Proof of your hypothesis can be found by looking no further than Ann Coulter.  She’s built a career out of it.

Have Arnold be publically in favor of nuclear power and then have Greenpeace whine about it. By supporting nuclear power, you’re still kicking the hippies! (Just don’t mention Stewart Brand.)

I think that if an authority figure started to promote conservation, there’s likely two reactions from at least the asshole conservatives—-they’ll either reject the authority figure for having gone “soft” or they’ll think that he’s just saying something to placate some imaginary liberal authorities, but he doesn’t really believe it.

yup. When Karl Rove did the “please fill out the census form” PSA’s, Michelle Malkin wrote a rant about how the leftists are using him as a ploy to… do something, I don’t remember. However, “leftist plot” and “Karl Rove” can only go together in a mind as spitefully delusional as hers.

You know, I’m starting to think that the wingnuts obsession with “kicking the hippies” has gone so far overboard that President Obama could have nominated Robert Bork himself to the Supreme Court last week, and the teabaggers would have still raised objections to the choice, simply because it was a decision made by that black man who is illegitimately living in “their” White House.

They don’t even have much of a concrete platform at this point, it’s basically come down to “Whatever Obama, the Democrats, and liberals want is bad, and we must always support the opposite position!”

Perhaps this could be used for good… maybe if we can get Obama, Congress, and progressive activists to push for the most shockingly conservative policies imaginable, it will push the baggers to demand that they do the opposite, and Obama cn then “cave” to their demands, and can say, “You guys were right, I was wrong.  I think we definitely should implement a Medicare For All program as you suggest.  Thanks for showing me the light”.  Sort of a reverse psychology.

The wierd thing is, I’m beginning to notice a lot of similarities between these fools and the PUMAs of 2008 in terms of their willingness to cut off their own noses to spite their faces.  And before anyone takes offense to the term “PUMAs”, I am not referring to Hillary Clinton supporters in general.  I’m talking about the very myopic tiny group of self-proclaimed liberal Clinton supporters whose emotionally-driven resentment over the primaries pushed them to argue the completely illogical postion that a McCain-Palin electoral victory would have actually been preferable to an Obama-Biden victory.

I have to say that I’m a defier - not that I disagree with the psychology involved, I just sense manipulation and my hackles go up like a frilled lizard.  Believe it or not, some of this comes from the way that evanglicals have tried to suck people into their authoritarian folds - it makes my bullshit detectors ring off scale.

“This is a sticky situation, because the only thing I can think would work at all on some conservatives would be to have someone they look up to talk up conservation.

How about changing it from “consumption” to “money spent”.  As in, you spent 10% more on your energy than your neighbors with similar sized houses did, sucker.

This reminds me of one of my friends that almost everytime we go Mountain biking he cuts across a trail that has been closed for revegitation, and sure enough he voted for McCain and calls himself a conservative.

Have Arnold be publically in favor of nuclear power and then have Greenpeace whine about it.

Problem is, most of the baggers can’t stand Arnold Schwarzenegger - he has become the archetype RINO among the wingnuts.

Hell, John McCain has dropped all pretense of being “mavericky” and gone full blown wingnut, and a large chunk of the wingnut base is still trying to toss him out on his ass and replace him with bonafide birther J.D. Hayworth, because they don’t feel that John McCain passes their ideological purity test.

At their current trajectory, they are probably going to believe that Strom Thurmond was a liberal pansy wuss in about ten years.

While kicking hippies is, I’m sure, somewhat satisfying, I’ve heard that punching hippies is even better.

I guess the problem I have is there really haven’t been any hippies around since the end of the Vietnam War.  The few who were left after 1975 were scared off by the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, whose mere presence — with awesome and inspirational Conservatism oozing from his every pore — was like kryptonite to hippies.

Can’t kick them or punch them if there aren’t any around.  And kicking or punching StrawHippies just isn’t the same…

Yeah, I know your type - your kneejerk response to the sensation of being manipulated, of course, is immediately do the reverse of what you think you’re being manipulated to do, which is why its so easy to manipulate people like you.

This is amusingly recursive.  Do you really think bullshit detectors work on such a simple model?

Hmm.  How about instead of a gentle “nudge” in the form of a frowny hippie-face, we just charge people a super-high rate for the excess energy they waste!  And people who use less pay super-low rates!  Seriously, if you’re willing to waste energy just to piss off liberals, then your rates aren’t high enough.

combine the two:  show that the avg usage for X size house.  People who use >3% less energy (parse that slowly) get a lower rate.  People who use >3% more are penalized.  B/c what do they care?  They’re wasting energy anyway.  Might as well burn money to piss off the hippies.

Allow an appeal process for people who have hospital beds and such in their houses to care for ailing/diabled residents, and it’s all good.

Wasters can waste as much as they can afford to, with the savings used to make up the losses to the conservationists.  there’s a nudge that works.

(sorry, shift key is not working well)

“Do you really think bullshit detectors work on such a simple model?”

Clearly, he does.  I have defier tendencies, too—for pretty much the same reasons Ms Kate cites—but it’s easier to take a deep breath and deal with one’s inner douchebag once the tendency is recognized and the goal of the nudge is worked through.  Not that it’s effortless, but it’s not like we’re doomed to keep repeating the same stimulus-response pattern of assholery in perpetuity.

I don’t think it is just hippies that they despise, I think they want to kick everyone. They’re just ultra-selfish, lazy assholes, who have the attitude: “If I think it I should be able to do it,” regardless of the consequences. What a chaotic world it would be if they were in charge. Oh wait….

