Behavioral economics and the play deficit
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KaBOOM! and ideas42 have teamed up in an innovative partnership to applying the groundbreaking principles of behavioral economics to the play deficit, to ensure that we create scalable solutions that provide all children, but particularly the 16 million children living in poverty, the playful childhood that is essential to creating successful adults.
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Behavioral economics and the play deficit
- 2. Behavioral Economics Providing Play to All Children
- 3. Homo economicus Choice Perfect Information Rational Thought Best OutcomeAction
- 5. Ways of Thinking System 1 • Automatic and quick • Approach/avoid • like/dislike System 2 • Effortful mental activities • agency, choice, and concentration
- 6. System 1 Impression Intuition Intention System 2 Beliefs Actions Choice
- 7. Scarcity Bandwidth Cognitive Capacity Executive Control Worse Decision Making
- 8. What does all this have to do with play?
Editor's Notes
- Traditional economics believes people are rational creatures who seek to maximize utility (that is, get the greatest possible benefit out of a given situation) In terms of play, traditional economics would state that, provided a play area and free time, parents would make the decision to have their kids to play based on their knowledge of how beneficial play is compared to all other activities their child could be doing (in some instances). However, this does not translate in the real world, as kids are playing less now than previous generations.
- When examining why that is, we have to begin examining just how difficult rational thought is. To do so, take a second to tell me what is depicted in this image. What about now? This is just a simple demonstration of your brain taking the available information and coming to a conclusion without examining all possible options or angles.
- To get at the root of why most people see the toad when shown the first image, instead of the horse, we have to look at how people actually make decisions and come to conclusions. Noting that this is a vast over simplification of decision making psychology and that thought processes cannot be cleanly bisected in this fashion, we’ll classify decisions within two systems. Deciding the picture showed a toad was an example of system 1 thinking, which is automatic and quick – often referred to as a gut reaction, while system 2 is associated with taking the effort to make decisions requiring concentration and focus. People utilize system 1 (often subconsciously) because its impossible to make rational decisions at all times due to limited cognitive processing, imperfect information, etc. Thus people rely on heuristics (mental shortcuts or rules of thumb) and biases (systematically distorted ways of thinking) to ease the burden on the brain, and system 2 operates in a comfortable, low-effort mode allowing system 1 to do its thing. Thus we can assume that – most of the time – the brain is working on a general “law of least effort”.
- However, when system 2 needs to be incorporated in a meaningful way, the decision pathway would actually look like this. But this model assumes that we can focus on choices with the entirety of our brains, when in reality, we face a multitude of distractions every day.
- And this brings us to scarcity, which can come in many forms. The busy experience a scarcity of time, the poor experience a scarcity of resources, dieters experience a scarcity of calories, the tired experience a scarcity of sleep, etc. Regardless of what type of scarcity is being experienced, it drives decision making because scarcity in one walk of life means we have less attention and less mind in the rest of life. In short, we have less bandwidth, which is cognitive capacity – such as the ability to solve problems, and retain information – AND executive control – planning, attention, initiating and inhibiting actions, controlling impulses. This leads to worse decision making
- Here at KaBOOM! we’re dedicated to bringing balanced and active play into the daily lives of all children, particularly those growing up in poverty in America. When considering the context of poor parents, we know that the poor are worse parents when compared to their well-off peers. They are harsher to their kids, less consistent, more disconnected, and thus appear less loving. However, we also know that low-income parents are not actually less loving. Its just that being a good parent requires many things, but most of all it requires freedom of mind. That is one luxury the poor do not have. This scarcity of bandwidth – coupled with the scarcity of time and resources – means low-income children are also not playing as much as they should. However, We also know that play is a critical to creating the positive parent-child relationships that mediate much of what we just described. Through play, parents get to be fully engaged with their children, bond with their children, and see the world from the perspective of their child. Active and balanced play is also a necessary part of every child’s life because play transforms children from sedentary to physically active, bored to mentally active, and solitary to socially active. Additionally, play promotes 21st century skills like creativity, communication, problem solving, and decision making that are critical to creating our next generation of leaders and innovators. Thus, because of the multitude of challenges faced by the population we served, we partnered with ideas42 to uncover ways to make play – which is the smart choice – the easy choice. We wanted to engage ideas42 in this effort because Behavioral economics applies insights from psychology and human behavior to programs and policies in the real world, with the goal of improving outcomes for individuals and society. Thus, making it the perfect tool for solving exactly these types of problems.
