Notes from ‘Tyranny of Small Decisions: Origins, Outcomes and Proposed Solutions’ (Bickel & Marsch, 2000)

Bickel, W. K., & Marsch, L. A. (2000). The tyranny of small decisions: Origins, outcomes, and proposed solutions. Reframing health behavior change with behavioral economics, 341-391.

1. ‘Tyranny of Small Decisions’ was inspired by Alfred Kahn’s (1966) use in describing consumers’ choice whereby individual acts of consumption, when viewed as an aggregate would not be preferred by the decision maker
2. Bickel and Marsh use the term ‘Tyranny of Small Decisions’ to describe how individuals suffer because of a narrow temporal outlook on life. They argue that an individual’s narrow or broad temporal context is determined by their environmental context

Behavioral economic principles that influence one’s temporal horizon

1. Availability of reinforcers – This can be reduced by:
   • Decreasing the magnitude of the reinforcer
   • Increasing the price, effort or response cost to acquire the reinforcer
   • Decrease the probability of acquiring the reinforcer (i.e., make it less predictable)
   • Delay the delivery of acquiring the reinforcer
   • Increasing sanctions or punishments for acquiring the reinforcer

2. Competing reinforcers – When competing alternatives are immediately available, they reduce the time or effort allocated to the initial reinforcer.

Small Decisions: Origins, Decline & Resurgence

1. In addition to incorporating new information from the environment through learning, humans are also able to acquire information through accumulated knowledge obtained from culture.
2. Whatever similarities between humans and nonhumans are coded in the genes, whatever is not shared was likely acquired via acculturation
3. It is likely that the extent to which a human discounts the future is a function of cultural contingencies

The beginning and its end

1. Hunting and gathering is consistent with a narrow temporal horizon since both activities are opportunistic and when found, reinforcers (meat and grains) are immediately available
2. In agricultural societies, people had to plan ahead by planting seeds today to reap a harvest tomorrow
3. Hunter-gathering is neither labor-intensive (Lee, 1968, 1979), nor likely to cause poor individual health (Cashdan, 1989; Hansen, 1976). The individuals in agricultural societies had shorter lives and were less healthy (Cohen, 1977). Besides, farming was more labor-intensive
4. Factors leading to a transition from hunter-gatherer to agricultural societies (Diamond, 1997)
   • Decreased local availability of wild food
   • Increased availability of domesticated plants
   • Cumulative development of technologies through a Lamarckian cultural mechanism where knowledge can be passed on to the next generation
   • Positive feedback mechanism between food production and labor, rendering hunting-gathering as a less attractive proposition
5. In short, a long temporal horizon developed because of a reduction in environmental resources that could support a narrow temporal horizon
6. The development of writing also facilitated the transmission of information even more efficiently. This occurred in the agricultural societies, rather than the hunting-gathering ones.

Time’s Cycle and Time’s Arrow

1. In ancient civilizations, time was deemed cyclical, implying changelessness and continuity. Whitrow (1989) reported that ancient Egyptians marked time with the ascension of a new Pharaoh
2. Concerning the Greeks, Whitrow (1989) noted that they were backward looking because certainty could only be found in the past, while the future was filled with uncertainty
3. With Christianity, Whitrow (1989), noted a shift in how time was perceived. Instead, history and the future were seen as the unfolding of God’s purposes. In this worldview, people can be saved now to partake in the future Kingdom of God
4. According to Stark (1997), Christianity’s temporal worldview developed due to:
   • Christianity moved away from Jerusalem which already housed Judaism with a similar set of beliefs
   • Christians’ behavior in traumatic times, such as caring for the sick during epidemics when other religions abandoned the ill. Christians were motivated by the temporally distal reward of eternity in heaven
   • Christianity’s tendency to provide a social safety net by providing for the less privileged

Modern Times

1. Factors such as consumerism, reduced civic participation, as well as increased isolation is reducing the temporal horizon
2. O’Malley (1990) – ‘Preindustrial societies enjoyed less of a distinction between work and leisure…They intermingled constantly in the course of living. A […] farmer, finishing one task, went straight to work on another, and even at rest, the farmer remained a farmer, there was relatively little sense of ‘time off’
3. Clocks spread into life through industrialization whereby factory work divided work time from leisure time
4. Wage earners started enjoying free time which soon became commercialized. This invariably led to a less restrictive culture with moral relativism where sanctions and punishment for a short time horizon were lifted
5. Time spent on the internet [TV is the dated example used in the book] has a low cost and immediate availability. This competes with other social relationships which eventually lead to less concern about others. This may be self-reinforcing, especially when a lack of concern for others lead to spending more time on the internet

The Culture of Poverty

1. Lewis (1966) – “The culture of poverty is not just a matter of deprivation or disorganization, a term signifying the absence of something. It is a culture in the traditional anthropological sense in that it provides human beings with a design for living, with a ready-made set of solutions for human problems, and so serves a significant adaptive function…Wherever it occurs, its practitioners exhibit remarkable similarity in the structure of their families, in interpersonal relations, in spending habits, in value systems, and in their orientation in time”
2. Environments containing a high prevalence of risk and uncertainty, as well as an isolation from mediating structures such as family, neighborhood or religion have been characterized by the prevalence of short-term behaviors
3. When instability is the norm, it may not be in the interest of the individual to behave in a way that shapes the future, especially when the future is not certain

The Relation Between Deviant Behavior and Short Temporal Horizons

1. F.T. Melges (Time and the Inner Future, 1982): “Time is both a medium and a perspective. It is a medium through which we live as the future becomes present. As the future becomes present, we become aware of duration and succession. Also, by transcending the present and looking at it from the past or future, we gain perspective on the present. These time processes are fundamental to our construction of reality. If they are disturbed, our view of reality may become distorted”
2. Alcoholics have a shorter sense of awareness (i.e., a short Future Time Perspective [FTP]) and were shown to have a less coherent organization of future events (Murphy & DeWolfe, 1986)

Proposed Solutions/Policy Implications

How can cultural changes be imposed in a way that is self-reinforcing?

• Provide incentives to attend self-control trainings
• Long-term coaching
• Constant surveillance (e.g., by families, communities, religious organizations, etc.) with predictable contingencies
• Resolve sources of environmental instability