Potato Propaganda
“There is nothing new under the sun”, said a depressed Solomon. That’s certainly true of government using psychology to influence their people, notwithstanding the excitement among policy makers around behavioural economics. An example is the good story about Frederick the Great’s attempts to introduce the potato into Prussia in the 18th century, or the shift in public health during the 50s and 60s from “a culture of secrecy to a culture of communication”.
The other example that not too many people mention is propaganda. I’m not yet quite sure where government interest in behaviour change policy stops and propaganda begins. This is a question that arises in an article by Conrad Bird for the Foreign Office, when applying lessons from domestic policy to public diplomacy. He says:
Strategic communication has a key role to play in securing behaviour change. Although the examples used above are from the UK domestic policy context, the principles that underlie strategic communication can be applied universally. Where there are people, there is insight to be generated – all the more so if we are working with peoples of differing cultures, ethnicities and religions. And we will always need to work out how to segment our audiences so that we can craft and tailor compelling propositions.
One review of Bird’s article picks up on the theme that the public diplomacy that Bird speaks of is really propaganda (apparently an old argument to diplomatic types) under a new name and is skeptical about how appropriate a strategy it is:
“If all this [behaviour change / strategic communication] is public diplomacy or is, at least, on the minds of some of those practicing it, then I would not like to be one of their targets”
The FCO response to the review is worth a look – and among the points it makes is that one distinction between behaviour change (or public diplomacy in this case) and propaganda is that the latter is one way and doesn’t seek a dialogue with its target. But I’m not yet convinced that this distinction is upper-most in the minds of policy makers keen to experiment with the new knowledge of behavioural economics.
Where do you think “behaviour change” stops and propaganda begins?
On a related note, one piece of public health advice that looks uncannily like propaganda tried to put a face on AIDS – and ended up using an image of a mass-murderer. The campaign has attracted a lot of criticism, and the linked image is quite strong [link].
UK Personal Debt: From Misery to Happiness
Mr Micawber delivers some valedictory remarks - courtesy of http://charlesdickenspage.com/
A week ago, the Bank of England reported that personal debt fell during July for the first time since records began (1993): people paid back more than they borrowed. Without picking sides in the debate running through the comments on Stephanie Flanders’ blog post on the subject, being able to live with less debt generally seems like a Good Thing to an economic muggins like me. As Mr Micawber said…
“Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.”
…et cetera, et cetra. Spending and money management is a behaviour I haven’t thought too deeply about, but there are a few interesting instances of design that encourage particular money-related behaviours that immediately spring to mind.
A while ago when working on a university project on Personal Carbon Trading (a parallel currency of carbon credits often described as another card that people would carry in their wallets) I wondered whether incorporating a display that indicated how many credits remained on the card would be a good idea. Something like e-paper could work well; it’s flat and consumes little power. Leaving aside the privacy issues and risks associated with displaying account balances on cards for everyone to see, a display on the card would give people some feedback (or self-monitoring) on their balance and could help them manage their account more effectively. Perhaps it could even take the idea of being in the red or the black literally and change colour according to the balance of your account.
Adding feedback to cards isn’t a new idea. You probably remember BT’s earlier phonecards, which had a strip which was marked each time the card was used. Here’s one (it just happens to be prisons issue phonecard) that looks from the marks like it’s been half-used:
Phonecard by Flickr user everydaylifemodern
Another interesting example of design for behaviour change to help money management is given by Dan Lockton in his Design with Intent toolkit. Yahoo’s loan simulator provides people with the ability to project their loan repayments into the future (it doesn’t seem to work on Internet Explorer 6 by the way):
Yahoo's loan simulator
It’s a helpful utility I think, but does it give the simulation in the right place? Maybe a loan simulator on a mobile phone be a better influence when you’re out spending money? Would it be better if you could plot other big expenses you’re expecting in the next few years?
Do you know of any other good examples of design, behaviour, and money management out there?
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