The premise of the Kool-Aid Kondifidential is that we, as Americans, have high aspirations for democracy and our citizenly participation in it, but that we, as humans, have a hefty bag of foibles, weaknesses and irrationalities that get in the way of those aspirations. So, while we all think the media should be giving us more factual, relevant information about the issues that matter to us, we'd really rather watch a Friends rerun than the Newshour with Jim Lehrer at the end of a stressful day.
But just because we're weak, we don't need to be hopeless. Curing - our counter-acting - our weaknesses doesn't even have to be painful.
A new branch of social science - a mash-up of economics, policy analysis and psychology - is telling us that small tweaks and tricks can actually have us live up to our better selves.
Thaler and Sunstein's "Nudge" and Dan Ariely's "Predictably Irrational" are two popular proponents of the idea that we can nudge ourselves into doing the things we tell ourselves we want to do.
Ariely describes the predicament we all live with. I want to be more productive so I set work schedule that has me diligently working on certain tasks through the day. Half an hour into work I think "let me just check my email to see if anything important came in." After responding to a couple of non-urgent frivolous emails, I'm back to work, but another 45 minutes passes and I say to myself "let me just check to see how much a sink at Pottery Barn would cost." After checking Home Depot and Crate & Barrel's selection, it's back to work, but pretty soon I've got to check in on Facebook, for no reason other than because that's what I do a few times a day. The morning passes and, yes, some work has been achieved, but at least an hour got frittered away. Not a crime - but also not what I told myself what I would do when I got up this morning.
Why does this happen? Why do we set expectations and goals for ourselves (eat less, save more) that we can't seem to keep.
Behavioral economists or psychologists will tell us it's because our "cool" rational self, which looks our for our long-term interest, is no match for our "hot" emotional self which is an ever ready sucker for distraction, chocolate brownies and a fabulous pair of shoes. We can plan with the best of intentions, but when a momentary impulse arises, cool reason flies out the window.
The answer doesn't have to be "give up hope" and give in to whimsical abandon, however. While our immediate gratification selves are brawny, they can be outwitted by our cool planner's brains, which have a few ploys to pick from.
First off, there is knowing oneself; you can't fight your procrastinator side without knowing you have one.
Once your failing is identified, your rational you can plot incentives and disincentives ahead of time to keep you to your word. Disincentives work well since, according to behavioral economists, we are far more loss-averse than win-attracted (so losing $100 is far worse than not getting $100, even though the cost is the same). Knowing this, websites have popped up helping smokers, dieters and the like achieve their seemingly unattainable goals of quitting and losing weight. The sites work by giving quitters a way to penalize themselves if they don't follow their own rules. So, for example, if you don't lose five pounds in a month, like you told yourself you would, the site would automatically give $100 of your money to a cause that makes your skin crawl. (Presumably you'd have to recruit a friend to be there for the monthly weigh-ins in case you think you might lie to the website.) Supposedly those sites work, the idea being that we won't lay off the Doritos just because we told ourselves we would - but we will put down the bag of chips to avoid losing $100.
There is another, less whip-cracking, strategy. Quite simply, that's to make it simple and easy to do what we know is good for us. This is where the government can help out. So if I know I need to eat fewer trans-fats, but I also like to eat out at restaurants, it'll be easier for me to stick to my non-trans-fat goals if restaurants are required to list the trans-fat content of its dishes on their menus.
You get the idea.
The question the Kool-Aid Konfidential will eventually want to answer is: what "nudges" can we put in place to give our "cool" heads an edge over our "hot" impulses. The first step will be, again, to identify when the two diverge. The next step is to figure out how to - painlessly - outsmart our irrational selves.
One simple example comes to mind: voting. Most of us want to be good citizens and vote in our local and national elections, but sometimes when election day rolls around we find ourselves behind on that paper assignment or exhausted at the end of a long day at work and figure, aw heck, how much does my vote count anyway? The government could give us a little incentive/disincentive that would do wonders. They could offer us a deal - if we voluntary sign up, we can be in for $20 if we go to vote or, conversely, be out of $50 if we don't. The $20 - and our sense of civic duty - might just get a lot of us to sign up. But it will be the potential loss of $50 that'll get us to the polls that day, for sure.
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