Don´t mess with Texas littering and cleaning

7/27/2019 Dont mess with Texas littering and cleaning

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Nick Michelioudakis (B. Econ., Dip. RSA, MSc [TEFL]) is an Academic Consultant with LEH (the representatives of

the Pearson PTE G Exams in Greece). In his years of active involvement in the field of ELT he has worked as a teacher,

examiner and trainer for both teachers and Oral Examiners. His love of comedy led him to start the Comedy for ELT project

on YouTube. He has written numerous articles on Methodology, while others from the Psychology and ELT series have

appeared in many countries. He likes to think of himself as a front-line teacher and is interested in one-to-one teaching and

student motivation as well as Social and Evolutionary Psychology. When he is not struggling with students, he likes to spend

his time in a swimming pool or playing chess. For articles or handouts of his, you can visit his site at www.michelioudakis.org.

Psychology and ELT: CS Texas

Dont mess with Texas! (Identity and Change)

The problem:The year: 1986. The place: Texas. Texas had a problem. The problem was litter. Litter was

everywhere. It was not for lack of funds; the state was spending around $ 25 m a year on cleanup and that

figure kept rising by an astonishing 15% per year. It was not for lack of effort; the authorities had tried all

the standard approaches. There were signswhich read Please dont litter and trash cans emblazoned with

the pun Please pitch in. Nothing worked. It was clear that what was needed was somebody who would

try a totally different approachsomeone who would employ lateral thinking. Fortunately, such a person

did exist and fortunately for Texas, they employed him. His name was Dan Syrek.

The Dont Mess with Texas Campaign: One of the reasons why previous attempts had failed was

that what works in one occasion may not work in another. For instance, some of the environmental

campaigns in the past had focused on peoples love for cuddly little animals such as owls (slogan: Give a

Hoot; dont Pollute! [clickhereto watch]) or on peoples feelings of guilt (e.g. the famous crying Indian

ad [clickhere]). But these approaches assume that people do care a little in the first place. What if they

dont?

The target audience: When Syrek and co started

working on the problem, they quickly identified the main

culprit. Not all sections of the population littered equally;

by far the main offenders were male / macho / 18-35

pick-up driving guys whose main interests were sports and

country music. Syrek even carried a picture of such a

stereotypical yob with himthey called him Bubba.You

can immediately see why the crying Indian cut no ice with

such a person and as for the cuddly owls

Carrots and sticks:What would we do if we were faced

with such a problem? I think instinctively most of us

would reach for the carrots and the sticks! But you cannot

offer rewards to people for refraining from an action and in this case the sticks would perhaps backfire.

One of the main distinguishing features of Bubba was that he was anti-authority. Threatening him with

fines or other sanctions would likely trigger a desire in him to break the rules even more (cf the notion of

Psychological Reactance Cialdini 2001).
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P s y c h o l o g y a n d E L T : C S T e x a s - P a g e | 2

NICK

The IdeaTexanness:Instead of threatening these young men, Syrek and his team chose instead to

take them on board! One of the most noticeable things about Bubba was that he was Texan and proud of

it! So that was the idea: they took this element and latched something on to it essentiallyTexans do not

litter cause they love their state! A whole series of commercials were created for the campaign. They all

shared a number of features: a) They were direct (Bubba is not that sophisticated) b) They usedcelebrities but not just any celebrities; they were all people who were recognizably Texan. c) They

stressed two elements: Texans dont litter and Texans care about whether others do. d) They were

clearly macho.

The Campaign: In one of the ads, two huge Dallas

Cowboys players are seen collecting litter by the side of

the road. One of them turns to the other and says Ive

got a message for the guy who threw this out of the

window the camera shows us a beer can Only I

kinda need to see him to deliver it and he crushes thecan with his fist wow! [click here to watch] In

another ad, a baseball pitcher famous for his split-

fingered fastball picks up some litter and hurls into a

rubbish bin which blows up spectacularlyamazing!

[clickhere].

The Results:The success of the campaign was startling! Within months almost 3 out of 4 people could

recall the message. A year later, littering had declined by almost 30%. Within 5 years, visible littering had

dropped by a staggering 72% and an emergency fund of $ 1m which had been earmarked to enforce litter

laws with punitive measures was scrapped as unnecessary (Case Study described in Heath & Heath2008pp 195-199)

Applications in the field of ELT: While this Case Study does not offer us immediately transferrable

lessons, there are many key principles we have clear implications for classroom management:

Emotion trumps reason: Notice that the campaign did not try to persuade people with arguments or

statistics. The notion that to change people you need to persuade them is very commonand very wrong.

