How To Manipulate People Into Wearing Masks

That slick human manipulator, Mr. Nudge himself, Cass Sunstein, is out with a new paper, The Meaning of Masks.

It is to be published in  Journal of Behavioral Economics for Policy.

Here is the abstract:

Many incentives are monetary, and when private or public institutions seek to change behavior, it is natural to change monetary incentives. But many other incentives are a product of social meanings, about which people may not much deliberate, but which can operate as subsidies or as taxes. In some times and places, for example the social meaning of smoking has been positive, increasing the incentive to smoke; in other times and places, it has been negative, and thus served to reduce smoking. With respect to safety and health, social meanings change radically over time, and they can be dramatically different in one place from what they are in another. Often people live in accordance with meanings that they deplore, or at least wish were otherwise. But it is exceptionally difficult for individuals to alter meanings on their own. Alteration of meanings can come from law, which may, through a mandate, transform the meaning of action into a bland, “I comply with law,” or into a less bland, “I am a good citizen.” Alteration of social meanings can also come from large-scale private action, engineered or promoted by “meaning entrepreneurs,” who can turn the meaning of action from, “I am an oddball,” to, “I do my civic duty,” or, “I protect others from harm.” Sometimes subgroups rebel against new or altered meanings, produced by law or meaning entrepreneurs, but often those meanings stick and produce significant change.

From the paper:

Because of the power of social meanings, statements and actions often signal certain virtues or vices, or offer a statement of social identity, a sense of the tribe to which one belongs. In the context of the coronavirus pandemic, getting very close to other customers in a grocery store had, in many places, a clear social meaning: “I don’t care about your health.” For Jews, wearing a yarmulke is of course a statement of affiliation, and its valence will be different among different groups. A few decades ago, the meaning of calling women “Miss” or “Mrs.” shifted abruptly, and those who used those terms, or instead “Ms.,” offered a certain social signals (often but not always intended). In American universities, calling students “Mr.” or “Ms.” recently came to have a new social meaning, because many people thought that doing that had naïve or offensive connotations with respect to gender identity. When people speak or act in certain ways, it might be because the social meaning is like a tax or a subsidy, not in general, but with the particular groups or community that most matters to them. In these respects, social meanings can operate as substitutes for economic incentives or instead as complements; they can also push in competing directions. Rather than taxing or fining people for (say) smoking cigarettes, private and public institutions might try to stigmatize smoking, and enlist a new or altered social meaning. For example, they might try to make smoking signal “indifference to the health of others.” Alternatively, a cigarette tax might accompany a social meaning tax. Or a penalty of fine (on, say, the use of illegal drugs) might have to compete with a social meaning subsidy, in places where the use of illegal drugs signals independence and defiance of authority (in a way that relevant people admire). We should distinguish here between extrinsic and intrinsic motivations. I am emphasizing that social meanings create an extrinsic motivation: People do not want to incur the opprobrium, or even the raised eyebrows, of others.

Do not for a minute think these are academic musings of an Ivory Tower scholar.

This is the real world manipulator, for the benefit of government, thinking out loud as to how to use "social meanings" as a method to manipulate people, in particular right now with regard to the use of masks.

 -RW