Herd - the hidden truth about who we are

Top Banker: how banking taught us the wrong lesson about financial incentives

"Motivation does not come from financial incentives alone. Again, the financial sector has done us all a disservice in promoting the belief that massive financial compensation is necessary to motivate individuals".

So writes Mervyn King, Chairman of the bank of England. about what might levers we might pull to drive up economic activity.

It's worth cutting this out and keeping it.

If you think people only do stuff for money - or even mostly do stuff for money - you'd be wrong. 

There are lots of other sorts of reward and disincentives - not least is the social stuff that we go on about [people doing what other people do, for instance]. 

Put it this way: financial incentives presume that individuals are primarily financial optimisers, acting independently in their own interest. Paul Ormerod makes this point really well in his new book - "incentives" tend to be part of an "individualist" or "I" model of behaviour.

Some people are focused on financial incentives all the time [we call them things like "greedy mothers"], all of us can be taught to be that way [ditto] but...and there's quite lot of evidence that financial incentives can overwhelm other intrinsic motivations in certain circumstances [prosocial behaviour can actually reduce when you pay volunteers].

But - it's far from clear that financial incentives always have a positive impact in shaping behaviour in the desired direction, be it in personal health, charitable activity or criminal activity. Sometimes they actually have a negative effect [as above] becoming the reason why you continue to do something.

So if you're looking to change behaviour, please be careful with financial incentives: they don't work like they say they do [not least because we're not like they say we are] and they can actually work against the desired outcome.

Look for the other - often [pro]social - motivations.

And as we ponder our own lives, it's worth listening to wise people like Sir Ken Robinson and Hugh Macleod who remind us to focus on our passions and our talents and let the money follow those two.

Whatever it is you do, don't just do it for the money...

 

Copycats everywhere

Amusing story in the UK media today concerning the arrest of Rob Smith (above) who decided to remedy the admin error surrounding the painting gold of a Royal Mail postbox to celebrate the Olympic success of Team GB yachtsman Ben Ainslie. 

It turns out that the original site selected was in Cornwall (where Ainslie grew up) but Lymington is where both men now live. 

So Smith took the brush in his own hands and copied the handiwork seen elsewhere around the country on a postbox near to Royal Lymington Yacht Club - not a tricky thing to do but the obvious response, surely.

In sadder news, I've been struck by the huge cellotaph which has grown outside the home of Tia Sharp's family (12 year old who recently went missing). Flower by flower, card by card, candle by candle & soft toy by soft toy the shrine has grown as individual neighbours follow the example of others' actions to demonstrate sympathy with the family.

I've written about this phenomenon before (not least in HERD) as something shaped by individuals copying the behaviour of others but the thing that struck me in this exaple was the emergence of the particular grammar here: candle, flowers, cards and toys (when did the toys become part of cellotaph design? I've seen a few at cemetaries and road-crossings recently but think this is a new design feature evolving through the same means). 

And in the US, news of yet another campus shooting.

We know that many things good and bad spread via the copycat effect (the Norwegian Anders Breivik not only copied the example of other mass murders but seems to have plagiarised large chunks of unabomber manifesto, too, as if to underline this). 

But don't be mistaken: copying itself is neither good or bad.

It just is and we do it all the time.

 

Eyes down for the Copying Quiz

In advance of my Sermon on Copying and Originality at The School of Life (Sept 9th), we've put together at little quiz on copying on Facetube

Let's play along...!

More Olympics shockers

If you're not fed up with Op-Eds on what the Olympics...(sorry just fell asleep there), here's one I did for MIT press on how we learned to love...

And if you haven't had enough Boris today...

 

A bit of a do about a dude's do AKA why "meme" misses the point about memes

 

Many of you might have been distracted by the recent brouhaha in and around London but there's been some interesting discussion around memes on the interwebs recently

With NASA's Mars Curiosity Landing this fella, Bobak Ferdowsi - lead on the activity team at NASA - became a meme.

Partly on account of his "do" and partly...well, make up your own interpretations (as this nice lady does here). 

Of course, there were lots of internet memes which started during the Olympics, my favourite being the funny diving faces...

And of course my tip for the top in Autumn/Winter fashion, the Wiggo Sidie (Tour de France Winner and Olympic champion, Bradley Wiggins sports a fine and distinctive set of ginger sidies here)

which generated a host of real world echoes from Sir Steve Redgrave

To these nice chaps at the cricket (albeit before the Olympics)

And now I learn Daniele, Nick and Graham will be running a marathon in September dressed the same way...maybe using the Mirror newspaper's downloadable stick on sidies....? Download Bradley

OK so my point is this: we all find it very easy and appealing to explain the spread of such things after the fact but most of the time we do it with reference to the thing and its specific characteristics rather than the mechanics which cause it to spread. 

Indeed this is at the heart of the idea of memetics: a meme is

"information that is copied, varied and selected – but the term is usually reserved for those that hit the big time, or "go viral" [Susan Blackmore cited in the Guardian]

The term "selected" here is important - it derives from evolutionary science (memetics being itself an attempt to apply the broad principles of evolution to cultural phenomena). "Selected" infers that there is something specific (and perhaps superior) about the thing/species and its relevance to its environment which explains its success. 

Our discussion of the kind of thing we call "memes" is unfortunately also dominationed by this kind of focus on the thing (the "information"), it's unique characteristics and what its spread reveals about our culture or how people feel (as the Do-dude piece demonstrates:)

"Ultimately, memes spread because on some level, they resonate with their audience" 

While it may make very good Op-Eds and very interesting intellectual showponying, scientifically it is plain nonsense. In biological evolution and in the cultural space, things spread fundamentally because of the copying activity, mostly not because there's anything particularly important or significant about them. It's the mechanic not the thing. 