In fact, in most cases people know what is right (e.g. smoking, drinking etc.). What is needed to sway

them is an emotional appeal. In a famous study, people were approached and asked for donations onbehalf of a charity; half of them were given statistical info about the extent of famine in Africathe other

half were given a story about Rokia, a poor 7-year-old African girl. People in the second condition gave

76% more (Yeung 2011).

Know thy enemy:One of the reasons the campaign was so successful was that it was not addressed to

all and sundry. It is amazing how clear Syrek was about the person he wanted to reach: male young

anti-authority. In this way he was able to tailor the message to the recipient. Similarly, we cannot adopt

an one-size-fits-all approach when teaching our students. To be able to motivate them we need a careful

needs analysis particularly in ESP (e.g. Robinson 1991 Ch 2) and Teaching 1-to-1 (e.g. Osborne 2005,

Ch 3). But even this is not enough; to see what really makes our students tick we need to get close tothem and interact with them ourselves!
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Focus on identity:Haidt (2012) points out that we all have a hivish tendency; a tendency indeed a

needto belong to something larger than ourselves (the hive). Stimulated by this feeling, people can be

astonishingly altruistic and more to the point they can change very quickly! The hive can be almost

anything; it can be ones nation, ones place of origin (Texas!), a football club (Barcelona!) or ones

school house (Gryffindor!). The last example is a very interesting one; if one can harness this the re sultscan be spectacular!

Remodel that identity:What the campaign essentially did was to tag an extra feature to the Texan

identity. There is no reason why Texans should care about the environment, but the ads managed to

create that link by using role models (in this case athletes and folk singers) who shared this identity

(Texan celebrities). Tim Murphey (2012) talks of NPRM (Near-Peer Role Models) and their potential in

shaping student behaviour. By getting older (and perhaps successful) students to give mini talks in our

classes or even just showing them examples of successful projects they have been involved in, we can go

a long way towards motivating our learners.

Dont destroy your message:It is vital to note that one thing Syrek and his team avoided was saying

that the root cause of the problemwas that everyone was littering. Saying something like The reason why

we are here today is that nobody bothers to be environmentally-conscious would have been a blunder; in

fact it would be telling every Bubba in Texas Everyone is doing it why should you be any different?

(Godstein, Martin & Cialdini 2007) Telling students I hope you are not like the other group who never

look at their books until their teacher tells them to the next day encourages them to do just that.

Avoid dissonance:Notice that Syreks team did not bother to address the apparent clash between their

message (Texans obviously would not pollute Texas!) and Bubbas previous behaviour. They simply

ignored the latter! Subconsciously, the campaign worked like this: Do you love Texas? Yes, I do!

So help us keep it clean! (It goes without saying that you would not dream of polluting yourself!)

According to Fine (2005) our vain brain routinelyrewrites our memories so Bubba conveniently forgot

what his previous practices were!! It is often the same with unruly students; if you give them an assistant

Teacher role, you may find that they take to it with gusto, conveniently forgetting what their behaviour

was only a few days previously!

George the pastor: OK here is a final ad from the

campaign: George Foreman was a boxer and not just any

boxer; he was one of the all-time greats. A world champion,he lost to legendary Muhammad Ali but he made a comeback

20 years later and won the title again at the age of 45! What is

not so well known about him is that he was also an ordained

Baptist minister. In this amazing commercial from the same

campaign he is seen preaching, telling the congregation what

to do ifyour brother does so-and-so. Then suddenly he says

But if he ever, ever messes with Texas (the choir stop in

puzzlement) pray for him brother; pray for him!

Excellent!! [just clickhere]
http://youtu.be/pP0pWc0w0xshttp://youtu.be/pP0pWc0w0xshttp://youtu.be/pP0pWc0w0xs


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References

1. Cialdini, R. InfluenceScience and Practice, Allyn & Bacon 20012.

Fine, C. A Mind of its Own Icon Books 2005

3. Goldstein, N., Martin, S. & Cialdini, R. Yes! 50 secrets from the science of persuasion ProfileBooks 2007

4. Haidt, J. The Righteous Mind Allen Lane 20125. Heath, C. & Heath, D. Made to Stick Random House 20086. Murphey, T. Teaching in Pursuit of WoW! Abax 20127. Osborne, P. Teaching English One-toOne Modern English Publishing 20058. Robinson, P. ESP Today Prentice Hall 19919. Yeung, R. i is for Influence Macmillan 2012

Don´t mess with Texas littering and cleaning

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