- We took the play deficit in low-income children and plugged it into ideas42 working model of designing behavioral economics interventions, examining the problem, the underlying behaviors and psychologies that may be causing the problem, and hypothesized potential interventions that could increase the uptake of play. While this is an iterative process, that often involves backtracking and reexamining hypotheses, for the sake of clarity, we will explain the results of each step in linear order. After we defined the problem as the play deficit – particularly for low-income children, we moved into behavioral mapping to examine what the decision pathway was for play.
- During the diagnosing process, we discovered that getting to our desired behavior – play – had 3 pathway points with 3 associated sets of barriers. The first is that play lacks salience in life, thus it is tough to get kids and parents to even think about deciding to play. Play is not usually a scheduled activity, like so many other activities kids and parents deal with today, and has no prompt that creates a decision moment of “should we do this”. It typically takes something special, like an abnormally warm day in the winter to prompt a “should we go play” moment. There is also a misperception of time spent inside vs. outside that hinders active and balanced play. This is due to an imbalance of environmental and physical cues between inside and outside. To clarify, when you’re outside the rising and setting of the sun indicates the passage of time and your body tiring gives indication of physical exertion. However, when we’re inside, there are far fewer reminders of how much time has passed. Thus, we may overestimate the amount of time we spend outside and underestimate the amount of time spent inside. Compounding this is the ease of which screens can be employed as “digital babysitters” – or low effort and low worry solutions to occupying a child’s time. However, once the thought of “should we play now” occurs, there are additional barriers to getting to “Yes we should play now”. These include infrastructure issues such prompting the additional question of “is there somewhere close to play?” Or “do we have play activities to do within the house?” and competitive tasks, such as laundry, or cooking dinner, or grocery shopping that can cause the answer “no we shouldn’t play”. Finally, once the decision to play is made, there are hassle factor barriers that might divert those along the pathway to not play. These are very but psychologically large - but in reality small – tasks that must be done to get ready to play, because for many low-income families play is still a destination that requires a journey. Factors like “do I need to get my child dressed for play”, “how far do I need to drive to play”, “will my child need to eat and do we have to pack a lunch”, and “I hope there’s a bathroom there or this could be a really short trip” all combine to potentially prevent play.
- To address these barriers we realized we needed Play Everywhere by: Re-envisioning public spaces– What if there were slides with stairs, swings at bus stops, and mazes on sidewalks?
- We know that low-income children spend a disproportionate amount of time with their parents running errands and accomplishing the day to day tasks necessary for existence. Why shouldn’t these be meaningful moments for parents and children to bond with play?
- When examining how to integrate digital solutions to the play deficit, we realized minor reminders that allow users to have effective feedback to how long they’ve been inside we came up with 2 potential solutions. Using sedentariness and tv time as proxies for time inside and inactive, one could design: A Cell phone app that causes the phone to vibrate when sitting or indoors for too long A pledge that parents and children could take to limit their TV watching. Families could make this decision when they’re thinking rationally, not when they’re exhausted after school and work. The time limit pledged could then be ticked down. Games codesigned for parents and children to play together Colocating adult and child ammenities
- Gyms and playgrounds Developing games where adults are handicapped Moment of choice – integrate it into routines in a different way – in the same way you sign up for football you sign up for play Campaign to encourage children to tell parents their bored Developing apps that vibrate when you sit for too long Tvs that let you know how much time you’ve been on there Removing internet connections and tv in bedrooms Rewarding outdoor play or letting them know they were doing it right