The Wall Street Journal provides the grist for our persuasion mill with a story of a government intervention employing persuasion principles.  In Peoria, IL, the police employ the “Armadillo,” a refurbished Brinks truck packed with high tech surveillance gear and a large visible sign declaring it a “Nuisance, Property, Surveillance Vehicle.”  The vehicle is, thus far, indestructible and when left parked in high crime neighborhoods, crime falls.

As the story develops, it appears that the surveillance features of the truck (cameras and other recording devices) are not the decisive feature.  The key attribute of the truck is its appearance.  “The ugliness of the Armadillo is what makes it unique,” says Jim Pasco, executive director of the National Fraternal Order of Police. “A police car is not a particular stigma, but if people see that thing in front of your house, they know something bad is going on in there.”

Police claim and offer ancedotal evidence that when the truck is parked in a high crime area or in front of a problem house (legitimate compliants from neighbors about noise or drugs), crime in the immediate area drops almost immediately.  Targeted residents also move out quickly, seeking less scrutiny.

This intervention clearly uses several Persuasion Rules.  Consider.

You Can Get Farther with a Kind Word and a Gun than with Either Alone.  The Armadillo is both a “word” and a “gun.”  It represents sheer power and authority – it a police vehicle, it is nearly indestructible, and it watches you ceaselessly – and it also uses psychology and persuasion – the 24 hour surveillance, the clear label of Nuisance.

All Persuasion Is Local.  A police officer was pondering how to solve this kind of crime when he drove into his station and noticed an old and faded Brinks truck sitting in the parking lot.  It had been purchased for one dollar for a vague purpose of security.  He hit on the idea of the Armadillo and built a persuasion plan from his local resources.

More Is the Enemy of Less.  Police could put a lot more personnel on the streets to handle problems like this.  They could have officers patrolling in car or on foot.  Of course, that would cost a lot more and could get more people, police and innocent bystanders, hurt.  That big ugly truck with a large sign and continuous surveillance is a much simpler solution.

And finally:  It’s About The Other Guy, Stupid.  The truck actually works.  Deadbeat, drug-using, delinquent people don’t like a truck watching them and especially don’t like being labelled as a “nuisance.”  As the story demonstrates, law-abiding citizens call in and request the truck be parked near them if necessary.  They don’t feel intimidated or shamed.

From a conceptual perspective, I’d say this persuasion play combines both arguments and cues.  If you are engaged in criminal or near-criminal behaviors, a strong argument would be surveillance.  A cop doesn’t have to be there in real time because a camera is.  You can certainly move to another location, but then the cops can move the truck, too.  It makes crime more difficult.  The truck may also create arguments that you will be ridiculed and dismissed in your own neighborhood.

The play can also operates as both a norm-based cue and an authority cue.  The Comparison Cue works as, “If other people are doing it, you should, too.”  In this instance, the norm is be law abiding.  If the Armadillo is parked in front of your house, you clearly violate the Cue.  Passersby don’t have to know much or think much, just observe the truck and know that there lives someone who has no respect for norms or rules.  Further, the markings on the vehicle clearly demonstrate the Authorities Are Here and They are doing the job.  Word up, fools.

The Armadillo is a nice play that reveals people who know how to do their job with persuasion.  There are some smart and deep cops in Peoria.

I found a great news story that illustrates a very different way of thinking about energy and enviromental policy.  We start, surprisingly enough, with Green Christians.

Green Christians are like secular Greens.  Both want to save the planet, but they tend to think about that goal with different approaches.  The Green movement usually has a strong scientific basis using theory and research to explain and measure both the problem and the solution.  They organize large political movements and seek government change in laws, regulation, and taxation.  They organize big splashy PR events and use media campaigns to influence folks.

Green Christians take a much smaller approach and think about things an individual can do to go Green.  The news article details several great examples.  Green Christians are selling their second cars and using bicycles.  They put in large gardens, grow a variety of crops, put them up, and save hundreds of dollars.  They hang out their laundry rather than use a clothes dryer.  They spend less time with computer driven entertainment and more time on family and community sports and recreation.