Of course, it's easy - looking backward with the benefit of hindsight and with reference to the thing and the culture, why that particular thing of all the things that might have spread did spread. But it's really hard to tell ahead of time (which is the important place to start from if you want to make your ponderings useful. 

As the great evolutionist Steven Jay Gould observed, re-winding the tape of evolution will more often than not lead to different outcomes from the one we find - we humans might well not have got so successful.

So whilst spotting the things that "go viral" (and post-rationalising why) is an interesting and diverting pass time, can we try to ask some more important questions, please? Ones less about the thing? 

Like what kind of network did this spread through? What kind of copying is it - what we call directed (focussed on authority or expertise) or undirected

And ditch the "What made the Nasa Mohawk guy such a successful meme", please?

It's not him, it's not it, it's the copiers and the copying that matters.

 

Hold the dates

 

Two upcoming dates for you in the first weekend in September.

First, for music lovers we've put together a fundraising night on the 7th at the Bull & Gate (4 bands including Kevin Duncan's Fastback, the Scratch Band and our own skatastic Big Shorts), raising money for the Bolivian streetkids project we've been supporting for ages!

Do come down - it'd be great to have a packed show! More details here. 

Then on the Sunday morning...

I'm very excited to be doing one of the School of Life's Sunday Sermons on Copying and Originality BUT you'll need to sign up here as tickets are selling pretty fast.

There'll be singing (but not signing) and some jumping (but not too much) and special biscuits and maybe a visit from ol' Lucifer himself..

We've had a lot of fun putting these together so it'd be great to see you at either/both!

Not a riot on my own

 

So 12 months on from the UK riots, a lot of thinkpieces around in the papers today

Here's one in the FT from the always reliable @Timharford who asks "Why did riots happen? And is that right question?"

And here's the one I wrote a year ago about precisely the same thing http://bit.ly/RkKuvG  

And here's me on the Today programme talking about exactly the same thing. Again a year ago.

Not in anyway suggesting there's any copying going on - Tim & I both read the same sources on the riots but if you want to know about copying, come to my Sunday Sermon on Sept 9th 

But if not here's some nice boys who want a riot on their own (rare enough for a social species like us humans)

Today in the super soaraway...

In a previous post discussing what the 5-ring Circus (see pic) is revealing about us, I mentioned in passing the lessons about national identity.

Today I want to return to this part of the subject and talk about the striking split emerging between those who see the UK through the lens of Henry VIII, Mary Poppins and Beefeaters (and feel uncomfortable at any evolution of national identity from this) and those who see us as 

human kaleidoscope of a country where those of every race, faith and background are a part of a huge and mostly happy family

Not my words but those of the Sun leader writers (yes, I know). 

Of course, it helps that our multiracial Team GB demonstrate their prowess and determination in front of us and that as we look around (in the crowd, in the pub or in front of one of those really huge screens erected in public places) at our fellow supporters we can see the same kind of shared vibrant shared identity reflected back. And that we had such a uplfiting and novel Opening Ceremony to respond to and interact around. 

But it is striking that this view of who we are is being so widely embraced as an agreed definition of who we are...

Sporting events are great for accelerating this kind of social change - remember how the Mexican Wave (la Ola) emerged from the 1986 Mexica World Cup and how other kinds of public phenomena can create widespread change (as I described in HERD) the cellotaphs (floral tributes to road accident victims) emerged from the death of Princess Diana.

Events like this bring people together and help them interact with people they wouldn't normally see and - as they do - they learn behaviour and feelings and opinions from those around them. Exposure to so many people so frequently and so strongly suggests to each of us that a. this what we now do b. this is what we now feel c. this is what we now think. 

What we do, what we feel and what we think we take from those around us. Remember that line from Oscar Wilde? 

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation

Our deeds, our feelings and our words can all become badges of membership and a challenge to them is often treated as a challenge to the tribe of which we are members [which also serves to explain the incredible bitterness of those who resist the new story]

 

And another thing about the Olympics and what it tells us about us.

Probably the smartest thing that LOCOG have done in seeking to engage the UK population is to go local.

By that I mean going 8000 miles over 70 days and visiting countless "locales" - i.e. places where real people live and thrive with other people. The hard yards, you might call it.

And to create the sense of shared excitement for those on the route - offering the chance to thousands of people to participate (and compete to do so) each of which is recognisable in their own locale - it seems to have followed all the rules of the modern engagement strategy.

The torch relay isn't a new idea but nor is it "authentically" Olympian (as the London2012 site tries to suggest) but as this piece shows, it has [ahem] interesting German roots

But it is a fantastic social diffusion idea: gathering crowds of people familiar to each other - or from the same place, at least - getting them excited with anticipation and getting them to see and feel each others' excitement. Flags, cheering, crowds, epic journey - all of these help.

Simple stuff, you might think but not something marketers today can be bothered with doing.

Go where the people are (rather than just shout at them).

Give them something (interesting & fun) to do together.

Help them see the excitement of those around them and those before and after them.

And start well ahead of time (building your audience's excitement well before you need it).

Not tricky, is it?

Key learning is this: audiences are not individuals acting independently - pairs of eyeballs or whatever the media measurement guys count.

Audiences are individuals interacting with each other around your activities. The more you encourage this further things spread.

You're building networks not sending information to individual agents.