Apparently today is National Everything You Do Is Right Day. I’ve got some questions about how exactly this works. But also, it’s about time!

And, when you’re doing something right, you want to bring others along with you, too. Today we’ve got a couple pieces of research about how to help persuade people to do just that.

How to Bring About Social Change at Work

Many of us volunteer for causes we care about outside of work. But sometimes you’re seeking a change at work, such as more equitable hiring or pay.

When that’s the case, the way you present your cause matters a lot, according to recent research from clinical professor Cythia Wang and professor Brayden King, both in the department of management and organizations. The researchers looked specifically at the names that activists give internal campaigns and found that certain labels can alienate the people they’re hoping to attract.

The researchers told study participants about a hypothetical gender-equity campaign. Half the participants were told that it was a “feminist” policy and half were told it was simply a new policy. The team also gave participants surveys to learn how much they, themselves, identified as feminists. Then participants were asked how likely they were to help with the campaign.

As expected, people who strongly identified as feminists supported the policy more if it was labeled as such. Among people who didn’t identify much with feminism, the effect was the opposite, with a preference for the unlabeled policy.

Avoiding a label doesn’t mean avoiding social change. “We definitely are not telling people to be afraid of being an activist,” King says. It’s more about how to be “a smart activist.”

In another study, they found a way to do just that: by tapping into company pride. The idea is to label a policy something like the “[Insert your company’s name] Policy”—for instance, the “Google Policy.” This drew much larger support from people who identify strongly with their organization than did a policy labeled as “feminist.”

“People often think about social movements as this grand thing,” Wang says. “But we also need to understand the psychology of the individuals that can help implement change, one person at a time.”

You can read the full story here.

Good on Paper

Here’s another study that could come in handy as you attempt to drum up volunteers for your initiative.

The research is from Maferima Touré-Tillery, an associate professor of marketing, and it looks at how virtuously we act on paper versus on a digital device. For example, are we more likely to volunteer or donate to a good cause if we’re given a paper form versus one on an iPad?

In several studies, she and her coauthor found that people were more likely to act virtuously on paper. The reason, they found in a subsequent study, is that participants felt that what they did on paper felt more real. “And because it feels more real, it’s more consequential,” Touré-Tillery says.

She’s not necessarily recommending that organizations go all in on paper. “I’m hesitant to say that because, obviously, there’s an environmental cost,” she says. Instead, she suggests thinking strategically about when you deploy paper versus digital messages, and if possible, making digital messages feel more impactful.

You can read the full story here.

Today’s Leadership Tip

“They fail to see the gold mine they’ve left behind.”

—Clinical professor Joel Shapiro in Forbes on why companies are too quick to abandon the data they collect from pilot tests, instead of putting it to creative use.