I think you're doing the "alien looking in" thing without really checking the lived experience.
There is a different human emotional response and very different behavior betwee:
(A) I commit for the long term to do this thing (and I admit to being a bit of a bad person/failure if I don't)
vs.
(B) I check if I want to continue each year.
In the case of consent being assumed, and socially pressured, you get different results than if attention is re-directed annually to "do you wish to continue consenting"
--
The first approach is better for encouraging long-term consistency in human animals.
You have created a new game. Every argument now becomes wait untill affirmation day. You have raised the salience of the defect choice. It was always there, but obscured. It's like gambling is legal if you go to vegas. New law you must now go to vegas once a year. In which case does the average person gamble more? It used to be easy to avoid gambling, now I have to decide not to gamble each year. You have made both choices have even friction. Whereas before the cooperate choice had status quo bias on its side. There is alien looking in, and I'm bad at itterated games, this seems to be case of the latter. Let's play poker.
As others have said, the requirement of annual affirmation increases the social acceptability of not-affirming, because it makes not affirming the no-action default. Decades ago, when I suggested to my then-boyfriend the idea of a 5-year plan regarding a partnership, he adamantly rejected that (because he wanted marriage). He saw the 5-year plan as reduced commitment.
A different example of how a policy ends up giving social permission is the famous Israeli childcare study titled, A fine is a price. This is the kind of example that could have been in 'Elephant in the Room' -- parents were sometimes late in picking up their children from preschool. The preschool was getting annoyed at the unpredictability of this and instituted a late-pick-up charge of $1 per minute late. (or something that seemed severe to the preschool at the time). Late pickups more than doubled under the new policy.
It all makes perfect sense if you accept that people are lazy. In general you want the most desirable option to be the easiest one to choose. Defaults are important.
The one proposal for an "expiring approval" that makes sense to me is laws. The idea is that laws and regulations should expire by default, and need to be periodically re-enacted in order to remain in effect. Otherwise you accumulate crud in the system and there is never enough political will to rethink antiquated laws. In the US our laws for copyright are a good example.
My intuition is that people think there would be more divorces because most married couples go thru times when they doubt that they should have married. If you forced people to annually say "I do / do not renew my vow", that would force those people to either lie, or put those doubts out into the open. Keeping your doubts to yourself, and hoping things will get better, is a very common strategy.
> But I find it hard to believe we are that forgetful.
I think you're genuinely overestimating people due to Typical Mind Fallacy. You and I are intellectuals, but most people are not. They go through the motions of life without actively thinking about what they are doing. They do things a certain way today because that's what they did yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that.
Asking them them to re-affirm their commitment to something (pay back a loan, stay married, continue attending work at their job, etc.) forces them to actively think about whether or not they actually want to keep doing what they're doing, and so a non-trivial amount of them will realize that, actually, no, they don't want to keep doing the same 9-to-5 that they've been doing for the last decade or so.
But if you hadn't asked them, it would have never occurred to them to actually think about that question.
Perhaps for efficiency reasons, the typical mind operates in "cache mode" a lot. If you made a decision a long time ago for your life trajectory, you stop recomputing whether that decision is a good one or not, and by default just continue implementing that decision without re-evaluating it.
This feels like people saying that they think anchoring will effect them. I think this as well. Having the question asked annually makes the choice much more salient, and makes both options much more apparently acceptable (if it wasn't normal, why are you asking?)
"defaults matter" has long been the cry of behavioral engineers. I don't think this is a puzzle, just an acknowledgement that actual humans aren't perfectly rational decision-makers.
I don't think there's any irrationality. Yearly vows make it harder to get through the hard times. Also, they weaken the strength of the vow itself: The fact that you know you'll be asked to renew your vow every year means it isn't a vow at all; everyone knows it's really just a vow for one year.
The irrationality is the failure to see the equivalence of "option to divorce anytime" and "option to divorce anytime PLUS an annual declaration of intent". In most of us, this is not an additional strategic option, and so cannot change our behavior. In real humans, this is a nudge and an indication of acceptance of both options, so makes it easier than otherwise to divorce.
They're not equivalent. Annual declarations of intent force people to bring issues out into the open, instead of hiding them and pretending everything is okay, which is /how we get through most of our lives/.
