Ifit wasn’t so serious, you’d howl laughing. Many did. Never one to miss a situation that reflects communications practices, a chuckle here and there was quite the moment.
A simple alteration of a urinal would be saving money on cleaners. I was in Stuttgart Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany getting ready for a talk and could I ever see a more obvious example of Nudge theory at work?
Nudge emerged more publicly as a theory in the 2008 book, ‘Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness’ by Prof Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein.
Its authors uncovered how subtle changes to an environment could force people to do things the architects desired, but the actors still believed they were exercising choice.
Rather than telling people what not to do, a psychological route was presented that tapped into the fragility of human thinking. You likely saw it, or were influenced by it during the UK government’s Covid presentations with their use of different colour schemes for warnings. It’s not radically new. Depth manipulators and advertisers cottoned onto persuasion en mass post WWII.
For instance, toothpaste used to be marketed as killing germs, but psychologists uncovered users were actually concerned with having a clean taste in their mouth. The architectural change here would be words, colour and shape.
Edward Bernays, the father of PR, or should that be propaganda (his words) considered people to be utterly irrational and easily persuaded.
Nudge theory and deadcatting- just two of many psycho tools have been at work within public figures, politicians and government benches, more so now than any time I covered politics as a working journalist.
Sound reasonable to people, don’t get upset, pepper your response with part truths, and introduce fallacious facts, which with a moderate face you and allies keep repeating. You gradually nudge people over. The long term goal of this is the Peak end rule. Gradually by turning people to your line of thinking, irrespective of failings, people tend to remember the last impact they were left with.
Trouble with all of this, is whilst it’s evident to those in PR and spin, it’s rarely taught in journalism practices. That is the people we entrust to decode complex issues are themselves unaware. In previous years maybe there was a reason, but when it feels like active measures today you have to think why?
But what if you could be alerted in real time by AI to these persuasive techniques? What if whilst a seemingly innocuous conversation was happening, you could be privy to an index of nudge et al? It’s something that’s been on my mind for a while and with an expert acquaintance there appears to be a way. But would people use it? Would they care?
