{"id":434,"date":"2013-03-11T10:07:02","date_gmt":"2013-03-10T23:07:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.eclectic-consult.com\/mooseblog\/?p=434"},"modified":"2013-03-11T10:07:02","modified_gmt":"2013-03-10T23:07:02","slug":"why-the-nanny-state-doesnt-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eclectic-consult.com\/mooseblog\/2013\/03\/11\/why-the-nanny-state-doesnt-work\/","title":{"rendered":"Why the Nanny State doesn’t work…"},"content":{"rendered":"

You’d think, that with over a hundred years of scientific study of human behaviour, that we’d have learnt a few ways of manipulating human behaviour. And you’d be right (see last week’s blog<\/a>). So the great irony is that, although governments (or more correctly, government\u00a0departments\u00a0and agencies) often use psychological techniques for manipulating humans (e.g., disturbing riot control techniques like ‘kettling’), they don’t appear to have heard of this thing called ‘psychology’ when they attempt to change behaviour in other ways.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

In recent times (let’s say the last 25 years), we’ve seen a raft of government-led initiatives that (so it is claimed) have been initiated to change our behaviour. Some of these ‘initiatives’ include the use of hidden speed cameras, other CCTV\u00a0surveillance, increased ‘security’ screening at airports, and prohibitions (e.g., drugs, liquids on international flights). Often, these actions are paired with a fear campaign: drugs are bad,\u00a0surveillance\u00a0protects us from terrorists, etc.<\/p>\n

Now, before this\u00a0article\u00a0descends into a series of accusations,\u00a0conspiracy\u00a0theories, or other such nonsense, perhaps we should look at what governments are trying to do, and whether it is working?<\/p>\n

Effectively (or not – pun intended), laws or initiatives that exist to limit human behaviour are predicated on the idea that (i) the change is desirable (i.e., it is of use or value for society), and (ii) that fear or prohibition-based actions work. Typically, when a government puts these sort of limitations in effect, they are based on a version of the following argument: “people aren’t very bright, and we need to protect them from themselves. Item, group, idea, or substance ‘X’ is ‘bad’, so we should limit access to that item, group, idea, or substance, and punish people who try to obtain access”. This statement is usually backed up by something like “although we don’t have any real scientific data to back up our belief that item, group, idea or substance ‘X’ is, in fact, bad, we will impose this ‘initiative’ anyway, and the defend it vigorously, whilst refusing to admit that we might be wrong. If we do this for long enough, we’ll have tradition on our side”.<\/p>\n

Oops, did that sound a tad cynical?\u00a0Apologies, I’m not actually on libertarian rant.\u00a0From a psychological\u00a0perspective, this type of\u00a0behaviour\u00a0is deeply flawed, because it makes two dangerous (and incorrect) assumptions: first, that those in a position of authority are qualified to decide on questions of access and, second, that people respond effectively to being told what they can’t do and that punishment if a good way to reinforce behavioural change. If you’ve read my posts on arrogance (here<\/a>, here<\/a>, and here<\/a>) you’ll know that it’s probable that the arrogance (and hubris) of those in positions of power is guiding their assumption that ‘they know what’s best’. This, to a certain degree, is both understandable (based on what we know about humans and power) and expected, but to go against 100 years of research on effective ways to modify human behaviour and revert, effectively to the oldest form of coercion (violence), is what pisses me off. Punishing an individual for\u00a0circumventing\u00a0a state-proscribed ban, might as well be called what it is. Punishment is violence, and violence doesn’t work when it comes to changing people’s minds (at least not in the long-term; it can be very effective in the short-term if you don’t give a shit about the consequences, or\u00a0believe\u00a0your own brand of bullshit).<\/p>\n

Let’s use a few examples. Hidden speed cameras are touted (by the\u00a0governments\u00a0that make a lot of money from the generated fines) as excellent ways of reducing speeding. We have good evidence that speeding is a causal factor in fatal injuries on the road, so fining\u00a0people\u00a0when they go fast must be a good thing! Turns out that getting fine in the mail a month after you sped, doesn’t do much to reduce it. Even the knowledge that there might be speed cameras out there only makes people more vigilant for speed cameras. In places where speed cameras are obvious, people do slow down, but accidents actually increase, because people are focusing on their speedometers, not on the road ahead of them. And they speed up again as soon as the speed camera behind them. In other words, speed cameras do not stop people from speeding, they distract them temporarily from speeding.<\/p>\n

