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The five sexiest ideas in politics

Yesterday the Sunday Times twigged to the idea of social norms.

The article wasn't quite right. They ascribed David Cameron's interest in that topic to a new book called Nudge by Sunstein and Thayler - when in fact it came from Robert Cialdini's book Influence.

But it was still an important piece.

The Sunday Times is very good at spotting intellectual trends. When they print an entire piece on some new thinking, it is an important sign that a change is taking place.

In a nutshell, thirty years ago there was a intellectual revolution centred on economics. Now the change in the debate is being powered by social psychology.

It helps explain how we can change society without increasing burdensome regulation.

Here are five of the hottest intellectual ideas now making an impact on politics. Dry as they sound, they are the sexiest ideas on the political scene:

1. Social Norms:  This is based on a simple observation - people copy each other. We take cues from others in our peer group about how to behave. This is a more powerful social force than legal restrictions. Could we, for instance, increase the amount given to charity simply by telling people how much more everyone else is giving? Want to know more? Read Influence by Robert Cialdini, Herd by Mark Earls and The Nurture Assumption by Judith Rich Harris or my article.

2. Reciprocal Altruism: Why do we help those who are not blood relations? Surely this wouldn't be a good evolutionary strategy? Well, it turns out that it is. We help others because we believe they will reciprocate. In order for this to work, game theory demonstrates, we have to believe we will be interacting with the same people repeatedly. Reciprocal altruism makes the argument for strengthening local institutions. Want to know more? Read The Oakshott lecture by David Willetts, and Natural Justice by Ken Binmore or my article.

3. Situationism: Is there such a thing as society? It is not just reciprocal altruism that shows that there is. It is also situationism. People behave differently when in different situations. They conform to expectations and group norms. Individuals have different dispositions but this is only part of the reason they behave as they do. Phil Zimbardo's famous Stanford prison experiment, while hardly a conclusive scientific experiment, showed how telling individuals they were guards or prisoners changed the way they behaved. This idea is, for instance, helping change Tory ideas on crime. Want to know more? Read The Lucifer Effect by Philip Zimbardo or my article.

4. Prospect Theory: Thirty five years ago, innocent A level economics students would ask their teachers "but what if the consumer isn't rational?". It would patiently be explained to them that rationality was a modelling assumption, that could very easily be relaxed. It turns out that relaxing the assumption has produced the most interesting work in economics over the last three decades, winning a Nobel Prize for Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. Prospect theory considers how people actually make decisions. It looks at, for instance, the ways people weigh up risks. It leads to a richer understanding of the way consumers respond to the design of policy. Want to know more? Read Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely and Nudge by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein or my article.

5. Cognitive Dissonance: In 1957 the psychologist Leon Festinger first put forward this idea explaining how people cling on the commitments they have made, twisting the truth round in their head to make it consistent with their existing view. Its importance for social policy is that individuals try incredibly hard to fulfill commitments they have made, verbally or in writing. Particularly when made in public. Cognitive dissonance is part of the reason why married couples stay together (in order to make good their commitment). Want to know more? Read Yes! by Noah Goldstein, Steve Martin and Robert Cialdini and When Prophecy Fails by Leon Festinger or my articles on political strategy and marriage.

The secret to a long, happy life

My column this morning was on the Easterlin Paradox. In a nutshell:

In a 1974 paper, the economist Richard Easterlin presented empirical evidence on income and happiness that was pretty puzzling. Using surveys of how happy people say that they are, the paper seemed to show that within countries, the richer people are, the happier they are, but that between countries the same didn't hold.

What this suggests is that being relatively rich compared to your fellow countrymen makes you happier, but that your absolute wealth doesn't matter.

The Easterlin Paradox is the foundation stone of the vast happiness literature. And it turns out that Easterlin wasn't right.

I thought you might want to read the original paper from Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers of the Wharton School. They assess the data and show that rising income and rising happiness go together after all.

But while I was working on the piece I also came across this rather simple argument, which should have occurred to me before, but didn't.

In 2003 Ruut Veenhoven and Michael Hagerty also looked at Easterlin's work. And like Stevenson and Wolfers they too found rising income and happiness go together. But they also added this idea - happiness years.

Their point is that as we live longer the wealthier we are, so the wealthier we are the higher the total number of happy years we have. Thus even if a wealthy individual is no happier per day, their total happiness across their life is increased.

Just what Judith Rich Harris would expect

Just before the 7 am news Friday's Today programme carried a fascinating little item about smoking.

It featured Bristol University's Professor Rona Campbell talking of her experimental work on how to prevent school age children from starting to smoke.

Her study involved pupils in 59 schools across the West of England and Wales. She gathered together a number of Year 8 (that is 12-13 year olds) identified as influential by their classmates. These children were given courses designed to make them a sort of informal anti-smoking lobby then sent back into their classrooms.

The result? The pupils in schools from which the influential children were drawn were 22 per cent less likely to start smoking than those in the control schools.

John Humphrys understandably called this "rather surprising". But is it really?

Certainly readers of Judith Rich Harris's The Nurture Assumption wouldn't be surprised. Her book suggests that peer group pressure is the main force that makes us what we are. Professor Campbell's appears to corroborate at least the asssertion that peer groups are central.

The work also suggests a way forward in many areas of social policy - from reducing youth violence to improving physical fitness.

Could lighting up save your life?

I've just come across a fascinating little piece in The Atlantic. It concerns the impact of smoking bans.

A new study in the Journal of Public Economics by Scott Adams and Chad Cotti shows that the bans have been associated with a 13 per cent rise in the number of fatal car accidents.

