Word: campaigners
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...bold assumption: rational decisions by self-interested individuals create efficient markets. Behavioral economics challenged this assumption, and the financial meltdown has just about shattered it; even former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan confessed his Chicago School worldview has been shaken. "We couldn't have planned a better marketing campaign for behavioral economics," MIT's Ariely quips. (See the best business deals...
...most powerful motivator for hotel guests to reuse towels, national-park visitors to stay on marked trails and citizens to vote is the suggestion that everyone is doing it. "People want to do what they think others will do," says Cialdini, author of the best seller Influence. "The Obama campaign really got that." (See pictures of Obama taken by everyday Americans...
...study, Alan Gerber of Yale got Michigan voters to increase their turnout an amazing 8.6% with a single peer-pressure mailer that listed the previous voting records of their neighbors and noted that a follow-up would be sent indicating who voted this time. (The Obama campaign actually priced out a similar mailer but decided not to risk a backlash.) And shame works; even some AIG executives gave up bonuses. Cialdini says brain imaging shows that when we think we're out of step with our peers, the part of our brain that registers pain shifts into overdrive...
...assume the default is the accepted thing to do. Obama's push to weatherize millions of homes - another stimulus bonanza - will require new norms. In Oregon, a countywide program to upgrade windows and insulation at almost no cost to homeowners got a tepid response. But after an intense mobilization campaign - through citizen councils, churches and Girl Scouts who went door-to-door asking residents why they hadn't weatherized yet - 85% of the county enrolled. "What worked was creating a sense that we're all in this together and you're a social deviant if you don't join...
Michelle Obama warned us during the campaign, "[Barack] is going to demand that you shed your cynicism, that you put down your divisions, that you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones, that you push yourselves to be better." The President reinforced this in his Inaugural Address when he urged Americans to set aside childish things and choose hope over fear. (See pictures of how Obama prepared his Inauguration speech...