Now, this article is informative for three reasons.

First, if you are not particularly religious, it gives you a friendly and noncontroversial look at the daily activity of plain, just-folks Believers.  You don’t have to fight about abortion or evolution or school prayer and see the common bonds that unite all of us as people being people.

Second, it demonstrates a great example of self-reliant Green rather than the Big Brother Green of government regulation, taxation, and nagging.  None of the folks described in this article are marching in the streets, organizing community groups, or trying to get a law passed.  They are going Green all by themselves.  It gives you another way to think and act Green and it does not require either a secular or a sacred commitment.

Third, and to the main persuasion point of all of this:  I cannot help but note the healthy lifestyle effects of Christian Green.  Imagine if you and your family:  Stopped driving and started biking; stopped throwing clothes in the dryer, but hauled them out to a line for drying; and dug up a 50 X 100 foot plot of dirt, planted crops, weeded by hand and without pesticides, pulled ripe vegetables from the ground or vine or bush, then canned them for winter; unplugged the TV, computer, and iPod and went out in the yard and played catch or croquet.

If you did this, how much weight would you lose?  Forget the Green, save the Planet, hype.  Just think about the physical lifestyle.  If everyone engaged in what I’m calling Lean Green, the US would not have an obesity problem.  Everyone would look the way they did back in the 1950s when I was a kid growing up in rural, small town Missouri.  Everybody would be walking, running, lifting, carrying, digging, dragging, stretching . . . just plain moving around.

Lean Green largely unplugs from technology and makes the human body do more of the functions of life rather than using a human made machine.  And that would massively and favorably change the lifestyle problems that plague the health so many people today.

Now, contrast this simple, unplugged, and obviously effective Lean Green with all the science that drives lifestyle interventions for the obesity problem.  They involve pills or government mandated, taxpayer financed plans or computer workstations on treadmills or plans to make people just fidget more often or massive media persuasion campaigns or calorie counts on menus, banned foods like trans fats in New York City, and hotline phone numbers sewn into plus sized new clothes.

Just compare the common sense effect of Lean Green to the scientific effect of all the NIH funded research on lifestyle interventions.  You do not need to a randomized controlled trial to see that our use of technology overwhelmingly causes the negative health effects of our lifestyle and that all the taxpayer funded science from the Federal government amounts to a piddling spit in the wind of change.

Yet, I’ve wasted a lot of my time and skill as a persuasion agent trying to do “scientific” interventions on lifestyle.  And the reason it was a waste was because the science of lifestyle completely misses the major factors that drive the current obesity problem.  It focuses upon incredibly baroque, nuanced, and subtle effects that requires millions of dollars of effort to produce virtually no change.

And, related to this scientific failure, consider how little weight the Green movement gives to the lifestyle implications of a Green approach.  We should not think about this as a Green thing, but as a Lean thing.  Sure, there are energy and environment implications.  The less carbon we burn in machines, the less damage we do to the planet.  The less carbon we burn, the less dependent we become on other countries energy resources.  All that’s great, but the real selling point of Green is Lean.

With everyone going long on Nudge, perhaps it is time to consider the short position.  A little due diligence is a good thing, isn’t it?  Begin with a fair recap on Nudge.

Nudge claims (web, blog, and book) that a persuasion play called “choice architecture” will have large, observable, and practical effects in public policy.  Through selection and sequencing of choice options, people can be nudged to make the wise move.  Smart people acclaim this claim and, stop me if you’ve heard this before, note it flows from Nobel-prize winning research.  Nudge is the intellectual’s tool of choice:  bright, nuanced, effective.  Please, do your own search on Nudge to verify its value, reputation, and impact.

But, Nudge will not work.  Consider then select from the following choice options.

1.  If Nudge works, why tell anyone?  Nudge is proposed as one powerful persuasion play that could change elections, marketplaces, gee whiz, Life As We Know It.  If it’s that good, you don’t need to talk about it.  Just Do It and get what you want . . . if it really works.  Yet, Nudgers are talking about it and not doing it.

