Applied Behavioural Psychology - Part 5

5/5 - C = Commitment, E = Ego

Commitment

Principles of Commitment

The idea behind Commitment is that “We seek to be consistent with our public promises, and reciprocate acts” (Dolan et al., 2010, p. 26).

People tend to be weak-willed when it comes to taking decisions that are in their long-term interests; they prefer to “live in the day.” For example, they may continue to smoke, overeat, spend too much on short-term pleasures, etc., knowing that it is bad for them in the long term. Meanwhile, they put off addressing what is best for them in the long run and taking action to achieve it.

To overcome these common weaknesses and achieve long-term goals, it can be a good idea to use “commitment devices.” There is evidence that commitments tend to become more effective in proportion to the costs of failure.

For example, by making commitments public, the costs of failure increase in the form of reputational damage, and the commitment is more likely to be upheld (Dolan et al., 2010, p. 26). The involvement of other members of the public acts as “low-key enforcement” of that commitment (Dolan et al., 2010, p. 60).

Written contracts can be effective in improving commitment. For example, so-called “commitment contracts” have been used in certain public policy areas, on the basis that putting a commitment in writing increases the chances of it being fulfilled (Dolan et al., 2010, p. 26). In terms of exercise, committing to walking 10,000 steps a day via a written contract has been shown to increase success significantly, compared to a control group that committed to achieving certain exercise goals without signing a contract (Dolan et al., 2010, p. 27).

Penalties for deviating from long-term goals can also help people to meet those goals (Dolan et al., 2010, p. 26). For instance, denying oneself certain pleasures or eagerly anticipated experiences in the event that deadlines are missed has been shown to help students overcome procrastination. “Commitment savings products,” which punish early withdrawals with loss of interest, have been shown to help bank customers keep their money in savings accounts. Special bank accounts for smokers have helped them to quit: funds are only returned after six months if they pass a nicotine test. Surprise tests after 12 months revealed that 30% of participants were still not smoking, i.e., the impact was lasting.

Finally, the fact that most people have a “very strong instinct for reciprocity” means that reciprocity can be exploited as a means of encouraging commitment: “I’ll commit to it if you do” (Dolan et al., 2010, p. 27). This is why, for instance, offering free samples can be so effective, because accepting a gift, no matter how small, acts as a powerful commitment to return the favour at some future point.

Signalling Commitment and the “Covid-19” Operation

A Coca-Cola executive in the 1980s described advertising as “message assimilation — the respondent must be shown to behave in some way that proves they have come to accept the message, not merely received it” (cited in Miller, 1988, p. 11).

In the context of “Covid-19,” even small public gestures were at first enough to signal acceptance of the official narrative, for instance, telling others to “stay safe,” bumping elbows, sanitising hands, posting a rainbow or message of thanks to the NHS on windows, and “clapping for carers.”

Putting rainbows on windows, though superficially child-like, was far from innocent given the history of totalitarianism. Vaclav Havel, for example, contemplated the significance of greengrocers putting up “Workers of the world, unite!” signs in shop windows in communist Czechoslovakia. The signs were not so much to signal support for the international working class as to demonstrate compliance with the regime. The real meaning was “I, the greengrocer [...], live here and I know what I must do. I behave in the manner expected of me. I can be depended upon and am beyond reproach. I am obedient and therefore I have the right to be left in peace,” e.g. from “potential informers” (Havel, 1985, p. 28).

Getting the population to put signs in windows in support of NHS workers served a similar function in terms of signalling compliance. “Protect the NHS” was an obscenity as the NHS was being “Nazified,” i.e. “force[d] to conform to government ‘covid-19’ contagion propaganda” at the expense of treating all other illnesses, leading to ever longer waiting lists and failure to diagnose serious disease in its early stages (Corbett, 2021; cf. Hughes, 2024b, pp. 34-35). Rather, what really mattered about the rainbows in windows (apart from their obvious infantilizing function) was a public show of commitment to the official narrative. Those who displayed one were also less likely to get snitched on by their neighbours (Hughes, 2024a, pp. 288-290).

“Clap for Carers” began on March 26, 2020, and continued at 8pm every Thursday evening for 10 weeks. It involved standing in view of one’s neighbours and making noise (clapping, whooping, banging pots and pans) to show appreciation for NHS staff and key workers at a time when hospitals were radically under-utilized (Hughes, 2024a, pp. 128-134).

Officially sanctioned applause has a dark history, viz. the endless applause for Stalin where no one wanted to be the first to stop. “Clap for Carers,” a seemingly harmless, altruistic campaign, in fact utilised applied behavioural psychology to get members of the public to signal their commitment to the “Covid-19” narrative in the prescribed way, thereby making it hard to break that commitment later.

Whilst an unsuspecting public clapped and beat their pots and pans on command (a primitive form of conditioning), an anonymous NHS consultant confessed, “There have been Thursday nights when I stood, alone in my office, and cried as I heard people cheering and clapping outside. It sickens me to see all the ‘Thank You NHS’ signs up everywhere and the stolen rainbow that for me now says one word and one word only: fear” (“NHS consultant says staff are being silenced over COVID-19,” 2020).

