Psychology - the missing piece of the policy puzzle
Why do policies fail? Psychology offers many answers
For now, we’ll be publishing Policy Events every second week as we focus on developing other tiers of content, including the Policy People Podcast, online community and written content like the following post.
I’ve noticed a recurring thread running through several recent conversations I’ve had while recording our podcast over the last few weeks. Three guests have, in their own way, each stressed the importance of psychology in policy making. I’ll expand upon what I’ve learnt from them here.
The Psychology of Public Narrative in Mobilizing the Masses
In my talk with Nizar Farsakh, he told me that storytelling is not just a tool for marketers, but “for anyone who is trying to get things done.” That certainly includes policy makers.
“Where policy makers fail is they think they need the best argument. I can persuade you logically that in order to go from A to B, we need to take these 5 steps, but to make you want to do it, I’m going to need to tell you a narrative that evokes a certain emotion,” Nizar says.
“Logic alone is insufficient, you have to have narrative to motivate people to want to do something,” he says.
As an example, he points to how Trump was able to engender feelings of empathy and affinity with blue-collar workers who he had nothing in common with because he spoke not only to their economic pain, but the anger they felt from being looked down upon by the country’s elite.
“Logically speaking, it doesn’t make sense. Trump never had a day of want in his life, but that was their experience,” says Nizar.
He points out what most people miss about this - “Actually, Trump does genuinely feel with them.” Although he came from a privileged background, Nizar reasons, Trump had been rejected and openly mocked by the political elites at the time, and so felt the pain of being ostracized from their circle.
By contrast, Nizar says, the only moment where Hillary Clinton expressed her authentic self was when she called out Trump for his comments on abortion during the third debate. She went off-script here because abortion was deeply personal to her and touched upon a principle she truly believed in.
“Tragically, it was that moment when she showed up that exposed all those other moments when she didn’t,” says Nizar. “It showed the extent to which she was calculating, measured and not speaking from an authentic place.”
Nizar shows us storytelling is a psychological vehicle for pushing the emotional buttons of the masses to invoke action. What’s more, the storyteller’s emotional authenticity and personal connection with the sentiment of the story is what can make or break the power of that narrative.
Interventions and Policy Adoption
Understanding what motivates people is crucial for intervening and causing change on the ground in local communities too. This can be particularly important for those engaged in the development sector, or who are involved in the practical implementation of a policy program at an NGO. In my conversation with Prateek Kanval, he told me that applying behavioral science was crucial for the success of Educate Girls’ outreach campaigns in Indian villages. The aim of the campaign is to create the shift in mindset needed to persuade parents to send their daughters back to school.
“It has a lot to do with behavioral science,” he says, adding that his approach drew on lessons learnt on nudge theory while at at Harvard Kennedy School.
To do this, they frame education in terms of economic incentive and have the parents think long term about the material benefits of having a daughter with a degree.
“We do community meetings, and we put the question to them ‘What is the scenario that your life can itself change by educating that girl?’” By focusing on the long-term ROI of educating a girl for a rural family, they have to show how delayed gratification will generate long-term results as oppose to the short-term gains of using a girl’s labor to tend the fields.
Applying peer pressure from other villagers, and especially from local politicians, is also important. “In villages, your elected representatives have a lot of weight, so you put peer pressure through the officials and neighbors to get them to change,” says Prateek.
By creating new social norms within the village, the NGO can nudge individual families toward a new path. Prateek explained that once families see their neighbors sending their girls back, they are much more likely to follow suit.
Again in this case, success didn’t come from claiming the moral high ground on the issue, but in understanding the psychology of the farmers. By seeing the issue from their perspective and focusing on the practical economic factors of the lives, the policy bore fruit.
Breaking Disinformation’s Cycles of Belonging
In my talk with Chris Kremidas-Courtney, I discovered how understanding the intricate interplay between believing and belonging is important for breaking the negative cycle of disinformation. Chris explained that disinformation clusters provide virtual communities for those who feel abandoned by society. “Their empathy and loyalty to their community has been hijacked by disinformation,” he says.
Understanding the loneliness believers of disinformation feel will be essential for policymakers who hope to build what he calls ‘off-ramps’ from the disinformation circuit.
“Understanding myth and psychology are vitally important for people working in security policy,” Chris told me. “Over the last ten years, I spend a lot more time reading psychology papers, especially social psychology.”
Disinformation attracts people not only because it offers simple answers to complex questions, but provides isolated individuals with a sense of community by which to view the world, “Believing is belonging, and belonging is believing” he says. “Taken together, believing and belonging are being, and so it becomes a part of the person’s identity.”
“That is why they take criticism as a personal attack, because they have internalized these beliefs as a part of their identity,” he explains.
As Chris shows, policy people aiming to break the cycle of disinformation, and the radicalization that it breeds, must understand the psychological appeal the phenomenon. Only in understanding the loneliness believers of disinformation feel will be essential for policymakers who hope to build what he calls ‘off-ramps’ from the disinformation circuit.
Bridging Policy People and ‘the People’
What all the above point to is that psychology offers a bridge that can bridge the gap, between the people making the policy and the people whom the policy is made for.
The criticism that policy circles are disconnected from the lives of regular people is an all too common theme in our politics today, and spans systems across the world, both democratic or otherwise.
People in policy typically rely on a stunning combo of stats, charts and facts to prove the effectiveness of a policy proposal, forgetting that if it doesn’t generate significant buy-in from the public, the implementation is doomed to fail.
A deeper grasp of the subjective, personal and cultural forces that influence human psychology will lead to more human-centric policy and help policymakers market their ideas more effectively, increasing adoption among the public.
I’ll keep you posted on more observations from my interviews. In the meantime, why not give our podcast a listen?
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Stay well and stay safe,
- Liam
Founder of Policy People