I think the disconnect is probably that you're imagining people making a binary decision, "do I want to stay married?" But really, people are on a continuum from zero discontent to complete discontent. Lots of people who are at 40% discontent would just hang on and hope things get better, but can't honestly take a vow to renew. They're at an in-between point where things aren't so bad that they'd divorce, but not so good that they can renew the vow. Having the option of renewing the vow pushes their discontent into the open.
Repudiating your loans does not mean you are released from the obligation to repay them. Asking for a divorce is not the same as being granted a divorce. Discharge of a loan requires the action of the creditor or a judge. Divorce requires the approval of a judge.
Now that I think on it, the results listed seem plausible. Yearly affirmative causes one to think—or reevaluate—the original obligation/commitment. Inertia is said to be the greatest force in the universe. Break that, and things fly apart. Can’t see, for example, marriage, as being any different. Hence we hear of warnings wrt trying to “open marriage arrangements” to “spice things up” and the like.
an affirmation could be analogized to an annual financial report for a firm
like real firms, there are advantages and costs to obscurity or signaling the opposite of what you intend
I can't say which way people would lean in the reaffirm regime but I think the market as it exists shows the impact of 'commitment mark to market' can't really be zero
off the top of my head, marriage counseling sometimes works just by getting both parties to back off and cool down, where escalation would've increased the chances of divorce
Re. "30% of those who have an opinion say fewer loans would be repaid": But 70% said no fewer loans would be repaid. I think you would need to have also given the option "More loans would be repaid" to interpret these results.
I do not share the pessimism/optimism of the "polls"- Divorces are long and expensive; declaring not to pay loans back is part fraud, part business suicide - people won't do that really much more often, all other things staying equal. (The polls merely show that people assume such opting-out must be then somehow less of a hassle.)
Inertia, saliency, default/nudging ... sure this would matter, too, and couples might feel tense on the day of yearly renewal. What if that day comes during a low time?!? As a (several times) married man, I thought and think about divorce more than once a year - always deciding: I stay put - I am able to call the lawyer when this changes, no need/no wish to sign a form every 4th of May. - Swearing allegiance to their nation is something most people never do - and what would a refusal even mean? I declare to be an outlaw from now on? I lose my citizenship? Does watching my national team twice a year suffice?
I do not want to change my phone-number every year - and would hate to have to declare so every year. OTOH: I do love amazon reminding me of my subscriptions! Laws and subsidies should have to get renewed.
The human psyche is variable. Kurt Russell & Goldie Hawn both had failed marriages so chose not to marry but choose to be together each day.
It seems to me that most humans would fall into the category of wasting energy on worrying and wondering if they or their partner are going to be fickle and choose to leave instead of go through adversities together and grow in a supportive way.
We are all unique and in healthy relationships having different strengths can be very helpful as long as your common core values align.
The Human Race to HumanKind is a collective consciousness maturation process that starts within seal person when we accept responsibility to not only to become our best but to also join TEAMS… Together Everyone Achieves Magnificent Miraculous Magnanimous Social Support Success
You're making it so that an action needs to be taken in order to maintain the commitment, vs. an action needing to be taken to break the commitment.
If it's the same game either way, why not have marriage reaffirmations once per second, rather than once per year?
The more frequent the active affirmation requirement, the more costly the commitment is. Once a year, it probably wouldn't make a huge difference, but it would not be 0.
Also, state of mind at the time of the commitment is typically important to both parties. The commitment they are looking for is something like "I commit to you forever, and I intend to bind my future self unconditionally" rather than "I commit to you forever, conditional on my not changing my mind later, because obviously divorce isn't that hard". Offering an annual opportunity to change one's mind about the whole thing would preclude the kind of commitment that many couples intend to enter into when marrying.
Hmm...I've been watching your TwiX quizzes ...
I think you're doing the "alien looking in" thing without really checking the lived experience.
There is a different human emotional response and very different behavior betwee:
(A) I commit for the long term to do this thing (and I admit to being a bit of a bad person/failure if I don't)
vs.
(B) I check if I want to continue each year.
In the case of consent being assumed, and socially pressured, you get different results than if attention is re-directed annually to "do you wish to continue consenting"
--
The first approach is better for encouraging long-term consistency in human animals.
I can't believe that people aren't aware that they have the option to quit at anytime.
But "aware of possibility"
and "socially acceptable" are very different things.
