2018.8.30纽约时报：城市可以用什么办法影响你变得文明
How cities trick you into better behaviour
城市可用什么办法影响你变得文明
“Do you see the sets of traffic lights on either side?” says Anand Damani, pointing out a chaotic four-way junction from the balcony of his Mumbai apartment. Cars have stopped, blocking the pedestrian crossing. Both pedestrians and cars whose turn it is to move are stuck.
达马尼（Anand Damani）站在他孟买公寓的阳台上指着陷入混乱的十字路口说："你看见路两边的红绿灯了吗？"汽车停了下来，挡住了人行横道。行人和汽车都一动不能动。
“There’s no need for two sets of signals at the same junction,” Damani points out. “Without an identical signal on the other side, drivers would stop at the right place so that they could retain a line of sight with the signal.”
达马尼指出："同一个路口没必要有两套信号灯。如果不是两边都有灯号，司机会停在右边，这样他们还能看到信号灯的指示"。
Damani’s suggestion is simple, yet effective. One small change could make errant drivers do the right thing, without them even knowing it. But then he’s an expert. He is a behavioural scientist in a country where the field is yet to convince the government. “You don’t need to make people mindful to change their behaviour,” Damani says. “Subconscious nudges through the environment also work. We call this behavioural design.”
达马尼的建议很简单却十分有效。小小的改变就能让莽撞的司机变得规规矩矩，他们自己可能还没意识到。达马尼是位专家，一位行为学家，但是孟买政府还没意识到行为科学的重要性。达马尼说："改变人们的行为没有必要让他们知道，通过环境潜意识的助推（nudges）也可起作用，这叫做行为设计。"
Damani started a behavioural design firm, Briefcase, back in 2013, along with his partner Mayur Tekchandaney. Their first project, Bleep, aimed to reduce Mumbai’s rampant car horn honking problem.
2013年达马尼和他的伙伴特克钱达尼（Tekchandaney）一起创办了行为设计公司"公文包"（Briefcase）。他们的首个项目哔哔（Bleep），就是为了减少孟买滥按汽车喇叭的问题。
The method was simple: over six months, Anand and his partner offered their own cars to participants to drive for a week. The vehicles were fitted with a buzzer that would light up and go off each time the driver pressed the horn and had to be manually switched off. It also recorded honking data that was used for analysis. The result: drivers reduced their honking by an average of 61%, because the buzzer was such a nuisance.
方法很简单：六个月来，达马尼和他的伙伴将自己的汽车提供给参与者使用。他们的车上都装了蜂鸣器，司机每次按喇叭时蜂鸣器就会闪烁，而且必须用手才能关闭。蜂鸣器还能记录按喇叭的数据以供研究。结果司机按喇叭的次数平均降低了61%，因为蜂鸣器实在太烦人了。
Damani describes Bleep as a simple, practical and low-cost solution to a big urban problem: noise pollution. “If the government wants to reduce noise levels in cities, it should make Bleep mandatory in all vehicles. We even installed it in the official vehicles of the Joint Transport Commissioner of Maharashtra, but it hasn't moved further from there,” he says.
达马尼认为哔哔简单实用花费少就能解决大的城市问题：噪声污染。他说："如果政府想要减少城市噪音水平，所有车辆都应该强制装上哔哔。我们甚至在马哈拉施特拉邦联合运输委员的公车上装了哔哔，但是除此之外别无进展。"
Beyond India other countries have been quicker to embrace behavioural design at government level. The UK, for instance, has a well-established, successful ‘nudge unit’, a public-private partnership called the Behavioural Insights Team. Its projects include helping persuade people to pay tax on time, increasing organ donor numbers and convincing students from low-income backgrounds to aim for top universities.
相比印度，其他国家在政府层面上很快就接受了行为设计。比如说，英国有完善成功的公私合作的"助推单位"——行为洞察力团队（ Behavioural Insights Team）。其项目包括说服人们按时缴税，提高器官捐赠数量，让低收入家庭的孩子立志考一流大学等。
Meanwhile in the US the Obama administration created a similar unit, the Social and Behavioural Sciences Team (though it appears to have been mothballed by the Trump government). From helping people conserve electricity to suicide prevention, introducing subconscious ‘nudges’ has proved to be more efficient than the usual awareness campaigns that typically use logic to explain to people why they should or should not do something.
在美国，奥巴马政府也成立了类似的单位——社会和行为科学团队（虽然已经被特朗普政府束之高阁）。该团队致力于帮助人们节约用电和防止自杀等，事实证明，潜意识的"助推"比常见的运用逻辑向人们解释应该做什么及不应该做什么的宣传运动更为有效。
Take public transport, in Mumbai on average between nine and 10 people die each day from train-related accidents, many involving people taking a short-cut across train tracks. In 2010, the Indian Railways approached behavioural architecture firm, Final Mile, to find a way to reduce the deaths.
就公共运输而言，孟买平均每天有九到十人死于铁路有关的事故，许多人是因穿越铁轨抄近道出事。2010年，印度铁路公司向行为建筑公司"最后一英里"寻求帮助，以减少死亡数量。
Among the experiments Final Mile conducted, one in particular grabbed the spotlight for its shocking grotesquery. At Mumbai’s Wadala station, which was notorious for deaths on the track, it put up big billboards with images showing the facial expressions of a man being run over by a train. The photos (which looked alarmingly real but were staged) were arranged in three panels, amplifying the horror. The experiments, which also included painting yellow lines on sleepers to help people gauge the speed of approaching trains, succeeded deterring people from crossing the tracks. The number of deaths at the station went from 40 in the year prior to the experiment to 10 after Final Mile's measures.