Here’s another one. Especially in the UK, many governments have installed large CCTV networks predicated on the idea that\u00a0surveillance\u00a0reduces crime. It doesn’t. Although people are less likely to be mugged underneath a CCTV camera, they’re just as likely to be mugged elsewhere. Well, how about universal\u00a0surveillance\u00a0I hear you ask? Turns out that all you get is bad video footage of crime, with no measurable increase in the crime solve rate. It’s easy to wear a cap or hoodie to hide your face or, in the case of more advanced technologies like gait\u00a0recognition, modify your gait! Worse, instead of making people feel safe, CCTV actually makes people feel afraid (if there’s surveillance, maybe I’m really at risk). London has one of the highest CCTV densities in\u00a0the\u00a0world, and yet they did nothing to reduce the 2011 London riots and might (although this is speculation) have even made it worse<\/a>.<\/p>\n

How about this one. Airport security – we all hate it, but tolerate it because we know it will keep us safe in the skies. Turns out it’s pretty much impossible to screen people properly (and keep an airport running) so, instead, the process is set up to give the illusion of safety. According to people who know a lot more about this than I do (see the work of Bruce Schneier<\/a>), the entire security apparatus is nothing more than theatre. But do anything for long enough and it self-justifies. It’s easy to use the argument that terrorism has dropped (or hasn’t increased) since the introduction of increased security at airports, but this doesn’t bear close scrutiny. In the meantime, the prohibition of taking your own water bottle on a plane (despite the absolute idiocy of this restriction) remains, and people ‘feel’ safe. As we know (or at least you will if you read this<\/a>), ‘feeling’ that something is ‘right’ is pretty much a guaranteed way of knowing that your primitive\u00a0brain\u00a0centres (the ones that deal with\u00a0your\u00a0safety) have been hacked.<\/p>\n

Best one for last? Drug prohibition! Everyone knows that drugs are bad; heroin,\u00a0ecstasy, marijuana are all evil right? I can’t even being to describe the hypocrisy in the ‘war on drugs’ – do a bit of research and you’ll realise it’s a combination of massive misinformation, specious reasoning, corruption, and prejudice. Because the desire to use drugs is about as old as our midbrain (with its reward\u00a0centres\u00a0that are activated by psychotropic chemicals), people have always (and will always) seek them out. Some of them are\u00a0legitimised\u00a0(alcohol,\u00a0nicotine, caffeine) and others demonised. But the prohibition and punishment associated with the ‘bad’ ones doesn’t stop people using them, it only increases the negative consequences associated with prohibition (e.g., increased violence), which are then used as reasons to extend the prohibition. When drug prohibition strategies are compared with more laws in more permissive countries (e.g., Australia versus Portugal), it turns out that violent crime, rates of addiction, and even usage reduce in those\u00a0countries\u00a0that decriminalise drug use. It’s not the drugs that are bad, it’s what people will do to one another when the value of the drug is increased by its rarity (based on the difficulty of obtaining it).<\/p>\n

Now, again, I’ve used hyperbole to make my point. As I’ve said, it’s not my intention to rant about things I don’t like. And my suggestion that\u00a0governments\u00a0don’t know what they’re doing when making laws is (although probably true a lot of the time) not by any means applicable all of the time. My problem is with\u00a0the\u00a0execution (again, pun intended) more than the flawed (read human) reasoning behind it. As I’ve said, people just don’t respond well in the long term to prohibition or punishment. They also really don’t like being told what they should do.<\/p>\n

