Right for Wrong
Get people to do the thing they already want to do — by giving them a shallower, more immediate reason.
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 93%
The real reason to do something (health, democracy, financial security) is usually too abstract and too distant to move anyone. Right for Wrong deliberately substitutes a small, immediate, arguably trivial motivator — a shout-out, a streak, a deadline, a disappearing error message, free pizza — for the noble reason. The behavior is still the one the user wants; only the motivation is swapped.
Origin
Named and formalized by Kristen Berman / Irrational Labs. It sits on the behavioral-economics finding of present bias (we over-weight our present selves), and shows up in the public-health and civic literature — vaccine lotteries in Ohio, pizza at polling lines.
Core principles
- 01At some level we're pretty simple humans who want an immediate benefit.
- 02The right behavior and the right reason are separable — and you should separate them.
- 03Deadlines are a gift: they help people prioritize a thing they already intended to do.
- 04This is ethically neutral technology. It is safe only when the end behavior genuinely serves the user.
How to run it
- 1
Confirm the behavior is genuinely in the user's interest
Right for Wrong only holds when the 'right' is actually right. Verify that completing the behavior improves the customer's outcome, not just yours. This is the ethical gate.
Watch out Skip this gate and you are simply manipulating people. Berman is explicit that the safeguard is measuring and being incentivized on customer outcomes.
- 2
Name the real (abstract) reason — and set it aside
Write down the genuine long-term payoff: physical health, a well-run project, financial visibility. Accept that it will not motivate anyone today.
- 3
Find the immediate psychological substitute
Pick a mechanism that pays out now: completion bias (a step or progress bar), social desirability (teammates see it), status (Clubhouse's on-stage friend circle), streaks, an instructor shout-out, or a deadline.
Pro tip Reframing a multi-step flow so each step delivers its own completion payoff converts an abstract end-benefit (seeing your income after syncing your bank) into a chain of immediate ones.
- 4
Add a deadline where prioritization is the blocker
When people intend to act but keep deferring, a deadline is often the highest-leverage 'wrong' reason. Irrational Labs added one to Kiva's borrower signup flow.
Pro tip Expect mission-driven organizations to resist deadlines as 'too hurtful'. The evidence runs the other way: more people complete the thing they wanted to complete.
In the wild
One of the bigger voting interventions on record is simply having pizza show up at the poll line. People turn out not because they've been re-convinced about civic duty, but because there's pizza.
→ Turnout rises — the right behavior (voting) is delivered by an unrelated immediate reward.
Irrational Labs added a deadline to Kiva's borrower signup flow, on the argument that a deadline helps people prioritize something they already intended to do.
→ Conversion increased. In contrast, a non-profit that refused a deadline as 'too hurtful' kept losing candidates who never made it to their interviews.
For a step critical to the app working, the team surfaced an error message; the immediate benefit of completing the step became making the error message go away.
→ Completion rose — but Berman flags this as a use-with-caution tactic: people will not love an app plastered with error messages.
Common mistakes
Refusing the 'wrong' reason on principle
Mission-driven teams reject deadlines, nudges and shallow incentives as beneath them. The result is that fewer people do the good thing they wanted to do. Purity of motive is not an outcome.
Over-applying the aversive version
Error messages, guilt and friction do drive completion, but they degrade the product experience. Reserve them for steps genuinely critical to the app functioning.
Is it for you?
Best for
Teams whose product delivers a delayed or abstract benefit (health, finance, education, civic) and who cannot get users to take the first action.
Not ideal for
Any behavior that is not clearly in the user's interest — there, this becomes a manipulation playbook and the incentive test should stop you.
From the transcript
“error message on the screen we call this right for wrong doing the right thing for the wrong reason where the right thing may be…”
“there's one one of the bigger voting interventions is just having pizza show up at the pole line right you're motivating people to go vote…”
“when you add deadlines and we've done this in multiple companies where you add a deadline more people do the thing right because you're helping…”
“if you think about Peloton you know yes I want to work out yes I want to have a healthy person but maybe I want…”
From the episode
Using behavioral science to improve your product
Kristen Berman (Irrational Labs)