When it comes to discrimination, Americans pride ourselves on how far we've come. Racial segregation is history. Explicit sex discrimination is banned. Same-sex marriage is the law of the land. But amidst all the progress, the male-female wage gap persists, and it's big.
— Cass Sunstein
Voters like to fall in love with presidential candidates, at least a little bit.
What's disgusting about genetic modification of food? I speculate that many people have an immediate, intuitive sense that what's healthy is what's 'natural,' and that efforts to tamper with nature will inevitably unleash serious risks - so-called Frankenfoods. The problem with that speculation is that it's flat-out wrong.
Facebook seems to think that it would be liberating if everyone's News Feed could be personalized so that people see only and exactly what they want. Don't believe it. That's a prison.
If a major source of the nation's news is personalizing user experiences, people with different points of view will end up in echo chambers of their own design. Facebook didn't create that problem, but it shouldn't aggravate it.
The U.S. is an optimistic nation. No candidate has ever won the American presidency by speaking primarily to people's deepest fears and by manufacturing a sense of apocalypse - that our leaders 'can't do anything right,' that things are utterly falling apart.
Donald Trump may not speak explicitly of 'who we are,' but with his promise to make America great again, he engages in his own kind of identity politics, signaling that the nation has lost its sense of self. That gets to people.
Trump is more performance artist than zealot. But he's finding enemies everywhere, whether they are judges of Mexican ancestry, parents of those killed in war, the current president, or children of immigrants. Whether or not he has a sense of decency, he is in grave danger of losing it.
Many progressives understand Scalia, and other conservative judges, in crassly political terms - as opponents of affirmative action, abortion, gun control, and campaign finance legislation. But what Scalia cared most about was clear, predictable rules, laid down in advance.
One lesson is that if you want to predict voter turnout, you should ask whether at least one candidate is attracting high levels of enthusiasm - not whether the stakes are high, or even perceived to be high. That fits the historical pattern.
Donald Trump has taken a battering ram to longstanding political norms - the unwritten conventions that make governance possible. But even before he decided to run for president, those norms were under assault.
Interviewers actively fool themselves, finding ways to learn from interviews even if there's actually nothing there to learn from.
Republicans are right to express concern about excessive regulation, and they can do a lot to reduce it, above all by scrutinizing rules on the books and by putting all new proposals through a cost-benefit filter. There's room for plenty of creativity here.
If there's a regulation that's saving 10,000 lives and costing one job, it's worth it.
Democrats want to use government power to make people's lives go better; Republicans respond that people know more than politicians do. We think that both might be able to agree that nudging can maintain free markets, and liberty, while also inclining people in good directions.
When I was an academic, I'd sometimes get a little feeling of excitement when I had an idea that was, I hoped, fresh. And whether anyone should act on that idea is a very different question.
I would reject the distinction between a Keynesian moment and a behavioral moment.
The U.S. is supposed to be a nation of second chances, but for the 70 million Americans with a criminal record, we're not doing such a great job. Even among those whose crimes were nonviolent and committed long ago, too many still bear a scarlet letter.
There's an old adage about speakers: You won't remember what they said, but you'll never forget how they made you feel. Trump knows that in his bones. He gives his supporters - and they are growing - a terrific feeling of safety and security, along with a laugh and a smile.
Democrats pride themselves on their commitment to science. Citing climate change, they contend that they are the party of truth, while Republicans are 'denialists.' But with respect to genetically modified organisms, many Democrats seem indifferent to science, and to be practicing a denialism of their own - perhaps more so than Republicans.
In a well-functioning democracy, people frequently encounter topics and points of view that they did not specifically select but from which they learn. Those encounters can change minds and, even, the course of lives.
When it imposes expensive regulatory mandates on the private sector, Congress often acts on the basis of interest-group pressures, anecdotes, and the emotions of the moment. The executive branch is hardly perfect, but it is far less likely to do that.
Behavioral scientists distinguish between fast thinking and slow thinking. Fast thinking is represented in the mind's System 1: it is automatic, intuitive, and often emotional. Slow thinking, reflected in System 2, is deliberative and reflective; it likes statistics. It's hard to think of a purer System 1 candidate than Trump.
Every human being has an assortment of diverse identities, and it greatly matters which one is triggered by social situations, which hold up different kinds of mirrors. The same is true for nations.