Here’s the facts. If you want to change human behaviour, whether your reasons are justified or not, setting restrictions and punishing violations of those restrictions simply doesn’t work long term. Short term you will get a reduction in whatever you want to reduce (or an increase in whatever you want to increase), but as soon as the restrictions are lifted, behaviour returns to its set point. People won’t stop drinking if you pass laws to raise the price of alcohol. People won’t stop eating sugar and fat if you tax fast food. And people won’t stop hurting each other if you put cameras up everywhere. People adapt to the new status quo (oh, it costs more to smoke, but I like to smoke, so I’ll spend the money on cigarettes instead of food for my family), or get creative. Always have, always will. And it turns out that the victims of prohibition are always the most vulnerable (the lowest earners, the poorest educated, the marginalised, the mentally ill, etc.)… Sadly, most governments make a fundamental attribution error<\/a> in their understanding of behaviour.<\/p>\n

So is there an alterative? Of course there bloody well is! It’s called social psychology and it’s been around for at least 50 years. Here’s how to design a program that is likely to result in permanent behaviour change.<\/p>\n

1) Educate, educate, educate. Give people the tools to be able to make up their own minds without\u00a0resorting\u00a0to fear or misinformation. Don’t just use education\u00a0campaigns,\u00a0actually spend money on educating people from the ground up. And make sure that this is education, not brainwashing – believe it or not, a highly educated society is a highly stable society! If restriction is required, make sure that the requirement is based on real science, not opinion or anecdote, and then explain it\u00a0properly.<\/p>\n

2) Focus on permissive rather than restrictive laws. Instead of telling people what they can’t do, tell them what they can. For example, permissive drug laws accept that people will take drugs, but provide a framework around that knowledge. Thus, recreational drugs are regulated and sold at licensed facilities that guarantee a level of quality, and people are educated on the drugs, and receive information about their safe use. Although a black market will remain (and abuse will still occur), the majority will use the legitimate suppliers (so long as\u00a0the\u00a0price isn’t too high), drug-related crime reduces substantially, and governments even get to tax the goods!<\/p>\n

3) Use social-psychology principles to help regulate undesirable behaviour. For instance, people respond a lot better to reward than they do to punishment, especially social reward. In other words, reinforcing behaviours through peer reward is massively more influential than being told you’ve been naughty by the system. This does take time, because it’s important that the peer group be reinforcing the right things. Here’s a good example –\u00a0instead of telling people that speeding is bad, and then taking pictures of them and sending out fines when they do, educate them about the consequences of speeding, and then encourage their peer group to self-regulate. The picture gets sent to everyone in their social network, who then provide feedback.<\/p>\n

I know what you’re thinking – a 25 year old male would speed, and get his picture\u00a0sent\u00a0to his mates, who would then provide highly positive feedback on his speeding. Yes, this would probably happen (now), because restrictive laws encourage law breaking, which is exciting and therefore desirable. It’s going to take a while to get here.<\/p>\n

