Daniel Kahneman

You know, when you want to influence somebody's behavior, that's a very big insight.

I've always thought that this is the best psychological idea ever.

You know, so far as I'm concerned.

But it's that when you want somebody to move from A to B in terms of their behavior, you can think of it that there are two ways of doing it.

You can push them, or you can ask the question, why aren't they doing B already?

which is an unusual question.

So then when you ask, why not?

Why aren't they doing B?

They ought to, as I think they ought to.

Then you get a list of what's going to win.

That's the psychologist, my guru, and that's my hero and many people's hero.

He spoke of restraining forces.

I mean, so there are reasons why they're not where you want them to be.

So he spoke of behavior as an equilibrium.

There are forces that are pushing you one way, forces that are pushing you the other way.

So how loud you speak, how fast you drive, it's easy to think of it as an equilibrium.

And what we tend to do when we want to move people from A to B is we push them.

We add to the driving forces

And Kurt Lewin's insight was that this is not what you should do.

You should actually work on the restraining forces and try to make them weaker.