“The search for clumsy solutions”

This article, written by Matthew Taylor, talks about the use (in recent years) of cultural theory and Social Sciences in the political decisions of the UK government.

Actually government leaders include increasingly insights from fields such as social psychology, social marketing, neuroscience and of social/cultural anthropology, because those areas give knowledge about of what drive human behaviour.

The article says that leaders need to identify which are the most useful knowledge contributed by this findings and perspectives of the cultural theory. Matthew Taylor says that this approach doesn’t offer simple answers but it can be useful to give clues about why some government strategies fail and why there are others that are so successful. In general, this idea of behaviour change focuses on strategies of communication and incentive rather than compulsion.

Taylor explain that since 2004, after a report on changing behaviour from the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit, the idea of behaviour changes become a very important part of social and public policy debate.

Behaviour change has become a “key objective” of public health and environmental policy. In addition, this perspective affects in very different areas as obesity, recycling, sexual health, energy use and many others.

Behaviour change considers humans actions in three levels of mental process:
-“the automatic and hard-wired”: the things we do because we are human beings
-“the tacit and culturally conditioned”: the things we do because of cultural and social structures
- “the consciously arrive at”: the things we decide to do in our social actions

http://www.guardianpublic.co.uk/solace-taylor-october