Theory of Fun

The piano stairs at a Swedish subway station.

SWEDEN - Faced with a choice of walking up stairs or taking the escalator, which would you choose? Although a natural inclination to conserve energy would make most people chose the escalator, an experiment in Sweden proved that the "fun" factor can actually change human behavior so that people made the healthier choice.

The experiment was a challenging one. The testers would try to get the majority of commuters leaving a subway station to walk up stairs rather than use an escalator situated right next to it. Their solution after much thought and some truly technical creativity was to turn the stair steps into keys on a giant, functional public piano. The result? Sixty-six percent more people chose the stairs over the escalator, creating a lot of music as they did!

In a second test engineers used sound effects to make a casual stroll through a park into an Alice-in-Wonderland-like experience. Pedestrians received the positive reinforcement of cartoon sounds when they tossed their rubbish into ‘the deepest trash can in the world.’ Video of the experiment shows people calling others over to test out the kooky noises emitted when park goers did the right thing by getting rid of their rubbish right way.

It has long been proven that positive rewards can get both humans and animals to change their behaviors, but these experiments showed that fun is a powerful enticement that can create change. After a widely viewed video of Swedes lured to a bottle recycling arcade game went viral, the testers opened up the website “The Fun Theory” to contestants from around the world.

Bottle recycling arcade game

Several contestants wrote in to the site that one human behavior they desperately want to change is getting pet owners to clean up after their animals in public spaces. One woman writes that while she is happy about the joy that pets bring, "they can soil the parks and streets with their poo and some people don't pick it up." She calls her invention the "Poo- Transformer". In her cleverly dreamed up machine, the pet owner places a baggie of pet poo into a tray, presses a red button and receives a dog biscuit in return. (A possible side benefit--the pets might also catch on to the social experiment and "perform" for treats!)

Another contributor to the site states that his pet peeve is people who don't give up their seats to senior citizens in buses. He shares his idea for what he calls the Elder Shake! button, a device the bus driver can activate to make all the seats shake just a bit to remind folks they should give away their seat to an older person. Others like the idea of using speech activation technology to thank people for good habits like turning off lights before leaving a room.

In the spirit of inviting people to create fun solutions to social, environmental, and health issues, the Fun Theory folks posted the best ideas on their site. Visit it, get inspired it, and make change with FUN!

To view videos turning some of these ideas into action visit www.thefuntheory.org