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...Nudge Factor We all know Obama won the election because he looked like change, sounded like change and never stopped campaigning for change. But he didn't call for just change in Washington - or even just change in America. From his declarations that "change comes from the bottom up" to his admonitions about "an era of profound irresponsibility," Obama called for change in Americans. And not just in bankers or insurers - in all of us. His Zen koan, "We are the change we've been waiting for," may sound like New Age gibberish, but it's at the core...
...kids. We elected a President, not a life coach, and we might not like elected officials' challenging our right to be couch potatoes. Obama's aides seem to favor nudges that preserve free choice over heavy-handed regulation, an approach Thaler and Sunstein, the co-authors of Nudge, call "libertarian paternalism." But it's still paternalism, and Sunstein will have the power to put it into action. The idea of public officials, even well-meaning ones, trying to engineer our private behavior to produce change can seem a bit creepy...
Everybody's Doing It! Which message would persuade homeowners to save electricity: a call to their environmental conscience, or an appeal to their wallet? Cialdini tested those approaches in a San Diego experiment, and the answer was neither. What worked was an appeal to conformity. Residents used less power when they were told their neighbors were using less power. We're a herdlike species, more likely to be obese if our peers...
...area where Bloomberg's green vision has clashed with political realities is mass transit. The subway system is controlled not by the city but by New York State's Metropolitan Transportation Authority. So while PlaNYC includes a call for the subways to be brought up to a state of good repair (a visit to any subway station will indicate they're not there yet), the city doesn't have the power to enforce it. Similarly, the plan pushes new projects like the long-awaited Second Avenue subway line on Manhattan's far East Side. Those multibillion-dollar improvements were...
Fast-forward to 2008, and Barack Obama has transformed the political landscape. His call to unite the nation not only attracted the young, but it also hooked some members of the most improbable constituency—the Republican Party. But, while Obama brought fewer prejudices to the presidency than his predecessor, did he also succeed in breaking down our biases and clinging to comfort...