Behavioral economics is for conservatives who don’t want to self-identify as such.  It’s just a way for elites to perpetuate Reagonomics while avoiding making the institutional changes necessary for real economic reform.

Preserving upward wealth redistribution plus patting yourself on the back for having liberal sentiments = a ghastly combination.

Nice try, Chet.  Nice try. 

Resisting manipulation does not necessarily mean being manipulated or manipulable.  I know people who are as you describe, but to say that ALL people who resist manipulation fit into your frame is to buy into a logical fallacy.  It is possible to say “no, I’m not buying it” to both sides of that ploy. Notice that I’m here and not a Malkinite.

Game theory is pretty important in understanding how this works.  Especially integrated with sociology and psychology.  For example, as some of you know I’ve read a book by Bowles et all, Moral Sentiments and Material Interests.  This selection of essays are directly intended for policymakers, and, um, in general, are only what most manipulators know and understand but reformulated for baby technocrats who’ll grow up to be masters of the (beaurocratic) universe.  A couple of essays are outstanding and reflects genuine work, though.  However, in general, the vast majority of the research behind “nudges” is mostly about technocrats exerting more sophisticated efforts at control.  They are almost *always* focused on top-down “nudges” and very little in the way lateral nudges, with the notable exception of folks like James Scott, Elinor Ostrom, or Jane Jacobs.

So, along with Ms Kate, I’d just kick, though I’d stop and think long enough to figure out where the family jewels were and kick *there*.

The thing I don’t get is how conservatives as presently constituted are reflexively against all kinds of “greater good” type things, and also against simple human kindness, like empathy.

I know they are miserable creatures, but do they really have to work so hard at it?

Oh, then that must be why I’ve never been bilked or schemed or taken in. Yes.

Sorry, not working Chet.  You are trying to create dichotomous frames here and, well, that doesn’t model the entire complex world.  I can see why a bench scientist might think the world is that simple, but it ain’t.

I don’t think that I can’t be manipulated, I just have a very good track record of NOT being conned or bilked or played.  From the time that I could read I have always questioned any religious teaching that I’ve been “provided” on fairly logical grounds, and I know that I’m not the only person who has tuned their bullshit detectors in sunday school.  I would bet that most people who claim to be atheist or agnostic would also fall into the category of being less prone to manipulation than those who are strongly affiliated with a particular faith.

Where do you live where there’s more than one “supplier of power” available to you? I’ve never even heard of a place where the utilities don’t have monopolies.

I can’t speak for MsKate, but here in Ohio, we can choose from a whole list of power suppliers.

Ditto for natural gas.

Oh, and Chet? So tired of that “but I didn’t say that - well not REALLY that - well not MEANING that” game.  Very tiresome.

But maggie, Chet doesn’t live there so it can’t and doesn’t happen. QED.

“Where do you live where there’s more than one “supplier of power” available to you? I’ve never even heard of a place where the utilities don’t have monopolies.”

If I’m remembering correctly, Georgia has something like a dozen with the regulation being minimal and the state demanding their pound of flesh being that they all have to take their turn supplying power to people with terrible credit while not demanding an exorbitant fee in the way of a deposit.

your kneejerk response to the sensation of being manipulated, of course, is immediately do the reverse of what you think you’re being manipulated to do, which is why its so easy to manipulate people like you.

That’s actually really true of a lot of wingnuts, and yes, they’re super easy to manipulate.  All you do is create a narrative of big bad liberals out to get them, and this prompts their mindless defiance, and voila!  You can start cashing your checks, since they’ll buy whatever you’re selling.

One form of nudging that probably works well on knee-jerk conservative defiers is something else Thaler/Sunstein talk about, which is creating the illusion of status.  I saw a video where Thaler spoke about this in terms of how the potato was introduced to Germany—-the king found the most effective strategy was planting potatoes, calling them the food of the wealthy, and having guards watch over them….and pretend not to notice when they were stolen.

it definitely WOULD be to look for a new supplier of power.

I don’t understand why a program designed to gently but effectively reduce power consumption would be so offensive.  It’s really no different than those signs that tell you how fast you’re going, or replacing stop signs with roundabouts.

I don’t think that I can’t be manipulated, I just have a very good track record of NOT being conned or bilked or played. 

But I don’t get what you’d think the “con” is with a feedback system that tells you what your energy consumption is.  The kneejerk response is obscuring the fact that no one is trying to get one over on you or hurt you in any way.

Amanda, the concern comes in with any button-pushing or cutesy attempt at behavior modification. This shit quite frankly reeks of Vacation Bible School attempts to use stickers and stars to reinforce swallowing of dogma. Of course, when it comes to conservation, I’d get over the happy gold sticker campaign, annoying though it may be.  Then again, I’d never get the frowny face because my family uses 1/3 the energy of a typical 4 person household in my state and I already know that.

The problem is that a lot of “nudge” behavior is the very same stuff that is used to sell stuff and manipulate other sorts of behavior, particularly if you grew up in a rough place.  It gets my antennae up, even if the motives are good.

But not all those who resist or react to such manipulations will behave like wingnuts do and act out against the message for spite - just as not all those who reject religious nudges become classic gambling, drinking, whoring backsliders.

Once I chastised some old fucker for washing his car while leaving the water running out of his un-nozzled hose.  His retort was “I paid for it!!!”  Yeah, thanks asshole, THAT’s going to make it rain.

My theory is that, like Chet, they just find thinking too painful.

Every Earth Day I read multiple conservative bloggers who are like “I will intentionally waste more energy to spite environmentalists.”  As long as this assholish attitude exists, personal conservation will never solve the problems we face.  We need tough government regulation and a sincere effort to go with alternative energy.