If the air quality is terrible in Los Angeles, if a particular university is unusually expensive, if crime is on the rise in Dallas, or if a company has a lot of recalled toys, transparency can spur change. Whenever public or private institutions have to answer to the public, their performance is likely to improve.
It can be easy and tempting, especially during a presidential campaign, to listen only to opinions that mirror and fortify one's own. That's not ideal, because it eliminates learning and makes it impossible for people to understand what they dismiss as 'the other side.'
Concerned about re-election, interest-group reactions, the media, or fundraising, many legislators have found it in their interest to refuse to cooperate with members of the opposing party - or to treat them as enemies in some kind of war, in which the whole point is to defeat and humiliate them. But the American people have been the real losers.
For business, government, and education, the lesson is clear: People ought to be relying far more on objective information and far less on interviews. They might even want to think about scaling back or cancelling interviews altogether. They'll save a lot of time - and make better decisions.
Employers, like most people, tend to trust their intuitions. But when employers decide whom to hire, they trust those intuitions far more than they should.
As presidents from Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama have recognized, the real question is whether regulations, whether new or old, are justified. That requires a careful analysis of their costs and their benefits.
If I may discuss the idea of explosion. The number of regulations issued in the last two years is approximately the same as the number issued in the last two years of the Bush administration.
I strongly believe that the Second Amendment creates an individual right to possess and use guns for purposes of both hunting and self-defense.
There's a big difference between the role of an academic and the role of someone in government. That's a cliche, but in academic life if you say things that are common sense and people nod their heads, it's not very useful. You're not adding anything.
I'm interested in how the Internet spreads information.
Individual investors beware: If you're constantly worried about a crash, you're probably making some big mistakes - and losing a lot of money in the process.
For consumers, the lesson is simple: Genetically modified foods are safe to eat.
If a company has acted badly, people want to punish it - not in order to deter future misconduct, but simply because they're outraged. And the more outraged they are, the more punishment they want to inflict.
Research shows that if people are talking and listening to like-minded others, they become more dogmatic, more unified, and more extreme. Personalized Facebook experiences are a breeding ground for misunderstanding and miscommunication across political lines and, ultimately, for extremism.
In recent years, Republicans have argued that Congress is a more responsible policymaker than the executive branch. But when it comes to regulation, Congress is often much worse, and for just one reason: Executive agencies almost always focus on both costs and benefits, and Congress usually doesn't.
Masterful politicians and effective agents of change tend to succeed by singling out and making salient some aspect of a nation's self-understanding, sparking a sense of recognition - and ultimately moving voters in their favor. Obama made it into an art form.
When President Barack Obama is trying to persuade Americans not to do something, he has a go-to line: 'That's not who we are.' Whether the issue involves discrimination, immigration, torture, criminal violence or health care, he invokes the nation's very identity.
The original 'Star Trek' series is the classic one. Its successor, 'The Next Generation,' is less lovable, but at its best, it's smarter.
From the standpoint of democratic legitimacy, it's a problem if half the electorate, or close to it, declines to vote, not least because they may not feel much of a stake in the whole process.
On some issues, Republicans and Democrats disagree so sharply that compromise is nearly impossible. Republicans are not going to support a cap-and-trade program to limit greenhouse gases, and Democrats won't support a 1,000-mile wall on the border with Mexico.
If interviewers are prejudiced against women or Hispanics, for example, a face-to-face interview will predictably result in discrimination. Reliance on tests, or on actual or past performance, can promote equality.
Here's a more controversial idea: In general, Democrats and progressives ought to allow Trump considerable room to choose his own employees - far more room than Republicans allowed during the Obama administration. Tit-for-tat is a dangerous game.
Donald Trump promises to impose, soon after his inauguration, a new requirement on federal agencies: If they want to issue a new regulation, they have to rescind two regulations that are now on the books. The idea of 'one in, two out' has rhetorical appeal, but it's going to be extremely hard to pull off.
Today, we are announcing that agencies are releasing their final regulatory reform plans, including hundreds of initiatives that will reduce costs, simplify the system, and eliminate redundancy and inconsistency.
We ought to ban hunting, I suggest, if there isn't a purpose other than sport and fun. That should be against the law. It's time now.
The 'cash for clunkers' program was a big success in part because it gave people the sense that the economy was moving.