Am I being na\u00efve? I do realise that humans are greedy, nasty and violent – but I’ve been writing for six months now about how humans can recognise and change that aspect of themselves. Maybe its time that governments stopped using the strategies they’ve been using for the last 3000 years and, instead, try something new. We’re connected in a way that we’ve never seen before in human history. Instead of using that\u00a0connection\u00a0to encourage more fear and restriction, how about using the science of human interaction and\u00a0behaviour\u00a0(it’s called psychology) to encourage something different? Turn off the nanny state and turn on society 2.0.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You’d think, that with over a hundred years of scientific study of human behaviour, that we’d have learnt a few ways of manipulating human behaviour. And you’d be right (see last week’s blog). So the great irony is that, although governments (or more correctly, government\u00a0departments\u00a0and Read More …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":455,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"The Eclectic Moose has a new blog post! Why the Nanny State doesn't work... (http:\/\/wp.me\/p2ys79-70)","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1,137,4],"tags":[72,171,163,168,169,170,167],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.eclectic-consult.com\/mooseblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/Surveilance-cam.jpg?fit=600%2C428&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":450,"url":"https:\/\/www.eclectic-consult.com\/mooseblog\/2013\/03\/04\/the-dark-side-of-psychology-manipulation-mind-control-and-priming\/","url_meta":{"origin":434,"position":0},"title":"The dark side of psychology: Manipulation, mind control, and priming…","date":"04\/03\/2013","format":false,"excerpt":"In my posts so far, I've spent the majority of my time talking about the ways in which psychology can benefit us. Mostly, I've focused on mindfulness, and understanding the\u00a0psychoevolutionary basis for human behaviour so that we can choose our actions. As a part of this, I've pointed out how\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.eclectic-consult.com\/mooseblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/Darth-Vader.png?fit=842%2C575&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":255,"url":"https:\/\/www.eclectic-consult.com\/mooseblog\/2012\/11\/05\/how-feedback-loops-regulate-human-behaviour\/","url_meta":{"origin":434,"position":1},"title":"How ‘feedback loops’ regulate human behaviour","date":"05\/11\/2012","format":false,"excerpt":"This week, I'm typing in pain. A little mountain biking crash on the weekend has left me with some very bruised ribs. The last few days of responding to my pain has got me thinking about something that I've been thinking about for some time, and that I'd like to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.eclectic-consult.com\/mooseblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/Reward-300x214.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":901,"url":"https:\/\/www.eclectic-consult.com\/mooseblog\/2015\/06\/08\/the-prisoners-dilemma-and-compassion\/","url_meta":{"origin":434,"position":2},"title":"The Prisoner’s Dilemma and Compassion…","date":"08\/06\/2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Imagine the following scenario: two prisoners are held in solitary confinement and have no way of communicating with one another. Each is told, individually, that there are three options: (1) if you betray the other prisoner, you will go free and he will be imprisoned for three years; unless (2)\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Business"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":240,"url":"https:\/\/www.eclectic-consult.com\/mooseblog\/2012\/10\/15\/is-elite-athlete-arrogance-a-performance-hack-part-2-when-arrogance-becomes-hubris\/","url_meta":{"origin":434,"position":3},"title":"Is elite athlete “arrogance” a performance hack? Part 2 (When arrogance becomes hubris)","date":"15\/10\/2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Last week I wrote about elite athlete \"arrogance\"\u00a0with the suggestion that it's actually a learned performance hack to help athletes trust \"expert systems\" under pressure. The more I thought about this though, the more I realised that it's not just used by athletes, and that there are lots of reasons\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Business"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.eclectic-consult.com\/mooseblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/Dictator-300x218.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":352,"url":"https:\/\/www.eclectic-consult.com\/mooseblog\/2012\/12\/31\/resolving-to-change-values-action-balls\/","url_meta":{"origin":434,"position":4},"title":"Resolving to change: Values, action, balls…","date":"31\/12\/2012","format":false,"excerpt":"It's New Year's Eve - no doubt many of you will be thinking about making New Year's resolutions and, like every year, they won't make a lick of difference. This week, I thought I'd change tack and go with a practical 'how to' for making lasting change. The concept of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.eclectic-consult.com\/mooseblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/New-Years-noisemakers.jpg?fit=600%2C428&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":726,"url":"https:\/\/www.eclectic-consult.com\/mooseblog\/2014\/01\/06\/your-minds-been-hacked-now-what\/","url_meta":{"origin":434,"position":5},"title":"Your mind’s been hacked: Now what?","date":"06\/01\/2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Happy New Year to everyone. Apologies for the radio silence over the Xmas break. I took a well needed \u00a0rest - fortnightly blogs will continue from today onwards. I've written a fair bit in the past about the idea that humans are hackable based on their cognitive vulnerabilities, mostly the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.eclectic-consult.com\/mooseblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/Mindhack1-e1387937488171.jpg?fit=350%2C216&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2ys79-70","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eclectic-consult.com\/mooseblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eclectic-consult.com\/mooseblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eclectic-consult.com\/mooseblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eclectic-consult.com\/mooseblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eclectic-consult.com\/mooseblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=434"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.eclectic-consult.com\/mooseblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":457,"href":"https:\/\/www.eclectic-consult.com\/mooseblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434\/revisions\/457"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eclectic-consult.com\/mooseblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eclectic-consult.com\/mooseblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eclectic-consult.com\/mooseblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eclectic-consult.com\/mooseblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}