Amanda, the concern comes in with any button-pushing or cutesy attempt at behavior modification.

Except that there’s no con involved. It’s like how Priuses have the indicator showing what your current mpg is: having that indicator makes you more aware of what your consumption rate is, and obviously you will want to lower that rate rather than purposely raise it. In the extreme case, the driver will develop a competitive streak to keep his overall mpg as high as he possibly can.

All you do is create a narrative of big bad liberals out to get them, and this prompts their mindless defiance, and voila!  You can start cashing your checks, since they’ll buy whatever you’re selling.

Instead of the happy/frowny face, I’ve also heard of simply giving people a measurement of instantaneous power usage. Just show people how many Kwh they’re using, and they start to use less energy. Just call the unit you need to install, “the device that the government bureaucrats don’t want you to know about!,” and the right wingers will beat a path to your door to buy it.

In the extreme case, the driver will develop a competitive streak to keep his overall mpg as high as he possibly can.

I dunno that I’d call it extreme.  It seems to be pretty common in Prius owners of my acquaintance - including my husband.  He drives an average of 700 miles a week for his job, and it just makes him cheerful to see an MPG of 50 or more.

I will also freely admit to being incredibly cheerful about our gas consumption.  We just put 1756 miles on the thing over the course of a 9 day vacation, and our total gas expenditure was $101.

“Except that there’s no con involved.”

I don’t think Ms Kate ever alleged that there was a con.  Just that nudge-type social engineering efforts can raise red flags for people not inherently averse to their goals as well as for people who are averse to their goals and people who are just jerks.

Tyro, the reason to avoid simply giving people a number is that the happy/frowny face attaches and provokes emotion.  They did experiments with those street signs that tell you your speed and compared them to ones that simply did the happy/frowny face depending on if you were speeding or not, and found that the face worked better.  I don’t think it’s some horrible manipulation—-again, I don’t think people are stupid—-it’s just that most people don’t take the time to really process dry information.  All statistics require interpretation, and what the happy/frowny face does is provide that interpretation.  While I can see how this offends some people, I think the basic truth is most of us rely on others to interpret most information we get for us.  It’s a division of labor issue.  For instance, I’d say most of us read the news and blogs instead of trying to do the work of journalism ourselves; we place our trust in people who do do that work depending on a number of factors.  But trying to do everything for yourself is too time-consuming. 

Really, it goes back to the path of least resistance aspect.

Maybe, preying, but I’ll bet the vast majority of people don’t really get their hackles raised by a simple smiley face cue unless they’re really, really paranoid.  It probably doesn’t even get noticed on a conscious level, or it probably would reduce consumption even more.

I can see why a bench scientist might think the world is that simple

Ms. Kate! Friendly fire! ;p

As for the smiley/frowny face thing I’d probably find it slightly patronizing (a state-wide “consumption” bar graph with an arrow pointing to my amount or something would be fine, thanks) but I certainly wouldn’t bother to be offended by it or anything. Just like I’m not offended by waitstaff being polite or people prefacing requests with “please”—sure, they are emotionally “manipulating” you to try and influence your behavior, and they do stand to benefit from it, but it’s all a net good so why worry?

I’m stubborn but I try not to kneejerk. It’s best to sort of shrug about things like manners and public policies, think about them in your own time, and then come to a decision after the emotional reaction has faded a bit.

I mean, I get what you’re saying, Ms Kate and preying.  I just think this is innocuous enough to fly under the radar.  But I do think that smart people often do fall directly into mental traps because they’re so good at rationalizing and overthinking stuff.  I was just saying to a friend not too long ago that I think smart people often have more trouble breaking bad habits or working through therapy because they tend to be two steps ahead of where the therapy/program is going and therefore set themselves up to resist it.  A lot of doing well in therapy or in breaking a bad habit is letting go of feeling like you’re the smartest person in the room and just going through the steps instead of trying to cheat the system. 

But I also think Chet’s right—-this often makes smart people easier to manipulate.  All you have to do is manipulate them into working to get to the conclusion you want them to get to.  Being female and kind of smart, I realized at a young age that very few people would take me seriously if I presented myself honestly.  And so I got really good at manipulating sexist, smart men by exploiting their overblown opinions of themselves.  Letting them think they figured out the conclusion you wanted them to draw turned out to be easier than you’d think.  Luckily, I’ve dropped that habit, but in my youth, it was something of a survival skill.  It does make you a better writer, though—-you learn a lot about the flow of rhetoric.

Like, you know who is really good at manipulating smart people?  Ross Douthat.  He runs the same con on liberal dudes that I figured out at a young age (though again, I’m a conscientious objector who doesn’t do this anymore).  It’s super simple—-flatter their sensibilities and their ego.  Tell them they’re right.  Play the ingenue who is simply asking questions of your superiors.  Pay attention to who they respect, and pretend to have discovered that person through them, but always make it clear that you understand less than they do.  If you play the game just right, smart people will eat out of your hand, because their very sense of their own intelligence blinds them.

Actually, I think much of this goes on already, and it’s not very innocuous.  Especially if it’s parsed as a cue fors some norms and a refusal to cooperate means that not drinking the kool-aid makes you uncool.

People are fascinated with power, and there are many people who make mucho dinero through selling pathways to power, from 48 Laws of Power (which is vastly more useful to identify power-mongers than to follow, since most of those laws presume you have the social status to use them) to the latest dietary or dating guide.

