Before my two-week break I finished The Political Brain by Drew Westen. Westen is a clinical psychologists and American Democrat. He looks at how the brain works and the part our emotions play in how we vote.
Anyone interested in how politics is communicated, in fact in how any message is communicated, should pick up a copy of this very readable work.
Barack Obama's acceptance speech at the Democratic convention is a casebook example of how to put Westen's recommendations into action.
It is probably best to look at the speech once you have finished the book.
Sunday, 31 August 2008
Nudged to disappointment
I have just had a two week holiday. Some of that time was spent at the Edinburgh Festival. For the train journey up and back I chose to read Thaler and Sunstein's Nudge.
The book has generated a lot of interest. I have read that Barack Obama is taken with it and it has caused quite a stir among the British Conservative party.
Much of the book looks at current nudging, mostly by the private sector. It is only near the end that the authors suggest some practical nudging for government that would, they claim, improve our lives while still allowing us freedom of choice.
If you don't work in marketing or public relations, you know nothing about psychology or economics, haven't read any of the books listed below, haven't worked out that organisations give you a default option in order to encourage you to choose the default, then this book is a must read.
If you can answer yes to any of the above then you can probably live without this particular nudge.
When I was in my teens, late seventies in case you were wondering, I was told that McDonalds had the seats in their restaurants designed so that you sat at a slight angle towards the floor. The idea was to encourage you to leave as quickly as possible. I have no idea if this is true or not. But the seats were designed that way and people didn't tend to stay very long. A few years ago the purveyors of fast food had a rethink and altered their seating.
Companies have been employing psychologists to help them market their products and services for a long time. This is not new and has been discussed in the media for as long as it has been going on.
The really interesting thing about Nudge is that it has reached a tipping point. But that is for another author to explore.
As promised, here are the books that you might have read already and cover many of the ideas in Nudge.
Blink by Malcolm Gladwell
Emergence by Steve Johnson
Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner
The Undercover Economist by Tim Harford
Mind Wide Open by Steve Johnson
The book has generated a lot of interest. I have read that Barack Obama is taken with it and it has caused quite a stir among the British Conservative party.
Much of the book looks at current nudging, mostly by the private sector. It is only near the end that the authors suggest some practical nudging for government that would, they claim, improve our lives while still allowing us freedom of choice.
If you don't work in marketing or public relations, you know nothing about psychology or economics, haven't read any of the books listed below, haven't worked out that organisations give you a default option in order to encourage you to choose the default, then this book is a must read.
If you can answer yes to any of the above then you can probably live without this particular nudge.
When I was in my teens, late seventies in case you were wondering, I was told that McDonalds had the seats in their restaurants designed so that you sat at a slight angle towards the floor. The idea was to encourage you to leave as quickly as possible. I have no idea if this is true or not. But the seats were designed that way and people didn't tend to stay very long. A few years ago the purveyors of fast food had a rethink and altered their seating.
Companies have been employing psychologists to help them market their products and services for a long time. This is not new and has been discussed in the media for as long as it has been going on.
The really interesting thing about Nudge is that it has reached a tipping point. But that is for another author to explore.
As promised, here are the books that you might have read already and cover many of the ideas in Nudge.
Blink by Malcolm Gladwell
Emergence by Steve Johnson
Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner
The Undercover Economist by Tim Harford
Mind Wide Open by Steve Johnson
The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
Sunday, 10 August 2008
The Nanny State is dead. Long live the Nudging State!
Sunstein and Thaler's Nudge has rather captured the imagination of British politicians. Well Conservative ones mostly but also at least one Labour MP. Mick Fealty explains all in his post Left, right or Nanny? And I am not simply linking to that post because it links to one of mine.
The book "offers a unique new take-from neither the left nor the right-on many hot-button issues, for individuals and governments alike."
Apparently, Barack Obama is very keen on it.
The question Mick asks is, will politicians from either party actually begin to nudge and stop nannying?
Nudge is not the only book to look at how we organise ourselves. Here is a sample list -
Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky
Emergence by Steve Johnson
The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki
Wikinomics by Dan Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams
Of course, Nudge is about how governments can encourage people to do things. The question for politicians, especially liberal politicians, is whether it is better to nudge or stand back and see what emerges?
The book "offers a unique new take-from neither the left nor the right-on many hot-button issues, for individuals and governments alike."
Apparently, Barack Obama is very keen on it.
The question Mick asks is, will politicians from either party actually begin to nudge and stop nannying?
Nudge is not the only book to look at how we organise ourselves. Here is a sample list -
Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky
Emergence by Steve Johnson
The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki
Wikinomics by Dan Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams
Of course, Nudge is about how governments can encourage people to do things. The question for politicians, especially liberal politicians, is whether it is better to nudge or stand back and see what emerges?
A turning point for Brown?
According to the People, Gordon Brown has got caught up in a sex scandal. Well sort of.
His personal trainer rather enjoys the personal with more than one person at a time.
Will all this sexy stuff rub off on Brown? Perhaps I should rephrase that? But you get the point... no that doesn't quite work either. Too much Carry On when I was a child I am afraid. And who says watching films as a child doesn't affect you?
