The Mere Measurement Effect
Asking someone whether they plan to do something makes them a little more likely to do it. The effect is small, but it costs one sentence, and it changes what a status question is for.
The mere measurement effect means a question can do some of a manager's job. Ask someone whether they'll do something, and they become a little more likely to do it.
Vicki Morwitz, Eric Johnson and David Schmittlein showed it in 1993: asking people once about their intent to make a purchase raised how often they later bought.
In 2016, Chantelle Wood, Paschal Sheeran and colleagues pooled 116 tests covering about 55,000 people. The effect held, with honest limits. It is small. It works best for easy, desirable behaviors, and it fades as the gap between question and action grows.
Treat it as a small push that costs one sentence.
At work, "Where are we on the client deck?" asks for a report on the past. "Will you send the client deck by Thursday noon?" asks for a prediction about yourself, and once you've said it out loud, you'd rather be right.
The nudge: In Monday's standup, swap one status question for a self-prediction: "Will you finish X by Thursday?" Keep X small and Thursday close.
Source: Morwitz, Johnson & Schmittlein, Does Measuring Intent Change Behavior?, Journal of Consumer Research (1993); Wood, Conner, Miles, Sandberg, Taylor, Godin & Sheeran, The impact of asking intention or self-prediction questions on subsequent behavior: A meta-analysis, Personality and Social Psychology Review (2016)