Also, every scam is dependent on the victim misidentifying who the mark is.  Hierarchal people, or people tripping on psychotropic memes like racism, or any number of other people concerned with positioning/positional good etc, etc, etc are very vulnerable to cons.  For instance, many of Bernard Madoff’s victims fell for either the affinity aspect (Madoff is a Jewish person like me) or fell for the idea that Madoff’s connections meant that he could do insider trading for their benefit with impunity.

Now, nudges in the pure context are something different from a scam.  The classic example is that of a dictator putting up huge statues/posters/murals with their faces looking out into some public area that people travel so as to make for a constant low-grade feeling of being watched (in the back of the subconscious).  Most nudges, though, are in the context of scamming, and do not involve flattering people (that’s for another part of a scam).  Nudges like opt in or opt out at specially selected stages.  Mirrored glasses and windows, basically the kind of things a magician would use—to misdirect attention and provide (bad) reasons for that misdirection.  It’s not innocuous, and is very rarely used in innocuous fashion outside of visual entertainment—The Mona Lisa, for example, nudges.

In addition to those who would see this nudging as a form of insidious manipulation, there is much more to the appeal of “kicking a hippie”.

There is also an element of the need to have the freedom/right to break perceived “society rules” and to be a 100% Grade A++ asshole and to stick it to those who “constrain” them to behave and act as civil decent human beings.  In fact, that seemed to have been one of the appeals for many US males to leave the “East” and “go West” during the 19th and early 20th century…..the desire to live life away from “civilization” with their perception of its constraining laws, social rules, and social restraints in the forms of comparatively everpresent social institutions, neighbors, and law enforcement. 

In a sense, the stereotypical hippie is seen in a similar resentful light that some westerner men felt towards the influx of middle/upper-class women who observed Victorian morality and missionaries who brought the social restraints/institutions with them such as churches and activist movements such as the temperance movement which eventually led to the failed prohibition policies of the 1920’s and early 30s.  Like the abovementioned women and missionaries, hippies are often seen as moralistic humorless partypoopers who always shut down what was once a great seemingly neverending party.

Like, you know who is really good at manipulating smart people?  Ross Douthat.  He runs the same con on liberal dudes that I figured out at a young age (though again, I’m a conscientious objector who doesn’t do this anymore).  It’s super simple—-flatter their sensibilities and their ego.  Tell them they’re right.  Play the ingenue who is simply asking questions of your superiors.  Pay attention to who they respect, and pretend to have discovered that person through them, but always make it clear that you understand less than they do.  If you play the game just right, smart people will eat out of your hand, because their very sense of their own intelligence blinds them.

I’ve seen a similar phenomenon with Fox News’ bloviating “financial analyst” Neil Cavuto.  Jon Stewart refers to it as the “Cavuto Mark”.  Essentially, rather than directly advocating a firm ideological position that he has on a particular issue, he’ll often frame it in the form of a question in the chyron.

For instance, when President Obama took a stance on the Skip Gates arrest last year, Cavuto would talk about the issue, and the chyron would display the question, “Is Obama playing the race card in Gates’ controversy?”  That way, if Cavuto’s critics accused him of stirring up racist animosity with these tactics, Cavuto could deflect it by saying, “Hey, I didn’t accuse President Obama of anything, I was just asking a fair and balanced question!”  It’s a pretty obvious form of manipulation that is easily recognizeable by any non-wingnut who doesn’t suffer from conservative confirmation bias.

But to the truly devoted Fox viewers, they convince themselves that Fox News isn’t telling them what to think, that FNC is just taking a neutral position and simply asking innocent questions and letting their viewers make up their own minds.  But in fact, manipulating a predictable response is PRECISELY what these “Cavuto Mark” questions are designed to do.  In courtroom legalese, you would call it “leading the witness”.  If you ask the question, “Is it wrong to suggest to nine year olds that they should be sexually active?” the majority of people would probably say, “Yes, that’s a bad idea.”  But if that question gets thrown out by a conservative in the middle of a debate about the propriety of sex education in the classroom, it’s pretty likely that he or she is pulling a completely absurd assumption out of his or her ass to misrepresent sex education.

Stephen Colbert often parodies the Cavuto Mark when he’s interviewing progressives… “George W. Bush, great president or the greatest president?”

It’s a pretty sick form of propaganda, and while I realize that wingnut philosophy existed long before Rupert Murdoch provided the Republican Party its own propaganda organization with Roger Ailes serving as the organization’s Goebbels fill-in, the fact is Fox News has provided these wingnuts a fairly powerful medium to foist their lies and obfuscations on the American public.  Fox News isn’t merely a cable news channel with a conservative stance, it’s a fucking cancer that is making the wingnuts act even more unhinged than they already were acting.

If we witness a repeat of the 1995 Oklahoma City tragedy, I’m putting a pretty big chunk of the blame on Fox News for fueling the fire in some psychopath’s mind.  I think it’s fair to asume that Scott Roeder was at least partly emboldened to murder Dr. Tiller because of Bill O’Reilly’s incessant shrieking of the phrase “Tiller the baby killer” on his program.

Apropos of this discussion, the current “New Scientist” (15 May 2010) has a set of stories on denialism, including looks at the psychology involved.

Pay attention to who they respect, and pretend to have discovered that person through them, but always make it clear that you understand less than they do.  If you play the game just right, smart people will eat out of your hand, because their very sense of their own intelligence blinds them.

That’s how GWB conned Christ Matthews into not doing an interview like he did with the other candidates in 2000, and shined him on by telling him how much he liked Winston Churchill.

My best BS detector is what my father formulated as Avenger’s
1st Law:

People tell you what you want to hear.

along with this quote about skepticism:

Skepticism is a good watchdog if you know when to take the leash off.