His personal trainer rather enjoys the personal with more than one person at a time.
Will all this sexy stuff rub off on Brown? Perhaps I should rephrase that? But you get the point... no that doesn't quite work either. Too much Carry On when I was a child I am afraid. And who says watching films as a child doesn't affect you?
Batman and the ethics of violence
Christopher Nolan's latest Batman film, The Dark Knight, has caused quite a stir. Last week's Sunday Times carried a piece about the level of complaints because of its violent content, then came Iain Duncan Smith and now Camila Batmanghelidjh in The Independent on Sunday.
All the criticisms centre around the contention that film violence leads to real violence. This argument isn't new. When Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange was released the newspapers ran a story about a homeless man being beaten to death. Ergo, the film was the cause.
There have been a log of studies about the impact of screen violence on children but none, or at least none that I am aware, on the impact of other things that happen in films.
At this point I should declare several interests. When I was a child I read the Batman comics. I also watched a lot of war films, crime films and Westerns. I have never owned a gun or committed a violent act. I have always wondered if people truly believe that removing violence from films and TV shows would mean less violence in society. If this is the case, how do people explain the activities of the Vikings? And finally, I think The Dark Knight is an exceptionally good film.
A Hollywood film that uses a comic-book hero, or anti-hero in Batman's case, to deal with the 'war on terror', the misuse of power by the State and the utter pointlessness of violence is something to at least be taken notice of. Film critics have talked about Heath Ledger's performance and the cinematic merits of the movie, so I won't repeat those here.
What particularly grabbed my attention was the battle between two very distinct ideas. One is a value system that says yes to humanity. Interestingly, this isn't represented by Batman but ordinary people. They are the ones who are forced to confront the other idea. That idea is represented by the Joker. He makes them face death and offerss them survival. Survivial, that is, at a cost.
The catch being that they must kill others to live. If they refuse to act, they will all die anyway. The Joker thinks the decision is obvious. But the people don't. They hold on to an ethical code that says we must say no to destruction and cruelty, we must die for the sake of our values because that is the only way to defeat the pointlessness and chaos that the Joker is offering Gotham City.
The character of Batman is very close to John Wayne's Ethan Edwards in The Searchers. Edwards can never be part of civilisation but for civilisation to exist it needs him. Batman is an outcast and the end sequence has an echo of the ending to Ford's masterpiece. Which is why Batman is to some extent an anti-hero and why the battle isn't strictly between him and Joker.
In The Uses of Enchantment, Bruno Bettelheim argued that fairy stories were brutal and violent for a reason. Children needed to work out their anxiety, feelings of rage and confusion through these cruel stories of wicked stepmothers, evil witches and predatory wolves. He was saddened that, over time, the stories had been tamed and lost their graphic violence. If one accepts Bettelheim's argument, then The Dark Knight is a film that children should see and not one that should be hidden from them.
All the criticisms centre around the contention that film violence leads to real violence. This argument isn't new. When Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange was released the newspapers ran a story about a homeless man being beaten to death. Ergo, the film was the cause.
There have been a log of studies about the impact of screen violence on children but none, or at least none that I am aware, on the impact of other things that happen in films.
At this point I should declare several interests. When I was a child I read the Batman comics. I also watched a lot of war films, crime films and Westerns. I have never owned a gun or committed a violent act. I have always wondered if people truly believe that removing violence from films and TV shows would mean less violence in society. If this is the case, how do people explain the activities of the Vikings? And finally, I think The Dark Knight is an exceptionally good film.
A Hollywood film that uses a comic-book hero, or anti-hero in Batman's case, to deal with the 'war on terror', the misuse of power by the State and the utter pointlessness of violence is something to at least be taken notice of. Film critics have talked about Heath Ledger's performance and the cinematic merits of the movie, so I won't repeat those here.
What particularly grabbed my attention was the battle between two very distinct ideas. One is a value system that says yes to humanity. Interestingly, this isn't represented by Batman but ordinary people. They are the ones who are forced to confront the other idea. That idea is represented by the Joker. He makes them face death and offerss them survival. Survivial, that is, at a cost.
The catch being that they must kill others to live. If they refuse to act, they will all die anyway. The Joker thinks the decision is obvious. But the people don't. They hold on to an ethical code that says we must say no to destruction and cruelty, we must die for the sake of our values because that is the only way to defeat the pointlessness and chaos that the Joker is offering Gotham City.
The character of Batman is very close to John Wayne's Ethan Edwards in The Searchers. Edwards can never be part of civilisation but for civilisation to exist it needs him. Batman is an outcast and the end sequence has an echo of the ending to Ford's masterpiece. Which is why Batman is to some extent an anti-hero and why the battle isn't strictly between him and Joker.
In The Uses of Enchantment, Bruno Bettelheim argued that fairy stories were brutal and violent for a reason. Children needed to work out their anxiety, feelings of rage and confusion through these cruel stories of wicked stepmothers, evil witches and predatory wolves. He was saddened that, over time, the stories had been tamed and lost their graphic violence. If one accepts Bettelheim's argument, then The Dark Knight is a film that children should see and not one that should be hidden from them.
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