103. Robert Frank — Under the Influence: Putting Peer Pressure to Work
Feb 11, 2020
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Psychologist Robert Frank discusses the power of social context in influencing behavior, focusing on climate-friendly policies, solar panels, and electric cars. The conversation also touches on peer pressure, positive behavioral externalities, moral progress, energy options, and ethical considerations like organ selling. Exploring societal influences on safety measures, dietary choices, and economic values, the podcast delves into balancing individual choices with collective impact.
Social influence shapes behaviors like using solar panels and hybrid cars, impacting broader actions.
Transition to clean energy requires massive public investment and targeting wealthiest individuals.
Focus on meaningful actions over excessive wealth for greater personal satisfaction and societal well-being.
Contrasting views on taxation highlight clash between common good and individual rights.
Deep dives
Behavioral Contagion and Social Influence
Individual behaviors, like using solar panels and driving hybrid cars, can have a broader impact through behavioral contagion and social influence. Studies show that these actions can influence others to adopt similar behaviors, creating a positive ripple effect. The clustering of activities like solar panel installations in specific neighborhoods demonstrates the power of social influence in shaping environmental actions.
Transition to Clean Energy Sources
Transitioning to clean energy sources, such as solar and wind power, is essential for mitigating climate change. Massive public investment in decarbonization is crucial. While individual behaviors matter in influencing broader trends, the bulk of the effort requires a shift towards sustainable energy practices on a large scale.
Wealthy Individuals and Climate Funding
Raising funds for decarbonization should primarily target the wealthiest individuals who have the resources to contribute significantly. Taxing the top income earners, rather than the middle or lower classes, is essential for funding climate initiatives. By directing resources from the wealthiest, the impact on climate change solutions can be substantial.
Balancing Personal Wealth with Social Responsibility
The pursuit of personal wealth beyond a certain point does not equate to increased happiness. Instead, a focus on meaningful and purposeful actions can lead to greater satisfaction. Beyond a certain level of wealth, additional consumption does not significantly enhance well-being. Emphasizing social responsibility and collective action over excessive personal consumption can lead to a more sustainable and fulfilling society.
Perspectives on Taxes and Rights
The conversation delves into contrasting perspectives on taxes, where the average conservative individual may view taxation as an infringement on their right to property, regardless of potential benefits to society. It highlights the clash between utilitarian reasoning, focusing on the common good, and conservative views grounded in individual rights and property ownership.
Debating Natural Rights and Costs
The discussion explores the concept of natural rights versus assessed costs in enforcing and upholding these rights, using examples like the right to smoke and the ethical implications of potential harm caused. It touches on the complexities of evaluating rights from both empirical and ethical standpoints, emphasizing the need to balance rights with societal costs.
Ethical Dilemmas and Moral Arguments
The conversation extends to ethical dilemmas such as the death penalty, prompting reflections on the moral justifications for capital punishment and its implications on innocence and society. It navigates through contentious issues like executions of innocents and highlights the interconnectedness of moral, legal, and societal considerations in evaluating complex issues.
Psychologists have long understood that social environments profoundly shape our behavior, sometimes for the better, often for the worse. But social influence is a two-way street — our environments are themselves products of our behavior. Under the Influenceexplains how to unlock the latent power of social context. We are building bigger houses, driving heavier cars, and engaging in a host of other activities that threaten the planet — mainly because that's what friends and neighbors do. In the wake of the hottest years on record, only robust measures to curb greenhouse gases promise relief from more frequent and intense storms, droughts, flooding, wildfires, and famines. Robert Frank describes how the strongest predictor of our willingness to support climate-friendly policies, install solar panels, or buy an electric car is the number of people we know who have already done so. Frank and Shermer also discuss:
luck and how lives turn out
circumstances of behavior
peer pressure and pressures on peers
free will, volition, and self-control
positive behavioral exernalities, e.g., solar panels
happiness vs. purpose/meaning/comfort
utilitarianism vs. natural rights theory
abortion, capital punishment, polygamy, prostitution, and the selling of organs
behavioral contagions: smoking, problem drinking, obesity, tax cheating, bullying, and wasteful energy use.
same-sex marriage and other areas of moral progress
arms races: good and bad
climate change
belief in god and religion in decline, and
UBI (universal basic income)
Robert H. Frank received his M.A. in statistics from the University of California at Berkeley in 1971, and his Ph.D. in economics in 1972, also from U.C. Berkeley. He is the Goldwin Smith Professor of Economics at Cornell University, where he has taught since 1972 and where he currently holds a joint appointment in the department of economics and the Johnson Graduate School of Management. He has published on a variety of subjects, including price and wage discrimination, public utility pricing, the measurement of unemployment spell lengths, and the distributional consequences of direct foreign investment. For the past several years, his research has focused on rivalry and cooperation in economic and social behaviour.