Rex Stout, Fer-de-Lance

On the concept of “nudging”, I saw an interesting story in USA Today about a philanthropic project that the former CEO of Panera Bread has undertaken (he stepped down as CEO last week)... here in St. Louis, a St. Louis Bread Company store recently converted itself into a non-profit entity called St. Louis Bread Co. Cares (Panera was founded in St. Louis, and the stores in this market are still branded as “St. Louis Bread Co.” rather than “Panera”), where the customer gets to pay whatever amount they can afford for their food.  The menu is identical to other Panera stores (the bread, however, is the one day old leftovers from other stores in the market), and the menu includes “suggested donations” which correlate precisely to the prices at other Panera stores.  When you get your food, you are asked to donate whatever you think is most fair, and all of the money above operating costs are donated to charitable causes.  It’s the only Panera in the country right now trying the concept, and thus far it seems to be working… in the first two days, more than a third of the customers donated MORE than the suggested menu prices.  The plan is to convert two more stores in other yet to be named markets over the next six months, and if the operation can prove to be self-sustaining for the long term, they hope to introduce the concept to every market in the country where Panera has stores.

Anyway, an initial thought I had was, “I wonder if anyone will try to freeload?”  But I think the reality is, for whatever reason, most people value not being seen as a selfish freeloader more than they value the $6 they might save if they opt to get themselves a free lunch at a public restaurant.  There’s a definite “nudge” factor involved here… you are allowed to get food at the store without contributing one red cent, but you have to be willing to accept the potential social stigma of being seen as the kind of person that would take money out a Salvation Army kettle at Christmas if you thought you could get away with it.

And of course, while this is a commendable intiative by Panera, you can’t disregard the fact that they are still a publicly traded company whose principal goal is to make a profit, and they aren’t going to willingly pour a bunch of money down the drain if it will hurt their profits over the long term - this concept will only work and grow if the majority of customers who patronize the store are willing to contribute at least enough money to cover the operating expenses of the store.  If they discover six months in that the store is actually losing a ton of money, it will get shut down.  And it will be the people who consistently try get something for nothing that would be ultimately responsible for its closure.  It’s sort of a collective nudge to the community to do the right thing, but giving people the freedom not to.  The social coersion is pretty subtle, but I think it’s definitely there.

Throw rocks at hipsters; save the Earth!

I like that.

The kneejerk response is obscuring the fact that no one is trying to get one over on you or hurt you in any way.
Comment #31: Amanda Marcotte on 05/19 at 07:54 PM

Actually there is a way that energy companies will be getting over on you by encouraging you to use less energy, at least in some situations.

Utility companies in monopoly or near-monopoly situations typically operate under regulations that say how much profit they are allowed to make.  In at least one instance that I read about, that number wasn’t per unit of energy.  It’s a flat amount.

So if Energy Company can get its users to use less energy, they will make the same profit for a smaller expenditure for work and resources.  Larger profit percentage, better earnings, stock price goes up, executive bonuses, etcetera.

Not that this makes it not better for you, as a customer and as a citizen, to use less energy.  But sometimes it’s not just about being a good corporate citizen.

I read an interesting blog post via feministblogs.org the other day about getting buy-in for employee participation programs that reminded me of this.  Some people are enthusiastic about “getting employees involved,” based on the stated goal of encouraging employees to improve their lives through empowerment.  Some are involved in using the goal to force behavior that benefits the organization way beyond the benefit to the individuals.  And some are practical about the tradeoffs, open-eyed but not automatically rejecting.

And the blogger didn’t include the fourth group, the reflexive rejectors.

Utility companies in monopoly or near-monopoly situations typically operate under regulations that say how much profit they are allowed to make.  In at least one instance that I read about, that number wasn’t per unit of energy.  It’s a flat amount.

So if Energy Company can get its users to use less energy, they will make the same profit for a smaller expenditure for work and resources.  Larger profit percentage, better earnings, stock price goes up, executive bonuses, etcetera.

While technically true, most regulations have built-in measures to stop measures to keep them profitable but not let them reach excess (atleast in the sense you’re pointing at.)  I know in the short term that the profits would go up but after the next regulatory meeting they would lower the ratings cap.  The real advantage to using less energy is that in larger areas they can sell that power to another grid zone or shut down a plant partially which means less production cost.

The defier types are generally “independent” thinkers taken to a pointless extreme.  I don’t like authority any more than I have to deal with it but when somebody pushes me to do something for my own good I try to do it.  Ms. Kate seems to exemplify the reasoning for all defiers.  They don’t like the idea that they can be “confused” and it frightens them and they react by doing the polar opposite.  There have been countless times this approach has worked by creating a backdoor loophole in rules by using defiers.

Sorry, I should have read #14 more carefully, since that was the one that triggered my reaction. But not all people who have illnesses needing extra care are officially labeled disabled, and not everyone ill has a hospital bed in their home (?!)—not to mention, there’s still the issue of penalizing telecommuters, etc, for saving other forms of energy.

Oh, I have a liberal friend who is a defier—she hates being lectured or talked down to, or even feeling like that’s happening, and so she gets angry on Earth Day, even though she agrees with the idea of conservation. If another friend gets on her case about how she should have a smaller car (her husband is a giant, and they don’t have a huge gas guzzler now), she talks to me about how she wants an SUV.