2.  Nudge does not produce large, observable, and practical effects.  While Nudges can produce real effects in the real world, these will be, at best, small.  In other words, you’ll need a statistician to find or invent them.  My reading of this research literature and my practical experience as a Federal government administrator in both the Clinton and Bush administrations would view the Nudge effects as small.  This is not a quantitative quibble between gearhead bean counters, but a Big Deal because of my next point.

3.  The Federal Government eats small effects for appetizers.  As anyone who’s worked in the Executive Branch knows, one GS-5 in the action path can unintentionally kill a small effect and no one will know it.  A year after Nudging, the Nudge Czar will ask to see a report.  The Czar will then find several disconcerting typos and grammatical errors, omissions and revisions that inexplicably penetrated those deeply nuanced Nudges, rendering them inert, incoherent, or, more likely, counter-poised to produce the wrong choice.  And no one will know how this happened.  That’s just what the Fed does with anything involving nuance – with nuance being another way of saying “small effects.”

4.  Nudge is not new.  While the Cool Table is pulling up a chair for Nudge as the New New Thing, it is not.  Since the 1970s a dazzling and diverse array of researchers have explored the “dual process” models of cognition, of which Nudge is neither the newest or oldest, best or worst.  Nudge and “choice architecture” can be classified as a persuasion cue that operates with low WATT processors ambling along the peripheral route.  Thus, fundamental ideas of Nudge are well known, widespread, and most importantly, already available in the marketplace of ideas, markets, and government.  Nudge thus operates at a discount.

5.  Nudgers have lost the element of surprise.  Assume I’m wrong on everything I’ve written so far.  Nudge is new, exciting, different, large, and practical.  It will work exactly as claimed.  Except now everyone on the other side of a Nudge knows it and can move to defeat it.  How?  I can think of two killer counterattacks off the top of my head.  But, I’m not a Nudger who tells everyone in advance how I’m going to Nudge them.  If you Nudge, do you really think I’m the only citizen who’s got a bead on this?

6.  Nudge is transparent and self-confessed bias.  Nudgers offer choice architecture as a libertarian paternalism for handling the great mass of unsophisticated citizens daily making self-destructive choices.  Nudge saves them from themselves.  Anyone who claims to be a Master of Persuasion and then draws a bright and shining line between the few sophisticated sources and the great mass of unsophisticated receivers is at once more maladroit and less Machiavellian, a terrible proportion for a change agent.

7.  If Nudge works, it’s not because of the Nudge.  Again, imagine I’m wrong (take a seat by my wife, she’ll tell the rest of that story).  If good outcomes flow from clever Nudges, I’ll argue under the auspices of that other Chicago school philosopher, Al Capone, who noted:  You can get farther with a kind word and a gun than with a kind word alone.  Nudges, the kind words, will always take place within the Fed Gun of fine, imprisonment, or public humiliation.  Sure, Nudge’s persuasive.  Yeah.  Nudge and me.  And, what, this little thing called an indictment?

8.  Nudgers have not thought the idea through to its end.  Readers grab onto the shiny, bright, and facile features of Nudge – it makes the world a better place, it’s based on Nobel Prize winning research, it is subtle – and do not think the idea out far at all.  How is Nudge like other existing ideas?  What is a “large” or “practical” impact?  What happens when you move from the lab to the Federal government?  Just how easy and effective can something be when the “other guy” knows about it?  Can you get both Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell to support it?  How will the Supreme Court judge laws and regulations confounded with persuasion tactics?

9.  Nudge won’t work because the Republicans have already tried it.  Didn’t the Bush Administration use Nudge in the run-up to the war in Iraq?  Recall the selection and sequencing of choice options the Administration used.  Remember, then, that nearly 70% of American citizens supported the invasion.  It’s not as catchy as “Bush Lied, People Died,” but “Bush Nudged, People Judged” is the more accurate bumper sticker.