And socially acceptable is both (i) stronger and (ii) undermined by the re-commitment.
Thinking futher:
Haven't the economists done this experiment.
Opt-in vs. opt-out 401(k)? Opt-out gets 95% participation, and opt-in gets 20 or 30%?
Defaults is a major part of human behavior, and we know that, and the economists did the experiments.
It's a signal. The reminder, or the requirement to re-commit, serves as a signal that not doing so is more acceptable than they had been assuming.
behavior.
You have created a new game. Every argument now becomes wait untill affirmation day. You have raised the salience of the defect choice. It was always there, but obscured. It's like gambling is legal if you go to vegas. New law you must now go to vegas once a year. In which case does the average person gamble more? It used to be easy to avoid gambling, now I have to decide not to gamble each year. You have made both choices have even friction. Whereas before the cooperate choice had status quo bias on its side. There is alien looking in, and I'm bad at itterated games, this seems to be case of the latter. Let's play poker.
That is an excellent summary, much shorter and sweeter than the article.
As others have said, the requirement of annual affirmation increases the social acceptability of not-affirming, because it makes not affirming the no-action default. Decades ago, when I suggested to my then-boyfriend the idea of a 5-year plan regarding a partnership, he adamantly rejected that (because he wanted marriage). He saw the 5-year plan as reduced commitment.
A different example of how a policy ends up giving social permission is the famous Israeli childcare study titled, A fine is a price. This is the kind of example that could have been in 'Elephant in the Room' -- parents were sometimes late in picking up their children from preschool. The preschool was getting annoyed at the unpredictability of this and instituted a late-pick-up charge of $1 per minute late. (or something that seemed severe to the preschool at the time). Late pickups more than doubled under the new policy.
It all makes perfect sense if you accept that people are lazy. In general you want the most desirable option to be the easiest one to choose. Defaults are important.
The one proposal for an "expiring approval" that makes sense to me is laws. The idea is that laws and regulations should expire by default, and need to be periodically re-enacted in order to remain in effect. Otherwise you accumulate crud in the system and there is never enough political will to rethink antiquated laws. In the US our laws for copyright are a good example.
My intuition is that people think there would be more divorces because most married couples go thru times when they doubt that they should have married. If you forced people to annually say "I do / do not renew my vow", that would force those people to either lie, or put those doubts out into the open. Keeping your doubts to yourself, and hoping things will get better, is a very common strategy.
> But I find it hard to believe we are that forgetful.
I think you're genuinely overestimating people due to Typical Mind Fallacy. You and I are intellectuals, but most people are not. They go through the motions of life without actively thinking about what they are doing. They do things a certain way today because that's what they did yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that.
Asking them them to re-affirm their commitment to something (pay back a loan, stay married, continue attending work at their job, etc.) forces them to actively think about whether or not they actually want to keep doing what they're doing, and so a non-trivial amount of them will realize that, actually, no, they don't want to keep doing the same 9-to-5 that they've been doing for the last decade or so.
But if you hadn't asked them, it would have never occurred to them to actually think about that question.
Perhaps for efficiency reasons, the typical mind operates in "cache mode" a lot. If you made a decision a long time ago for your life trajectory, you stop recomputing whether that decision is a good one or not, and by default just continue implementing that decision without re-evaluating it.
This feels like people saying that they think anchoring will effect them. I think this as well. Having the question asked annually makes the choice much more salient, and makes both options much more apparently acceptable (if it wasn't normal, why are you asking?)
"defaults matter" has long been the cry of behavioral engineers. I don't think this is a puzzle, just an acknowledgement that actual humans aren't perfectly rational decision-makers.
I don't think there's any irrationality. Yearly vows make it harder to get through the hard times. Also, they weaken the strength of the vow itself: The fact that you know you'll be asked to renew your vow every year means it isn't a vow at all; everyone knows it's really just a vow for one year.
The irrationality is the failure to see the equivalence of "option to divorce anytime" and "option to divorce anytime PLUS an annual declaration of intent". In most of us, this is not an additional strategic option, and so cannot change our behavior. In real humans, this is a nudge and an indication of acceptance of both options, so makes it easier than otherwise to divorce.
That's irrational, but very very common.
They're not equivalent. Annual declarations of intent force people to bring issues out into the open, instead of hiding them and pretending everything is okay, which is /how we get through most of our lives/.