But the happy face thing would not only probably irritate her, it would irritate me. I’d rather have an enclosure that helps me figure out how much hand-washing all my dishes would save vs. turning off my computer earlier at night so I could figure out if one or both options were needed to meet whatever consumption-drop goal I wanted to go for. I *like* those radar signs that say how fast one is going right next to the sign that says the speed limit. THAT is information. A happy face is an obnoxious way to treat intelligent adults like 5 year old children. I wouldn’t try to use more electricity (or hit the gas pedal), but 1. I would have trouble working out WHY I was getting a happy or frowny face (there’s no real info) and 2. once I worked it out, I would be writing a letter to tell the utility company/CHP/whatever, why a low-information, illiteracy-based feedback system does not appeal to the brains of educated adults.

I like Zifnab25’s suggestion at comment 51. Informative, simple, and motivating. Should appeal to people across the board.

But if conservatives genuinely believe that Progressives/Demorats are evil, truly evil and working every moment to destroy Christian America; then one can see how they will oppose everything remotely Liberal-seeming. 

Many of them perceive us as The Devil, a real, palpable force of evil; everything we say is a scheme to destroy them, and the country.  Any evidence to the contrary is just more deception.  So it is logical to them to oppose anything we are in favor of.

I’m riding my bike to work tomorrow and, I have to admit, it’s partly because I’m going to get goodies for it.  It’s National Bike to Work Day, so the city is going to have rest stations set up with freebies and prizes.  Plus my company must have gotten a nasty letter from the AQMD because they’re offering double bonus money all summer—that means that instead of being paid $1 a day for every day I commute by bike, I’ll get $2 a day.  Sure, it’s only $10 a week, but when gas is well over $3 a gallon, that looks pretty damn good by comparison.

Yes, I’m shallow, but I doubt I’m that much different than most people:  offer me a tangible benefit for doing what you want me to do and I’m more likely to do it.

<blcokquote>But I also think Chet’s right—-this often makes smart people easier to manipulate.  All you have to do is manipulate them into working to get to the conclusion you want them to get to.</blockwuote>

Rule of thumb among conmen: the two best targets are the generally ignorant and the generally smart.  The former won’t realize they are being conned.  The latter believe they can’t be.

Smart people, or those who consider themselves smart, are often inclined to not admit they don’t know something and won’t stop to ask the the simple question “What does that mean/how does that work?”  That’s how Enron managed to con so many people who were not actually that stupid: they just didn’t want to admit they couldn’t understand the process by which Enron was supposedly making so much money.

To use a famous example, Oprah Winfrey is not a stupid person but she keeps being the promoter of all sorts of utterly insipid crap simply because people know what buttons to push and because she apparently doesn’t want to admit that she doesn’t actually understand what the hell they are babbling about.

Wow, that spelling sucked.

#5

I have to say that I’m a defier - not that I disagree with the psychology involved, I just sense manipulation and my hackles go up like a frilled lizard.  Believe it or not, some of this comes from the way that evanglicals have tried to suck people into their authoritarian folds - it makes my bullshit detectors ring off scale.

Actually, Ms Kate, I totally understand, because I’m the exact same way about manipulation. Anything that seems even vaguely like manipulation makes me get suspicious and even angry. This actually led to me taking a ‘libertarian’ point of view of everything when I was young, which was, in retrospect, rather childish and stupid.

#59

Rule of thumb among conmen: the two best targets are the generally ignorant and the generally smart.  The former won’t realize they are being conned.  The latter believe they can’t be.

Yeah, great point KeithM.

I would almost put another category into this analysis. The generally stupid are constitutionally incapable of distrusting anything. The generally smart are capable of distrusting, but they don’t generally have to doubt themselves. The fix for this comes when you start to take the massive sense of distrust you have for the rest of this sleazy-ass world, and you start to apply this sense of distrust to your own sleazy self, and your distrust.

In other words, you have to start distrusting every fucking thing, including yourself, including your distrust. Your distrust has to become like a universal solvent, attacking everything from every angle, all the time. That’s the extra category that’s missing, (maybe)... you have to distrust yourself.

Make no mistake your sense of distrust is an attempt at self-defense. But self-defense only takes you so far. When your sense of distrust learns to turn on itself and start feeding on itself, that’s when you start to see that, at bottom, it is just as stupid to be reflexively rejectionist as it is to always accept everything.

#55

A happy face is an obnoxious way to treat intelligent adults like 5 year old children. I wouldn’t try to use more electricity (or hit the gas pedal), but 1. I would have trouble working out WHY I was getting a happy or frowny face (there’s no real info) and 2. once I worked it out, I would be writing a letter to tell the utility company/CHP/whatever, why a low-information, illiteracy-based feedback system does not appeal to the brains of educated adults.

Here’s the problem: Samantha you’re a smart person and you actually care about the truth so it may be difficult for you to understand how massively stupid most adults are. I kind of think that the smiley faces/frowny faces is just right for most people.

The problem with nudges is that it’s so hard to tailor them to people’s cognitive preferences (well, and also that they’re a bit authoritarian, but that’s a separate discussion). You could, I supposem have a range of different, subtle nudges that will between them cover enough of your intended audience to make a statistically significant difference, but it would take some trail and error…

My electricity company gives me a discount if I pay a set sum every month instead of just cover my bill. I initially set the sum a bit higher than what I thought would be necessary, because I had a big bill one wonter and wanted to pay it off quickly. Anyway, since then I’ve figured out how to use my central heating system more efficiently and my usage has gone down a lot, but I never got round to readjusting the monthly debits. Then, lo and behold, this winter (right in time for the January credit card nadir, too!), the electricity company credited me almost £200 in unused fees! It was a complete unintended consequence, but it’s a fantastic nudge - I love to see untility companies pay me money! This sort of thing will work well of the refusers/suspicious as well, because money int he bank is money in the bank, and even wingnuts can’t argue with that (though they’ll probably argue that poor people shouldn’t get the same options).

