BEHAVIOR

THINKING SOCIALLY
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Figure 2.1 What others think, expect, and do influences our own preferences and decisions
Humans are inherently social. In making decisions, we are often affected by what others are thinking and doing and what they expect from us. Others
can pull us toward certain frames and patterns of collective behavior.
imperceptibly, shaping individuals, just as flowing
water shapes individual stones in a riverbed. Policy
makers can either work with these social currents
when designing interventions or ignore them and find
themselves swimming upstream. Just as a dam taps a
river’s kinetic energy to generate electricity, interventions
can tap sociality to facilitate cost-effective social
change. This chapter offers examples of how sociality
can serve as a starting point for new kinds of development
interventions.
Social preferences and
their implications
Social recognition and the power of
social incentives
Everyone knows that economic incentives can influence
behavior. 2 What is less commonly recognized is
that social incentives can also exert a powerful effect
on behavior. In fact, social rewards, such as status and
recognition, can motivate people to exert effort and