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Reinstigating Control

Hasan Rahman's photo
Hasan Rahman
·Jul 10, 2020·

14 min read

“No matter what the business model, you have to be able to influence behaviour to succeed.”

In this post the idea is to provide a very short overview of some of the concepts that underlie the mechanism or the story of behavioural design, change or influence.

SOCIAL ENGINEERING

Social engineering (in social science) refers to efforts to influence particular attitudes and social behaviors on a large scale, whether by governments, media or private groups in order to produce desired characteristics in a target population. This influence naturally needs to reach the target nodes through e.g. communication which is facilitated by the existence of e.g. relationships. If the relationship is bidirectional it constitutes an exchange and would have higher chances of allowing a successful transfer of influence.

MARKETING

Marketing is the study and management of exchange relationships. It is the activity, set of institutions or business process of identifying, anticipating and satisfying values, needs and wants of customers, clients, partners, and society at large through an exchange, creation or communication process. It includes the process of getting potential clients or customers interested in an organisation’s products and services (aka objectives of the organization).

[Marketing research is “the process or set of processes that links the producers, customers, and end users to the marketer through information used to identify and define marketing opportunities and problems; generate, refine, and evaluate marketing actions; monitor marketing performance; and improve understanding of marketing as a process. Marketing research specifies the information required to address these issues, designs the method for collecting information, manages and implements the data collection process, analyses the results, and communicates the findings and their implications.]

ADVERTISING

The techniques and practices used to bring products, services, opinions, ideas, or causes to public notice or attention for the purpose of persuading the public to respond in a certain way toward what is advertised. Advertising attempts to influence the buying behaviour of customers or clients with a persuasive selling message. It is a marketing tactic.

NUDGING

Nudge theory: a psychological theory on influencing individuals and groups to take action without force. It is essentially an exposure to a trigger. “A nudge, as we will use the term, is any aspect of the choice architecture that alters people’s behaviour in a predictable way without forbidding any options or significantly changing their economic incentives. To count as a mere nudge, the intervention must be easy and cheap to avoid. Nudges are not mandates. Putting fruit at eye level counts as a nudge. Banning junk food does not.”

CHOICE ARCHITECTURE

Choice architecture is the design of different ways in which choices can be presented to consumers, and the impact of that presentation on consumer decision-making. The choice architecture design may be set up in a way as to nudge consumers toward certain personal and social behaviors. Although such techniques have become popular among policymakers, the ethical question pertaining to such techniques remains unresolved. Moreover, different people may respond differently to the same frame depending on their habitual structure. Furthermore, no metrics exist that can help one regard the result of reframing as beneficial, as all metrics would in turn depend on a certain frame. Nonetheless, the basic idea is that choice exists inside frames, which can be ‘designed’ or manipulated to influence choice.

FRAMING

Framing involves social construction of a social phenomenon — by mass media sources, political or social movements, political leaders, or other actors and organisations. The basis of framing theory is that the communication medium focuses the attention of the receiver on certain events and then places them within a field of meaning. In essence, framing theory suggests that how something is presented (i.e. the context) to the audience (called “the frame”) influences the choices people make about how to process that information. Frames are abstractions that work to organise or structure message meaning. In the social sciences, framing comprises a set of concepts and theoretical perspectives on how individuals, groups, and societies, organise, perceive, and communicate about reality.

CONTEXT — CONNOTATION

Context is the surroundings, circumstances, environment, background or settings that determine, specify, or clarify the meaning of or characterise a concept or entity (an entity is a person, place, or object that is considered relevant to the interaction between a user and an application, including the user and applications themselves) while connotation is a meaning of a word or phrase that is suggested or implied. Connotation is concerned with how the sign system is used in each message. The semantic content is selected by the addresser and represents that individual’s values and intentions. Connotation, therefore, pertains to the intended attachment of a context to a concept leading to the manufacture of an intended frame. Context itself is “a frame that surrounds the event and provides resources for its appropriate interpretation” — connotation simply adds the element of intentionality. Context has total control over how a concept is understood. This forms the basis of our understanding of any concept and, therefore, shapes our perspectives.

