t always the goal. 

Let’s say instead that you want someone to appreciate something more. This is one of those rare occasions when you might want to add a bit of friction. The study that I talked about in the book, is the very well-known 2012 study from Norton, Mochon, and Ariely about The IKEA Effect. This is the idea that we appreciate things more, the more effort we put into it creating them. The harder we work to create something - such as assembling a piece of IKEA furniture, the more we appreciate it once we’ve created it. 

All in all, friction and difficulty aren’t always negative things. Humans are complex. It all comes down to the context, and the specific goal you’re aiming for. 

More from Richard Shotton, on The Psychology of Consumer Choice , and The Power of The Red Sneakers Effect

Photo by Rock Staar on Unsplash

References for The Consumer Psychology of The Press for Champagne Button

Norton, M. I., Mochon, D., & Ariely, D. (2012). The IKEA effect: When labor leads to love. Journal of consumer psychology, 22(3), 453-460.

Shotton, R. (2023), The Illusion of Choice: 16 ½ psychological biases that influence what we buy, Harriman House