Kent Greenfield

Slightly more philosophical/political than many other popular books looking at the implications of behavioral psych, like our vulnerability to framing effects and habits. Among other things, Greenfield argues that because fish don’t know what water is—that is, our aspirations and beliefs are formed in contexts that shape what we think of as possible—we can’t limit condemnation of discrimination only when the targets “feel” discriminated against. This is an easier argument for me to accept with respect to my own preferences than some of those of others—he picks the very fraught example of the burqa; while my own intuitions tell me that it’s oppressive, I think the first step is to give women a bunch of other, real opportunities (yes, choices) in their lives. He’s best at challenging the idea that everything is okay if it was the result of “choice,” the common right-wing response to many problems today. Among other things, “if you’re given a choice between being pushed down an open elevator shaft or pushed down a staircase and you rationally pick the latter, it doesn’t mean you weren’t pushed, aren’t going down, and won’t get hurt on the way to the bottom.”

Greenfield diagnoses an equivocation on the meaning of “personal responsibility” that has worked to the benefit of individualizing rhetoric. One meaning is doing the right thing because you take responsibility; the other is that anything you choose is therefore fine (and this latter meaning does not offer any substantive theory of what the right thing might be). The latter meaning doesn’t work because of the many, many externalities we regularly impose on each other; if I don’t wear a helmet on my motorcycle, the damage I suffer in an accident will also result in costs to others.

Another issue: humans are generous in interpreting our own bad actions as the result of circumstances and not character, and stingy in interpreting the bad actions of others. Greenfield wants us to give the same empathy to other people as we regularly accord automatically to ourselves, which seems right. Especially since many of our “choices” are not particularly under our control in any meaningful sense, we should pay more attention to structural conditions under which choices are made. This also implies that the so-called “nudgers” are overselling the ability of small nudges such as structuring cafeterias to encourage healthy food choices to work in a world where, for example, big food companies have powerful incentives to keep fighting to provide us with fat, sugar, and salt. If we’re already subject to influences, especially directed influences, then nudges are just bringing a knife to a gun fight; we need more regulation.… (más)