Behaviour, more specifically habits, form as people pursue goals by repeating the same responses in a given context, which results in the (unintentional) formation of context-response associations in memory. The influence of context is twofold. Once habits form, context cues come to automatically activate the habit representation in memory. It doesn’t matter if the exposure to cues that provide a specific context is deliberate, inadvertent or externally enforced. Habit performance follows directly from the perception of context cues and thoughts about the behaviour. Moreover, repeated activation of one response in a context reduces the cognitive accessibility of alternatives.

The context itself, then, is determined by the Goals. The goal system defines or exposes a particular context, which, if coupled with repeated actions, leads to habit formation. Habits interface with goal pursuit directly and via context. This is depicted in the following figure. If the logical next step in the evolution of the web is a semantic web, then the step that comes after that is a web based directly on goal pursuits — a community united by purpose first and foremost.

sys1.png Fig: Schematic of three ways in which habits interface with deliberate goal pursuit: through initial repetition and exposure to contexts during habit formation (illustrated by the arrows from goal system to context cues and habitual response), through activation or inhibition of the habitual response, and through inferences about the probable causes of habit responding (reflected by the double-headed arrow between habitual response and goal system). [W. Wood and D. Runger, Annu. Rev. Psychol. 2016.]

Plato scolded a child who was playing at cobnuts. He answered him: “You scold me for a small matter.” “Habit,” replied Plato, “is no small matter.”

PERSPECTIVE

Similar in some ways to the theory of relativity in Physics — where one’s observation is relative to one’s frame of reference — the framing theory in the social sciences or psychology talks about the consequence of our dependence on context to construct meaning — one’s observation is always relative to a context or frame. Thus the power of reframing things cannot be overstated, especially since frames or context can possibly dictate what we consider as valuable or real — everything we view is within a context, through a frame. So the same thing can be good or bad depending entirely on our frame of reference. If someone could construct these frames for others — if someone could put some information into some particular contexts, for instance, it would give them unmeasurable power over the decision-maker, the power to manipulate or coerce them into opting for things.

This external way of manipulating choice has an influence on the internal method of choice architecture since it can influence our habits, e.g., through repetitive nudging, while the inverse isn’t true. The external manipulation doesn’t have to be originating from a malicious intention and neither the inverse. It doesn’t need to be labelled as good or bad, it just needs to be understood and then, if need be, countered — so that freedom of choice can be preserved. There are tons of examples of our perspectives and choices being defined or at least influenced through what we’re exposed to, which ranges from what we see on a daily basis through norms, traditions and customs, to state laws, activities and organisations the state allows or promotes, explicitly or implicitly, directly or indirectly. If I see or experience something, some behaviour taking place, some physical form — a girl walking down the road in short skirts every other day since my childhood, I’d get habituated or desensitised to the reality of the situation as well as get used to that situation as perhaps the standard possibility, a norm. On the other hand if I’ve been conditioned or habituated to watching fully covered members of the opposite sex, seeing a half-naked lady would be quite life-altering. On a more serious note — how do we know what we’ve gotten used to is not having adverse affects on our habitual or thinking structure? How do we even know what we’ve gotten used to? The appropriate answer to the latter is much easier to imagine than that to the former. To be on the safe side — everything we see or do repeatedly is either making us sensitised to something or habituated to something. These habits we “learn’’ as a result of the above-mentioned two phenomena and which shape our perspectives. A perspective is rightly defined as an attitude — it is an attitude, gained through a habit of some sort, through repetitive exposure to a stimulus — that develops into a perspective.

VALUE

The value we consider something to be of usually denotes the degree of importance that thing has in our life or a measure of benefit it provides us with. On the first glance one can see that it can be fairly difficult, if not impossible, to determine an objective measure of value. People would denote value to things depending on their preferences, life circumstances, or perceptions, among many other things. What would happen if we force the scale to exist somehow? We know peoples’ perceptions and preferences can change and that they can be changed by, for example, the way information is placed around them or how something is represented to them, regardless of what that thing is. Thus value can be synthesised within the human brain using our cognitive biases or habits. We can show something to be valuable, something which may not have any value at all apart from the frame it’s been presented in, and that frame itself may be taking advantage of one of our blindspots or biases. Saying that value is subjective doesn’t give us much useful information about value. It’s more interesting to characterise value in terms of how it’s manufactured. What’re some of the characteristics that come to your mind when you think of something “manufactured’’ or “synthesised’’? Something artificial? An invention?

