Humans consistently make the same mistake about understand the motivations, the inhibiting and promoting pressures of other people. We assume that everyone else is exactly like us. Therefore, when we build systems and institutions that attempt to alter behavior, we encode our own motivations and desires as the impetus.
I.E. why we have UX researchers, do user testing, A/B testing etc when we develop products. Our instincts about what other folks will pay for/want/value/use are rarely totally accurate.
“I don’t want to go to jail, therefore, jail will be a globally effective crime deterrent” is demonstrably false for this subset of the population.
From a purely behavioral science perspective, we know that humans deeply discount uncertain future downsides compared to short term certain upsides.
If you are interested in this sort of stuff, I strongly suggest reading Mark Kleinman, particularly his work on “swift, certain, fair” as an effective means to address this population and challenge.
I.E. why we have UX researchers, do user testing, A/B testing etc when we develop products. Our instincts about what other folks will pay for/want/value/use are rarely totally accurate.
“I don’t want to go to jail, therefore, jail will be a globally effective crime deterrent” is demonstrably false for this subset of the population.
From a purely behavioral science perspective, we know that humans deeply discount uncertain future downsides compared to short term certain upsides.
If you are interested in this sort of stuff, I strongly suggest reading Mark Kleinman, particularly his work on “swift, certain, fair” as an effective means to address this population and challenge.