All rubbish of course. We do what we do. NOTHING changes
our behaviour other than the day to day minutiae of action/reaction. And as
"behaviour" goes undefined in the piece it is doubly nonsensical.
Fred, if you are scared by this you should take more drugs
From: Frederic Stansfield <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: [COMMUNITYPSYCHUK] the political is the psychological?
To: [log in to unmask]
Date: Thursday, 17 September, 2009, 8:43 PM
I listened to this programme. It was
very interesting but rather scary.
If you missed it, I recommend the repeat.
From: Fryer, David <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: [COMMUNITYPSYCHUK] the political is the psychological?
To: [log in to unmask]
Date: Thursday, 17 September, 2009, 7:45 PM
Can politicians shape our behaviour?
By Martin Rosenbaum
Producer, BBC Radio 4's Persuading Us to be Good
Are you a good citizen?
The kind who doesn't drink too much but always puts the empties in the
recycling box? The kind who ignores tempting store credit card offers but
does give blood, who saves prudently for your pension while avoiding
unprotected sex?
In short, the kind who does what the nanny state might want you to do?
And if you're not yet perfect, how can the state persuade you to become
better?
That's the question a growing number of politicians, local government
officials, health professionals and think-tank members are grappling with,
as they puzzle over how best to change public behaviour to achieve their
policy goals..
Personal choices
And they are now turning to the increasingly influential ideas of social
psychology and behavioural economics in their search for answers.
"In many areas now there are limits to the cures that can be achieved
by government alone," says the climate change minister, Joan Ruddock.
" Some leaflets are more likely to encourage anti-social behaviour
than discourage "
Martin Rosenbaum Freedom of information blogger
"Behaviour change is a very important priority because we know that
things like health and the environment are affected by the choices people
make."
And the Conservatives are also interested, according to the shadow
chancellor George Osborne.
He argues: "Social psychologists are helping governments around the
world design policy solutions that are more effective than big state
solutions. If you go with the grain of people's instincts you are more
likely to achieve the public policy outcomes you want, rather than sitting
in a government department dreaming up some rational scheme that doesn't work
in practice."
Barnet Council in north west London is one of those local authorities
trying to improve its population.
" We've got to stop nagging. If nagging worked we'd all be skinny,
we'd all be recycling and we'd all be walking to work "
Mike Freer, Barnet Council leader
In one pilot scheme in Finchley, the residents have been asked to reduce
their carbon footprint by turning down their heating, reducing their car
use, and so on..
A traditional persuasive strategy would be based on stressing how this
could benefit the environment. But the council is going further in testing
out techniques of influence.
The residents are asked to make pledges in a face-to-face conversation with
one of the canvassers who have been going door-to-door in this area.
They are only asked to make some limited pledges - to choose three out of
nine options on the pledge card they are shown.
And posters on lampposts proclaim the number of households in that street
who have agreed to participate.
Peer pressure
In other words, this project is based on enticing people into making a
small but face-to-face commitment and then using the force of peer pressure
to encourage others.
"If you go to someone's door and say 'can you do a great deal for the
environment?', they're probably going to back off," says Daniel
Delange, of the charity Groundwork, which the council has employed to
implement the project.
"But if you say 'a little bit for the environment', they feel they can
do a little bit and feel good about themselves for doing it."
"We put these posters up, so we hope the neighbours see," he
adds. "We hope the neighbours will feel 'if they're all doing it,
maybe I should be doing it as well'."
But there is still some way to go.
When we asked one resident if she was impressed by the posters about the
number of neighbours taking part, she replied: "Not knowing who the
neighbours were, I don't know."
For the council leader, Mike Freer, this approach is an idea whose time has
come.
He says: "The role of the council has shifted away from being a
provider of services to being responsible for helping local citizens
improve their lives. Nudging people along is a terrific idea, we've got to
stop nagging. If nagging worked we'd all be skinny, we'd all be recycling and
we'd all be walking to work."
The Barnet pilot scheme is being funded by the Department of Communities
and Local Government, which wants to examine how well the academic theories
involved can be implemented in practice.
Similar ideas are also being employed at the national level.
If you fill out the "carbon calculator" on the government's
Action CO2 campaign site, you will see that at the end it compares your
carbon consumption to that of other households like yours.
Some of this is based on the work of the leading American social
psychologist, Professor Robert Cialdini.
He argues that the key role of peer pressure or "social proof" is
illustrated by a Californian experiment about trying to reduce household
energy consumption.
The participants were given information about how cutting consumption could
benefit the environment, and also about what other households were doing to
save energy.
The outcome?
"The messages we sent to them about what their neighbours were doing
were the only ones that made a difference," he says.
New jargon
But this also suggests that politicians who complain about how widespread
an undesirable behaviour is can inadvertently be encouraging it, because it
can help that behaviour become a social norm.
" I'm starting to hear local authorities...now talk about
'person-shaping' "
Matthew Taylor
This applies to everything from young people carrying knives to patients
who don't turn up for their medical appointments.
Thus Professor Cialdini believes that talk of an "obesity
epidemic" simply encourages more obesity.
"Instead of normalising the undesirable behaviour, you want to
marginalise it," he adds.
All this may mean that we have to learn a new item of political
terminology.
"I'm starting to hear local authorities that were quite recently using
the phrase 'place-shaping' as the jargon for what they did now talk about
'person-shaping'," says Matthew Taylor, a former Downing Street policy
aide to Tony Blair.
The term "person-shaping" probably won't appeal to politicians,
but it could increasingly describe what they are trying to do.
Persuading Us to be Good will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 at 20.00 on
Tuesday, 15 September, and again at 17.00 on Sunday, 20 September 2009.
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___________________________________ The Community
Psychology List has a new website/blog at:
http://www.communitypsychology.co.uk/ There is a threaded discussion forum:
http://www.communitypsychology.co.uk/cgi-bin/discus/discus.cgi There is a
twitter feed: http://twitter.com/CommPsychUK To post on the website blog,
forum or twitter feed, contact Grant or David at the email addresses below.
David Fryer ([log in to unmask]) or Grant Jeffrey
([log in to unmask]) To unsubscribe or to change your details on this
COMMUNITYPSYCHUK list, visit the website:
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=COMMUNITYPSYCHUK
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