Value certainly can be synthesised. It can be created within individual perceptions as well as social perceptions. Groups, organisations and nations can agree on the value of something. Though what we mostly see in the world is one group “setting up’’ the value of something and the other, considerably larger, albeit “weaker’’ group being explicitly or implicitly, externally or internally, forced to accept that value system. Of course, after a sufficient enough time, after getting used to a certain concept of value, one won’t be able to, in general, easily tell whether a certain value is being forced onto them or not, as their preferences, and wills, would be moulded according to the prevalent, habit-controlling value structure. Regardless, it is our individual choice or the choice we make, whether free or coerced, within a social setting, in any group, that sets the value of something. This does not imply, however, that objective value can, in principle, not exist.

Even if objective value can exist, what we usually regard as objective value may very well fit the bill of subjective value. I propose that any objective value needs to, at least, account for objective realities, if such as the latter exist. Plato, for example, assumes that “good’’, “justice’’ and “virtue’’ are objective realities, but unless we have lived all possible results ensuing from a decision or action that counts as good, virtuous or just, and analysed each one through an objective lens, we cannot possibly have an objective opinion of what good, justice or virtue are. Different individuals and societies would, without a doubt, have their own definitions of the above. And while there may be significant overlaps in those definitions, there possibly cannot be complete consensus. This brings me directly to what is possibly the right candidate for consideration of objective reality — our limitations. We experience our limitations — how much effort we can put in or how much we can work before we need a break, our mental and physical limits and most importantly how much, or little, time we have — throughout our lives and throughout our days, constantly. We can differ on our meanings of justice, and especially on how to achieve justice. We can differ in regard to our value systems. We cannot, however, differ with regard to our limitations, at least qualitatively speaking. Moreover, we cannot differ with regard to something, perhaps the only thing, that we know is definitely going to happen in the future, without the shadow of a doubt: we’re all going to die.

So some objective realities can exist, an exhaustive list of which can probably be put together. If one knows that one has limited time left, time becomes one of the most (objectively) valuable assets that one has. We do often waste our time, though, and mostly fail to give it as much importance as it would have if we kept in mind that death was perhaps very near. The way we live is as if death is not imminent — directly enforcing our views on an objective reality. If the net direction of our actions and habits determines our value structure, and if what we do and will can change, we can learn to consider anything as valuable. We can even learn to consider something objectively valuable as unimportant. Subjective, psychological value, our will and even more so our habits, what we do, triumphs all established facts and objective realities. The objective value or reality exists independent of our views and is available for adoption if we desire so, if we structure our habits so.

Perceived value, then, is what value for someone actually is. Our construction of reality dictates our behaviour and our behaviour shapes our reality. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? It doesn’t matter. For all practical concerns we can modify our habits, perspective and choices by choosing to act in specific ways and by allowing only selective information to enter us. The problem is actually deeper and more pervasive than one might imagine. Any perceptual data that enters us, even what we speak, what we call something has an affect on how we behave or specifically react to that thing. The massive implications of this are best left to imagination. It would be appropriate then, one would think, to study and construct systems of human interaction — social, economic and political — based on an understanding of humans rather than anything else. An immediate example of something that considers perspectives as secondary rather than primary as humans do is classical economics. It looks at things from a singular perspective — something is what it is, rather than what one thinks what it is — which is a terrible assertion. Note that the notions of economics influence all aspects of a person’s life ranging from personal to social. The economic system does this by modifying personal and social values — or rather, people do that themselves by adhering to the economic system in place without second thought. In fact, the maxim of maximising profit that forms the basis or guiding principle of the capitalistic ideology is more than an economic system, it’s way of life, a direction that people follow in every aspect of their personal as well as social lives. A psycho-social fact like a way of life results from the natural function and interaction of the mind and social systems. Social systems provide the context which over the years through repetition aids the formation of our habits, our thinking patterns, our abilities and feelings, as well as our norms and cultures, the social constructs that we adhere to. Psycho-social systems as well as their constituting elements are highly malleable. They can adapt, change and align towards a goal, provided that we trust the goal, or those that provided the goal. To conclude, trust is what allows us to change. The question is, how do you tell if the one that you trust is trying to manipulate you?