POLITICS AND PERSUASIONthat people have to opt out rather than
opt in. Sunstein and Thaler’s ideas have
already had an impact in the UK, with
10 Downing Street recently establishing
a “Nudge Unit”, which receives advice
from Thaler. Moreover, early in 2010,
leaked emails from David Cameron’s
strategy director Steve Hilton found him
extolling the usefulness of psychology.
“Here are some great examples,” he
wrote to Conservative colleagues, “of
how harnessing the insights of behav-
ioural economics and social psychology
can help you achieve your policy goals in
a more effective and light-touch way...”
It’s not just a UK and US fad. In 2009,
the French set up a dedicated strategy
unit to advise the prime minister on the
implications of findings in psychology
and neuroscience.
Another important factor in persua-
sion research relates to social norms
- the overpowering tendency to follow
the crowd, to behave in a way that is thought of as “normal”. A good
example of this comes from the research of Robert Cialdini, Professor
of Psychology and Marketing at Arizona State University and author of
the hugely successful Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (1984). Cial-
dini investigated to what extent hotel guests place their towels straight
into the laundry after use or reuse them. The standard persuasion
tactic that a hotel uses is to leave a card imploring guests to consider
the environment and reuse towels as much as possible. Far more effec-
tive than this, as Cialdini’s research showed, is a message stating that
most guests reuse their towels at least once during their stay. This
social-norms message made Cialdini’s participants 26 times more
likely to reuse their towels than those guests subjected to the standard
environmental message.
According to a Time magazine article published in April 2009, Presi-
dent Obama’s team of psychologist advisors recommended exploiting
this very effect in the run-up to the 2008 presidential election. Their
advice was that by spreading the word that a record voter-turnout was
Richard H. Thaler, co-author of
Nudge and a government advisor.