Because accidents in neighbouring areas have gone up even more the authors think that the crashes are partly the result of jurisdiction hopping, with smokers driving to bars that will let them puff away.

What then about a national ban?

The Atlantic says this:

Growing evidence from neurological research also suggests that smoking lessens a drinker’s level of intoxication, and that nicotine deprivation can sharpen the urge to drink.

As a result, the authors say, smokers who comply with the ban and elect to booze close to home may be drinking more, or getting more drunk from the same number of drinks.

While a national smoking ban could offset some of the increase in fatalities, perhaps alcohol, like coffee, is simply best (and safest) when enjoyed with cigarettes.

How to reform welfare

The Adam Smith Institute has published a paper on welfare reform today. Among other positive attributes it provides a useful summary of US welfare reform initiatives.

Among the paper's proposals this caught the eye:

Jobcentre Plus offices should be privatized, and should compete with other private and voluntary organizations for local welfare contracts. These providers would be subject to contractual government performance targets, and would be paid by results.

Why is this striking?

Because it has been a constant suggestion of welfare reformers for almost fifteen years, ever since Peter Cove and Lee Bowes came over here to explain their organisation America Works. At the time Labour, with David Miliband taking the lead in his policy adviser role, said they were really interested in it. Now, years later, it remains undone.

It is a symbol of the vast gap between talking welfare reform and doing it.

Why it's best to tie the knot

Marriage works. It keeps relationships together and children benefit hugely from stable two parent families. The evidence is overwhelming. I've never seen it seriously disputed.

It is a serious sociological observation, not a right-wing cliché. Indeed, the first time I was introduced to the idea was an article, Dan Quayle was Right by Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, originally printed in The Atlantic Monthly. I was given it by Will Marshall of the Progressive Policy Institute, the intellectual driver of the Clinton-Blair third way.

But it still leaves two questions. Why does it work? And can Government do anything to promote it? I think the answers are linked.

The reason why married couples stay together longer than cohabiting ones is not a mystery. Marriage makes use of a very strong principle of social psychology - that humans strive very hard to remain consistent to their commitments. Robert Cialdini deals with this in one section of his unmissable book Influence.

Marriage works for the same reason that Weight Watchers get you to announce your goals in public and weigh yourself in public, and for the same reason that the Chinese insisted that prisoners of war write their confessions down. Once a commitment is made publicly, even in front of a few people, it becomes much harder to escape from.

Understanding that marriage works through social psychology is important when considering policy.

The suggestion that tax breaks might encourage marriage seems laughable. One Brown spin doctor when asked why he cohabited replied "I would have married, but Gordon abolished the married couple's allowance". Yet this laughter is inspired by a misconception about the tax policy - that the idea is to pay people a small sum to wed. How could the sum ever be big enough for that, scoff the critics.

They've missed the point. The idea is to establish that marriage is a social norm, once again. That it is socially approved of and looked on with favour. Just as they work hard to be consistent, people tend to conform to social norms. Quite a small sum could prove powerful.

A McJob is a good job

The Oxford English Dictionary describes a McJob as:

An unstimulating, low-paid job with few prospects, esp. one created by the expansion of the service sector

Now McDonald's is organising a petition to get this definition changed. Well, good luck with that.

Actually I mean it, good luck with that.

In his stimulating book The Dream and the Nightmare, Myron Magnet explains that stigmatising low wage jobs is a social disaster. It involves the middle class sending a signal that such a job is demeaning and hardly better than the dole.

Since the most important step a person can take on the social ladder is to get a job and stick at it, McJobs need to be defended from their critics.

Where do I sign, Ronald?

Why Greg Clark is right

The suggestion by Tory MP Greg Clark that the party should prefer a metaphor about poverty employed by Polly Toynbee to one used by Winston Churchill has caused a stir.

The Mail devoted a full page to quotes from Churchill and Toynbee, as if Clark had suggested that the Guardian columnist would have been the better wartime Prime Minister. (An amusing observation, incidentally, is that while Churchill was alive there were long periods when Tories of a Daily Mail disposition hated him far more than any of them dislike Toynbee now)

Boris Johnson does rather better with a very witty and subtle defence of Clark in the Telegraph.

But the commentators on conservativehome (most of them anyway) get into the meat of the debate - should the Conservative Party be interested in addressing relative poverty or only absolute poverty. It was this (important) question that Clark was trying to answer and on which he is surely right.

Let me use a simple example to illustrate the point. You have no heating, no television, hardly any meat, you live in one room, your children work in a factory all the hours of day and night to scrape together enough money to eat and you have only one set of worn clothes. Are you in deep poverty? Not if you live in 1800. But if you lived now? Of course.

We all do think of poverty as relative. The Conservative Party has been thinking like this for about 100 years. What Clark has done, with the help of a jolting reference to Polly Toynbee, is to make the implicit position of Tories, explicit. 

Getting welfare to work

Here's a link to a blog post which is a. Pretty short b. Mostly an email from the wife of a fairly obscure, dead American politician c. About complicated US welfare policy. So why the link?

Because in just a few lines Michael Barone outlines an interesting reason for the success of American welfare and thereby makes a compelling argument for devolving power back to communities. Barone says that welfare policy worked because the central government decided simply to give states a block grant and let them decide how to keep within it. Local politicians then took the strain.

The facts of life behind bars

No argument that I've ever made in The Times has attracted as much negative comment as my assertion that prison works (save perhaps for a disparaging piece I once published about Tottenham Hotspur).

The facts about prison, however, still seem to me inescapable.

Talk about Freakonomics

Tim Harford shows that you can provide an economic explanation of practically anything.