@64

“I kind of think that the smiley faces/frowny faces is just right for most people. “

This kind of thinking is apparent in Thaler’s libertarian paternalism, and he wonders why people are suspicious.  No matter how good the cause, treating people like they are stupid will bring resistance.  In general, people (even conservatives) can understand dollar amounts, so why not include indications of savings tied to reduced energy usage instead?

You know, back to the original point, what are they basing this on? Just the fact that someone lives in a similar house to their neighbors?

So, an asshole couple with two Hummers and horrible energy practices could easily get a smiley face while their neighbors with the 3 foster kids, and grandma living with them get a frowny face, even though 6 people are using 10% more energy than the two next door?

Not to mention that if it’s based on neighborhoods, then the assholes bumping around their McMansions with the cineplex in the basement, two hot tubs and a sauna, and a commercial kitchen that could run a soup kitchen but is only used to nuke microwave dinners could get a smiley face for using less than the assholes next door, but the people in the smaller, more sustainable, greener neighborhood who are actually using infinitely less than the McMansioners get a frowny face for not doing quite as well as their even more energy-conscious neighbors?

The idea, in and of itself, isn’t bad, if it could be actually compared realistically across the board. I don’t see how this plan could actually be meaningfully implemented.

Lymis, would it not be possible to arrive at some sort of national average per person per unit of time (adjusted for peak usage seasons, e.g. winter int he north vs summer inteh south)? Plus work in a certain percentage of energy from renewable sources, benchmarked against the lowest nationally available percentage? I mean, the point about this is not that it’s supposed to be very low, just that you end up with a benchmark to measure progress from, right?

Lymis, they based this on how much one’s usage went up or down over what it was previously.  So the 1% bump wasn’t over everyone else, it was how much more they personally used.  1% more than the month before.  I’m not sure why that’s complicated.

“Starting in Spring 2008, it has been sending households in the treatment group a Home Energy Report.2 The report provides household specific information on own monthly electricity usage over time and relative to neighbours’ usage over the same time period. The report provides energy saving tips.”

Actually, both the “smiley face” study and the original research into power usage nudges are based on “peer comparison,” from your own link.  They couched the results in terms of increase or decrease of usage over previous individual usage, but the smiley faces are based on peers, not prior usage by the individual.

#66

This kind of thinking is apparent in Thaler’s libertarian paternalism, and he wonders why people are suspicious.  No matter how good the cause, treating people like they are stupid will bring resistance.  In general, people (even conservatives) can understand dollar amounts, so why not include indications of savings tied to reduced energy usage instead?

I’m less interested in the reasonable, intelligent way people would like to consider themselves, more interested in the stupid, weak way they actually are.

This is kind of WTF to me. I use exactly what I need, no more, no less. I live in an old house, which I rent, and which might not be colossally efficient. If this were to generate a frowny face bill for me, I would be pissed off. They would get their frowny face right back, glued to the check I use to pay them.

“Anyway, an initial thought I had was, “I wonder if anyone will try to freeload?” But I think the reality is, for whatever reason, most people value not being seen as a selfish freeloader more than they value the $6 they might save if they opt to get themselves a free lunch at a public restaurant.”

That’s how I always assumed the speed readouts next to the speed limits were supposed to work—everybody knows how fast they’re going, what with their speedometers and all, but the big flashing readout lets everybody else know that you’re the sort of prick who’d speed in a construction or school zone.  It’s not going to influence the sort of person who flips the machine the bird and continues on their merry bat-out-of-hell way without regard for the life or limb of elementary schoolers, but I don’t know that the sort of person too stupid to figure out that 25 is significantly greater than 15 is going to have any better luck figuring out why that machine is scowling at them.

Chet of course is mostly full of crap about con men. Con men, Nigerian scammers, spam marketers, serial killers, etc., don’t actually care if you aren’t a good mark. They don’t care that you are always on the lookout for being conned, because they don’t want to waste their time conning/killing you. They just focus and care about the people with few personal defenses.

While Chet imagines that there is some kind of magic double-reverse-twist psychology that always works on people who hate the idea of being conned/manipulated, most conmen know that it’s worth their time to simply move on to the next mark.

Many people have natural defenses. The just of a conman (or serial killer) is to cast a wide enough net that he finds the people who lack those natural defenses.

This is kind of WTF to me. I use exactly what I need, no more, no less.

You might not know that for sure. After getting a little “nudge,” you might realize that there are some appliances or other things might be consuming more electricity than you think.

“Actually, both the “smiley face” study and the original research into power usage nudges are based on “peer comparison,” from your own link.  They couched the results in terms of increase or decrease of usage over previous individual usage, but the smiley faces are based on peers, not prior usage by the individual.”

You’d have to take both into account if you’re doing the study over a long term, though.  If this summer is hotter than last summer, you’re going to use more electricity cooling your house to the same extent through the same practices.  So your percentage goes up, even though your practices aren’t any more or less wasteful than they were last year.  In order to look at whether or not the increase in consumption is likely to be due to something the consumer could control, you have to look at their peer-group during the same timeframe.  If everyone’s usage has gone up in the same ratio, it’s likely due to changed conditions and not changed habits.

The power provider in my state lets you chart your usage over your entire billing history, and helpfully gives you a graph with both your power usage and the average daily temperature in your area.  But the peer-comparison method would have been way more useful last summer, when the giant usage spike I saw on that graph didn’t make proper sense without the knowledge that the “average temp” function was useless for comparing that year and the year before—your a/c is going to work way harder when the average temp of 90 is due to a consistent temp of 85 with a spike to 95 in the afternoon than when the average temp of 87 is due to a very hot afternoon with significantly cooler mornings and evenings.  The issue then becomes “Are we handling the ridiculous weather we’ve been having worse than everyone else?”.

