The Housefly Effect by Eva Van Den Broek & Tim Den Heijer: The seven flies that control us
The Housefly Effect by Eva Van Den Broek & Tim Den Heijer (Bedford Square £20, 240pp)
The Housefly Effect is available now from the Mail Bookshop
When flies begin to congregate on your kitchen counter, it is time for a clean. But for Amsterdam Schiphol Airport, the arrival of flies was beneficial. They painted little flies in the urinals, et, voila, ‘splashback’ was reduced by 50 per cent. If men had a target, their aim was far more accurate.
This is not a new phenomenon, 19th-century British urinals had bees painted on them. Bee in Latin is ‘apis’…
Of the 3,250 buttons at pedestrian crossings in New York City, 2,500 have no bearing on traffic. But when a pedestrian has a button to press they feel in control; it doesn’t matter if that feeling is real.
According to Van den Broek, a doctor of behavioural economics, and Den Heijer, a creative strategist, these instances can be explained by the Housefly Effect. The human behavioural equivalent of the Butterfly Effect, in which a small change starts a chain of events that will have a huge impact (the flap of a butterfly’s wings in India causing a tornado in Florida), the Housefly Effect occurs when ‘your behaviour is influenced by something you barely notice’.
This book is crammed with interesting nuggets from the psychology of how we spend money, to the fact that, in the US, when the Capitol was raided in 2021, the raucous rioters followed the cordoned paths along the corridors.
Is pedestrian power a myth?
Van den Broek and Den Heijer make the persuasive case that we’re more likely to take the path of least resistance than make a free choice. If you bought the expensive dishwasher tablets from a supermarket’s middle shelf because the cheaper ones were down by your ankles, you have been influenced by a housefly. If you would buy sardines but never pilchards (they’ve been renamed), you have been influenced by a housefly.
There are seven ‘flies’, including the ‘lazy fly’ (the one of least resistance), the ‘pain fly’ (the one that avoids pain or discomfort) and the ‘social fly’ (fallible to social pressure) and their collective power is mighty. But, our behaviour is not out of our control. If you know what the various flies are, you are capable of avoiding them.
The power of conditioning can go both ways. Condition yourself to do positive things. Do a press-up every time you go to the loo (though probably not in the loo), or phrase questions with clear options rather than leaving them open ended (ask someone if they want burgers or sushi, rather than just what they want to eat). You are able to rewire your brain so that your houseflies become allies rather than swat-able nuisances.