I think the disconnect is probably that you're imagining people making a binary decision, "do I want to stay married?" But really, people are on a continuum from zero discontent to complete discontent. Lots of people who are at 40% discontent would just hang on and hope things get better, but can't honestly take a vow to renew. They're at an in-between point where things aren't so bad that they'd divorce, but not so good that they can renew the vow. Having the option of renewing the vow pushes their discontent into the open.
The price difference between an American option and a European option?
Repudiating your loans does not mean you are released from the obligation to repay them. Asking for a divorce is not the same as being granted a divorce. Discharge of a loan requires the action of the creditor or a judge. Divorce requires the approval of a judge.
Now that I think on it, the results listed seem plausible. Yearly affirmative causes one to think—or reevaluate—the original obligation/commitment. Inertia is said to be the greatest force in the universe. Break that, and things fly apart. Can’t see, for example, marriage, as being any different. Hence we hear of warnings wrt trying to “open marriage arrangements” to “spice things up” and the like.
Good thought for the day. Thanks.
an affirmation could be analogized to an annual financial report for a firm
like real firms, there are advantages and costs to obscurity or signaling the opposite of what you intend
I can't say which way people would lean in the reaffirm regime but I think the market as it exists shows the impact of 'commitment mark to market' can't really be zero
off the top of my head, marriage counseling sometimes works just by getting both parties to back off and cool down, where escalation would've increased the chances of divorce
'fake it till you make it'
Re. "30% of those who have an opinion say fewer loans would be repaid": But 70% said no fewer loans would be repaid. I think you would need to have also given the option "More loans would be repaid" to interpret these results.
What a horrifying contemplation.
Horrifying probably denotes truth …
In 2007, German politician suggested a marriage-recheck every 7-years. Ms. Pauli was a member of the very conservative CSU. https://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyle/glamorous-bavarian-wants-law-to-allow-7-year-itch-idUSHAR057822/ - the idea was copied from a Bavarian humorist, who in 2005 had suggested 5 years.
I do not share the pessimism/optimism of the "polls"- Divorces are long and expensive; declaring not to pay loans back is part fraud, part business suicide - people won't do that really much more often, all other things staying equal. (The polls merely show that people assume such opting-out must be then somehow less of a hassle.)
Inertia, saliency, default/nudging ... sure this would matter, too, and couples might feel tense on the day of yearly renewal. What if that day comes during a low time?!? As a (several times) married man, I thought and think about divorce more than once a year - always deciding: I stay put - I am able to call the lawyer when this changes, no need/no wish to sign a form every 4th of May. - Swearing allegiance to their nation is something most people never do - and what would a refusal even mean? I declare to be an outlaw from now on? I lose my citizenship? Does watching my national team twice a year suffice?
I do not want to change my phone-number every year - and would hate to have to declare so every year. OTOH: I do love amazon reminding me of my subscriptions! Laws and subsidies should have to get renewed.
The human psyche is variable. Kurt Russell & Goldie Hawn both had failed marriages so chose not to marry but choose to be together each day.
It seems to me that most humans would fall into the category of wasting energy on worrying and wondering if they or their partner are going to be fickle and choose to leave instead of go through adversities together and grow in a supportive way.
We are all unique and in healthy relationships having different strengths can be very helpful as long as your common core values align.
The Human Race to HumanKind is a collective consciousness maturation process that starts within seal person when we accept responsibility to not only to become our best but to also join TEAMS… Together Everyone Achieves Magnificent Miraculous Magnanimous Social Support Success
🤗💕☮️⚖️🌎🌍🌏
You're making it so that an action needs to be taken in order to maintain the commitment, vs. an action needing to be taken to break the commitment.
If it's the same game either way, why not have marriage reaffirmations once per second, rather than once per year?
The more frequent the active affirmation requirement, the more costly the commitment is. Once a year, it probably wouldn't make a huge difference, but it would not be 0.
Also, state of mind at the time of the commitment is typically important to both parties. The commitment they are looking for is something like "I commit to you forever, and I intend to bind my future self unconditionally" rather than "I commit to you forever, conditional on my not changing my mind later, because obviously divorce isn't that hard". Offering an annual opportunity to change one's mind about the whole thing would preclude the kind of commitment that many couples intend to enter into when marrying.
Once every five years would be a true test