Ditto pretty much everything Ms Kate said (including well below current energy concumption in the same state except for empty nesters in a too big house compared to other 2 person households).
I am also a Prius driver who monitors my use and MPG.  I usually try for and get a mileage above 50, but I always weigh it against the cost of time, safety and aggrevation.  Drivers in MA are called Massholes for a reason.

I don’t really like it when people brag about how they haven’t been conned or how they’re very suspicious, because it implies that people who are the victims of fraud are somehow lesser because they allowed themselves to be conned.  It comes very close to victim-blaming, and this is why people are the victims of fraud are often extremely reluctant to report it, which allows con artists to continue with their schemes.  And no matter how suspicious you are, there are manipulators out there who can get you too.  Some people are just naturally very manipulative and even the most suspicious person will fall for their lies.  My father is one of those people and he managed to convince a very educated and smart women to get into a relationship with him where he was abusive.  He has managed to trick all kinds of people into thinking he’s a great person.  And I will be any amount of money that he could manipulate the people here who are so proud of never being manipulated.

They don’t care that you are always on the lookout for being conned, because they don’t want to waste their time conning/killing you. They just focus and care about the people with few personal defenses.

Including the people who think their personal defenses are TEH AWESOME.

The fact that you’ve apparently lumped “Con men, Nigerian scammers, spam marketers, serial killers, etc” into one category indicates you’ve got an inflated sense of your own defenses because you think you know how an attacker works.  Spammers and the Nigerians (and related con artists) rely on spreading a wide net over as many people as possible and don’t care if 99.9% of the people dismiss them as bunk.  Serial killers have a wide range of methods of selecting victims.  Some have specific criteria, some go for targets of opportunity, and in some cases (like the Beltway Snipers) all the personal observation in the world wouldn’t have saved you from a bullet fired from a hide in the trunk of a car.

And as for conmen…

There are varieties of cons, not all of them run the same, and not all of them involve trying to get money out of you for illegal purposes.  There are a great many people who laugh at the idea that anyone would think the Nigerian scam was legal and yet support groups like PETA (bonus points if said people have pets), or pay money for software that will supposedly help one work the stock market, or invest in companies that have a great sales pitch and no actual product or service (how many Internet bubbles have we been through now?)

Maybe the people who are pissed off at the “happy face” are “defiers” because they know that it is just the first step on the road to fines, penalties, and as soon as possible, physical control over the amount of energy they are allowed to use?

Dammit people!!!

Electric generation suppliers and aggregators must also be registered with the local utility to sell electric generation service in that utility’s service area.

Electricity doesn’t magically fly on fairie wings to your meter!
Anyone can add to the grid.  ANYONE! As long as it’s done in a safe manner.  (Hence the registration) You can add a wind turbine, solar cells or gas generator and make yourself a generation supplier.
But only ONE company or PUD get to run the wires to your house.

Stop making me talk about work on my break.  :(

Maybe the people who are pissed off at the “happy face” are “defiers” because they know that it is just the first step on the road to fines, penalties, and as soon as possible, physical control over the amount of energy they are allowed to use?

OK, I’ll bite.  Even if that ridiculous slippery slope fallacy were somehow not fallacious, explain to me how, precisely defiance would stop any of this from happening?  Are you really suggesting that these people are completely stupid and have no foresight?  Maybe it works like this;

1.  Throw a tantrum and use more energy when we see smiley faces.
2.  ???
3.  Big bad government decides to leave us alone.

It’s a complete non sequitur as well as being a slippery slope fallacy.  I guess some people don’t care about doing anything that actually works so long as they can show that they Officially Disapprove.

#80

Maybe the people who are pissed off at the “happy face” are “defiers” because they know that it is just the first step on the road to fines, penalties, and as soon as possible, physical control over the amount of energy they are allowed to use?

The GOVERNMENT will PHYSICALLY CONTROL my power use! CAN’T YOU PEOPLE SEE THE DANGER!!?!?!!!

In my little town, there are many cars with stickers proclaiming that they are powered by electricity or biodiesel, and at least one which claims it is “powered by ground up baby seals and hippies’ tears”.

Of course, if you were to offer to actually convert his car to run off a fuel derived from animal fats and human secretions, he’d blow a gasket (so to speak)....

In the eighties I had a colleague who came from a city in Scotland where in the poorer neighborhoods, apartments had meters in which one had to put in coin to get power. No bills, just buy the power direct—no coin no power. Maybe the hippie-kickers would like that better.

“The GOVERNMENT will PHYSICALLY CONTROL my power use! CAN’T YOU PEOPLE SEE THE DANGER!!?!?!!!”

IT’S OVER 3000!!!

So if Energy Company can get its users to use less energy, they will make the same profit for a smaller expenditure for work and resources.  Larger profit percentage, better earnings, stock price goes up, executive bonuses, etcetera.
Not that this makes it not better for you, as a customer and as a citizen, to use less energy.  But sometimes it’s not just about being a good corporate citizen.
Comment 52—oldfeminist

I don’t mind regulations that reward companies for doing The Right Thing if it’s not at my expense.

money int he bank is money in the bank, and even wingnuts can’t argue with that
Comment 65—TheLady

There was that woman who called Glenn Beck a while back to ask why she got a tax credit—an he told her it was because Obama is plotting evil.