To Light or Not to Light? --- Ron Talmor Entry #2

"Were you successful in convincing people to make a change in their lives in regards to your project? Why do you think they did or did not agree to make a change? What did you learn about what it takes to persuade people to make a change in their lifestyle and how can you more effectively convince people to make a change if you were to do this again?"

I was moderately successful in improving the lighting at Lawson and at other places. The people who committed to save energy outside of Lawson will probably attempt to save some energy. However, I think that after a while they will just forget to close the lights or set the timer or do whatever they have chosen to do. Thus, I am only moderately successful in improving the lighting efficiency in other places. In Lawson Middle School I also think that we only moderately changed the school. This is because as we were doing our research we found out that Lawson already has extremely energy efficient lights (occupancy sensors in many rooms and energy-efficient lights). So, even if we did change Lawson it would only be a tiny amount because there isn't much to change because (as I have previously stated) they are already making good choices during the light-installation process. Thus, we are again only moderately successful in in improving the lighting at Lawson. While talking to people about improving their lighting I realized several facts. One: they only want to hear good things about why they should change their lifestyle. Two: they don't want to hear bad things about changing their lifestyle. Yes, it is true that this is only one fact, but this fact is so important it had to be mentioned twice! This leads me to how I can more effectively convince people on how to do what we want them to do. It's actually quite simple! All we have to do is tell them what they want to hear! We shouldn't try to disprove that what we say is bad. We should just briefly mention it and not provide too much emphasis on it. Finally, if we were to change what we did I think we should have less talk about the bad parts of each lighting alternative and more parts about the good parts of each lighting alternative. Besides that, every "bad" facts about the product we keep we can counter argue using "good" facts about the product.