最后一英里所做的尝试中，有一项因异常怪诞格外引人注目。孟买的沃达拉火车站以死于穿越路轨的人很多而著名。该公司在这个火车站竖起一个巨大广告牌，是一个男子被火车碾过的惊恐万状的面部表情。广告一组三张图片（看上去非常逼真，但其实是假的），放大了被火车碾过时的恐惧。该公司还尝试在火车铁轨的枕木上画黄线，帮助人们判断驶来的火车的速度，成功阻止人们横越铁轨。采取最后一英里公司措施前一年，沃达拉火车站的死亡人数是40人，采取了措施后降低到了10人。
“People don’t change faulty behaviour despite awareness, as humans are not rational beings. So you need new theories to change people’s behaviour,” says Biju Dominic, co-founder of Final Mile.
多米尼克（Biju Dominic）是最后一英里的创始人之一。他说："即使意识到危险，人们也不会改正错误行为，因为人类并不理智。所以需要新的理论改变人类的行为。"
The idea that human beings are irrational goes against classical economics, which assumes that all decision-making is based on logic. It is the premise for behavioural economics, which also incorporates psychology and cognitive neuroscience into the discipline. In 2017, American economist and creator of the “nudge theory” Richard Thaler won the Nobel Prize for Economics for his pioneering work in this new field. But is behavioural science as promising and innocuous as it seems? Could human irrationality also be exploited, not just manipulated?
认为人类并不理智这一观点有悖于古典经济学，因为古典经济学认为人类所做的决定都基于理性。但人类行为并非都基于理性却是行为经济学的前提，该学科将心理学和认知神经学也纳入人类经济行为的研究范围。2017年，美国经济学家，"助推理论"的创始人塞勒（ Richard Thaler）因其在这一新领域的开创性工作荣获诺贝尔经济学奖。但是行为科学如现看起来一样前景广阔毫无害处吗？人类的不理性是否可能被利用，而不仅仅是被操纵？
Last year, Uber, the global taxi-hire service, found itself on the wrong side of nudging. As the New York Times reported, Uber used “videogame techniques, graphics and non-cash rewards to prod drivers into working longer and harder”, arguably to the company’s gain. For instance, Uber preloaded the next journey before the current one had ended, enticing drivers to continue working without a break. Some local Uber managers adopted female personas online so that the largely male driver workforce might be more inclined to their suggestions. Finally, when drivers logged out for the day, the app would encourage them to keep working, citing arbitrary targets such as beating the previous day’s earnings, the paper reported.
去年，国际出租汽车公司"优步"就走向了利用助推的歧途。纽约时报报道，优步利用"游戏技术，图表以及非现金奖励诱导司机长时工作，"以获取更多利润。比如，优步会在当前行程结束之前预先载入下一行程，诱导司机不间断工作。一些当地的优步经理在网上使用的是女性身份，以让占多数的男性司机更易听取他们的建议。纽约时报报道说，最后，司机结束一天工作准备登出优步网时，优步的应用程式会鼓励司机继续工作，提出随机的目标建议，比如要超过前一天的收入等。
“Nudges and other uses of behavioural science to change behaviour are supposed to be used in the best interest of the people whose behaviour the nudges are trying to change,” says Francesca Gino, a behavioural scientist and professor at the Harvard Business School.
吉诺（Francesca Gino）是哈佛商学院的行为科学家和教授，他说"助推和其他行为科学的使用应该是为了试图改变其行为的对象的利益。"
Dominic of Final Mile seems to agree with her. Initially, his company helped brands like Unilever market more successfully using behavioural science. “But soon enough, we realised that this science had more width than just helping to sell soap. We eventually moved out of marketing into tackling social problems like open defecation and garbage disposal,” he adds.
最后一英里的多米尼克似乎也同意她的看法。最开始，他的公司利用行为科学帮助像联合利华这样的品牌市场做营销。他补充道，"很快我们就发现，行为科学能做的不只是帮助卖肥皂。我们最终不做市场营销而是处理像随地大小便和随手乱扔垃圾这样的社会问题。"
Final Mile has been approached once again by the Indian government – this time to use behavioural science to prevent speeding on the Mumbai-Pune Expressway. In the past, the firm successfully reduced speeding by 50% on the National Highway 44 between Hyderabad and Bengaluru. Then, Dominic’s team painted sets of parallel white lines that ran across the road. The space between these lines narrowed as a driver approached an accident-prone zone. The driver, fooled into thinking that the vehicle was accelerating, involuntarily reached for the brake.
印度政府再次向最后一英里寻求帮助，这次是利用行为科学防止孟买浦那高速公路的超速行为。该公司曾成功减少了连接海德拉巴和班加罗尔的44号国道50%的超速。多米尼克的团队在孟买浦那高速公路上画上了平行的白线。靠近事故频发区域时，白线间的距离缩短，司机误以为汽车在加速，会不自觉踩刹车减低速度。
According to Dominic, nudges could also be as simple as a change of name. “When you call it the Mumbai-Pune ‘Expressway’, it gives people the impression that the road is meant to be sped on.”
根据多米尼克的说法，助推办法可以很简单，在这里只要改个名字就行了。"把这条公路叫做'孟买浦那高速公路'，人们会认为在这条路上开车需要加速。"
