What the Independent seems not to have done is to follow the news. Today it has a feature on No 10 using behavioural economic theory, and specifically the ideas of Professor Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein who wrote a book called “Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness”. The Indy suggests that the ideas were popular in Conservative circles in 2008, dropped from sight and then are now gaining ground. Hmmn, I wonder what could have happened between 2008 and now to take their eyes off this one?If the Indy had listened to the excellent “Persuading us to be good”, presented by Times leader writer and Tory adviser Daniel Finkelstein, broadcast in September 2009 (here but sadly no longer available on listen again), they would know that far from eschewing these ideas, the Tories and large chunks of the public sector have been busily applying them for years. In fact, the NHS set up a social marketing unit in 2006 , the University of Stirling and Open University have a social marketing institute and the BBC documentary was full of examples of local authorities using them. But, the Indy really should have listened to the bit in the documentary where Mathew Taylor New Labour insider and RSA chief, points out how ideas like these develop in the body politic. What he said was that first, there is lots of excited and exaggerated claims, then a period of quiet in which, sober minds examine the ideas for content followed by their incorporation into the mainstream – diffusion of innovation in other words.Incidentally, the other author mentioned by the BBC documentary was Bob Cialdini, who wrote “Influence” in which he suggests, among other things, that we are attracted to propositions if we think that others are attracted to them, that we are missing something by not being involved and when we think that there is some scarcity involved. Hence the title of this posting was crafted to influence you to read it, so it must have worked eh?