10.  Finally, Nudge won’t work in the Federal government because the government already has an effective change tool:  Push.  You don’t do something as small, fragile, and ephemeral as Nudge when you can simply walk up to citizens and Push.  Governments just call it something like Nudge to divert your attention.

So, what’s the due diligence on Nudge?  If you’re doing research, writing for the chattering classes, or looking for a seat at the Cool Table, go long on Nudge.  Otherwise, go short, pull up a chair, and enjoy the show (audio clip with script).

Les Paul, the great guitarist and electric guitar innovator, died today at the age of 94.  Millions of electric guitarists mourn his passing.  Here are a couple of shots of my Les Paul standard, lefty of course, given as a tribute to his legacy.

Let’s rip some Santana or a buttery jazz.

Thanks, Mr. Paul.

We dropped out subscriptions to several specific health and medicine journals and now keep an eye on that literature through “Journal Watch.”  It’s a great  biweekly summary of the research published in a wide range of journals.  The August 15, 2009 issue contains two posts that demonstrate, gasp, persuasion principles operate on physicians!

The first post comes from a research study that looks at Pay For Performance (and, yes, there’s a webspeak acronym, P4P) that looks at a new payment program in the United Kingdom.  Physicians are paid based on performance outcomes on 136 indicators of high quality care.  Thus, if some physicians get their clients to have better outcomes, those physicians get more money.  If the clients do worse on the outcomes, physicians get less.

Guess what?  Patient outcomes improved on most measures (asthma, diabetes, and coronary heart disease) and patients working with physicians under P4P noticed no difference in access to care or quality of interpersonal interactions.  However, the Journal Watch editorialist managed to worry about potential, but unstated, pernicious side effects from P4P.

In case you missed it the medical community is incredibly sensitive about payment systems not only because of keep your hands offa my stack, Jack, but also because of concerns about fairness, equality, and an effective system.  Money has weird effects and is clearly a major problem.  This P4P program appears to keep people healthier, focus physicians on outcomes, distinguish and reward good versus bad performance, and deliver a product people like and trust.  But, the editorialist, speaking on behalf of all physicians, primarily worries about unstated, but bad side effects.

Here’s the persuasion play:  Reinforcement theory (aka “For Me?) works even on physicians.  The When-Do-Get can focus physicians on efficacious treatments, make their clients healthier, and properly reward (or punish) physician behavior.  Yet, this will appear to be surprising and perhaps worrisome news to some physicians who seem to think that the rules of human nature do not apply to them.

The second post reveals no worries about pernicious side effects for physicians, but may surprise you.  Journal Watch offers a full page Feature on getting physicians to change from a proven, ineffective treatment to a treatment that actually works.  You might need to read that again because it doesn’t sound right.  “You mean my doc may be doing something that is not scientifically proven?  Is that what you wrote?”

Yes.

The treatment is called, “tight glucose control,” and is aimed at diabetics.  Currently, many physicians engage in tight control, but, as the Feature writer demonstrates, the science on this practice indicates that it is not effective and should not be used.  The Feature writer notes and discusses several scientific publications, going back to the 1970s, but more fully developed in the 1990s, that demonstrate why tight control should not be used.

The Feature writer then states,

“Social psychology literature suggests that people cling to belief even in the face of mountains of evidence to the contrary.  But, as physicians and scientists, we should embrace change when new evidence consistently contradicts our prior beliefs and clinical practice.”

This sounds like something you shouldn’t be able to make up, but there it is.  A rule of persuasion is:  All people always resist significant change.  Sure, when it applies to switching from paper bags to reusable bags at the grocery store, yeah, people will resist change.  But, physicians resisting persistent, consistent, scientific evidence that tells them to stop that and do this?

Yep.

Persuasion applies even to persuasion and scientists.  In fact, in my own experience both for myself and the many physicians and scientists (and scholars and intellectuals and every other “smart” group) with whom I’ve worked, we can be some of the most resistent people in the world.  Our intelligence actually works against us as we find ways to refute new information.

Persuasion reveals.