Monday, August 6, 2007

Using Shame to Promote Good

There was a story today from Thailand which was quite disturbing, yet seemed like it might work. Thai police will be forced to wear a Hello Kitty Armband if they are caught misbehaving. This will in turn guilt them into being good in order to avoid having the Hello Kitty shame.

The guilt trip was also used by a Judge in my neighborhood who is now a US Representative in the Houston area. But shame might also be useful in terms of environmental stewardship. What if people who let a certain amount of GHGs into the atmosphere had to put hello kitty on their cars? Well maybe not hello kitty but some sort of sign that they were producing more than their fair share of pollutants.

This is an idea I had for a public service commercial as well. "Carrying your carbon." And if you rode a bike you could carry a black marble but if you were riding a moped it would turn into a small brick. If you drove a huge SUV you would have a huge block on the top of your car. I'm not sure if it would work, but it would be interesting.

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