In the Spring of 2020, there was widespread participation in “Clap for Carers.” One only had to open the window to hear the ritual being performed. Months later, however, with the public heartily sick of “lockdowns,” efforts to get the public to signal its commitment proved far less successful. For example, when the government asked the public to ring a bell or bang a saucepan on their doorstep for two minutes at 6pm on Christmas Eve 2020 to “spread togetherness” in the face of the Tier 4 restrictions it had imposed (Snuggs, 2020), there was very limited participation. When an attempt to revive “Clap for Careers” for the third national “lockdown” on January 8, 2021, fell flat, the Prime Minister asked the public to join in a national clap to honour the late Captain Sir Tom Moore on February 1.

On March 23, 2021, the one-year anniversary of the first “lockdown,” the government urged people to stand on their doorsteps at 8pm with candles, torches or lights on their phones as a “beacon of remembrance” (“Landmarks across UK lit up,” 2021). In London, key landmarks including the London Eye, Trafalgar Square, and Wembley Stadium were lit up in yellow, providing imagery for the mainstream media to propagandise the public with. Yet, when I went for a drive around my neighbourhood between 7:59 and 8:10 pm to gauge the level of public participation, I found almost no one taking part.

In sum, the government’s repeated attempts to get the public to signal its commitment to the “Covid-19” narrative, despite widespread public indifference as time went on, indicates that Commitment was an important element of the behavioural psychology strategy being deployed against the public.

Social Media and Demonstrating Commitment

Recall the effectiveness of written contracts/promises in increasing commitment identified by MINDSPACE. Since the MINDSPACE document was published in 2011, social media has assumed an ever more prominent role in getting users to signal their commitments for all the world to see, typically in written form, but also in audio-visual format (the act of externalizing the commitment being what counts).

In 2020, people changed their usernames to signal commitment through such phrases as “flatten the curve” and “stop the spread.” This soon morphed into virtue-signalling profile pictures of users in face masks, creating normative pressure to conform while making it easy for Silicon Valley and the intelligence agencies – which are one and the same (Hughes, 2024a, p. 334) – to monitor compliance levels.

In February 2021, the UK government launched a social media campaign to get people to add Facebook frames and Instagram GIPHY stickers to their profile pictures, signalling their commitment to “vaccination:” “I will get my Covid vaccine” and “I’ve had my Covid vaccine” (Department of Health and Social Care, 2021). Modelling this behaviour for others to follow, the social media profiles for Health Secretary Matt Hancock and “Vaccines Minister” Nadhim Zahawi were updated to show “I’ll get my Covid vaccine,” along with the rainbow and NHS love heart. That campaign was also promoted by the Premier League, the Beano, and celebrities including Zandra Rhodes (DBE) and Brian Blessed (OBE).

This was followed in March 2021 by “Got The Vaccine Not The Virus” yellow bracelets (Quann, 2021), a poorly calculated marketing promotion that forgot the sorry history of the estimated 80 million yellow Livestrong bracelets sold by the Lance Armstrong Foundation before the cyclist’s lifetime ban for doping in 2012 (Agostinelli, 2025).

Undeterred, the Government partnered with popular dating apps in an attempt to boost the uptake of Covid-19 jabs as the rollout reached younger people in June 2021. Benefits of publicly declaring one was “vaccinated” included badges and stickers to add to one’s profile and free “super likes” and boosts to improve the odds of finding a date (Stubley, 2021). The apps also displayed adverts and banners to promote the "every vaccination gives us hope" campaign.

Penalties and Reciprocity

Penalties for failing to maintain commitment to the official “Covid-19” narrative fell mostly in line with the negative incentives discussed above, modelled around a prohibition on engaging in certain activities without a mask, without a negative test result, without a “vaccine,” etc. Commitment to the cause was effectively extorted.

In terms of reciprocity, the narrative that “We’re all in it together” was instrumental: everyone was expected to play their part, for one another. The idea of “protecting others” was cynically exploited to place pressure on dissenters to return the “courtesy” of standing six feet apart, wearing a face mask, taking the shots, etc. Furlough also created a sense of reciprocity towards the state, as money for nothing plus alleged protection from the “virus” made “following government guidelines” seem like a perfectly reasonable thing to do in return.

Those who refused to reciprocate were subjected to a gruesome “LOOK THEM IN THE EYES AND TELL THEM [...]” propaganda campaign in 2021, which was aimed at guilt-tripping them into reciprocity (Magee, 2021). In it, sick-looking people wearing oxygen masks look the viewer in the eyes as a range of slogans gaslight the viewer into thinking they should “always keep a safe distance,” “never bend the rules,” and “believe the risk is real.” The campaign was designed by the Cabinet Office behavioural-science team, Conrad Bird, MullenLowe, and Matt Hancock, without any input from ethicists (Sidley, 2024, pp. 7, 11).

Ego

Feeling Better About Ourselves and Maintaining Self-Consistency

According to MINDSPACE, Ego means that “we act in ways that make us feel better about ourselves” (Dolan et al., 2010, p. 8). Maintaining a positive and consistent self-image is important to us. Hence what psychologists call the “fundamental attribution error” – the idea that “when things go well in our lives, we attribute it to ourselves; when they go badly, it‟s the fault of other people, or the situation we were put in” (Dolan et al., 2010, p. 27). Similarly, people tend to identify with particular groups which, in their eyes, can do no wrong – the MAGA/MAHA movements in the United States being an obvious example. Entire worldviews can be changed in the process (Dolan et al., 2010, p. 27).

Marketing specialists have been exploiting the Ego principle for a very long time. For example, men have been shown to donate more to charity when approached by an attractive woman; their altruism turns out, to some extent, to be a function of their ego and wanting to look good in the eyes of the opposite sex (Dolan et al., 2010, p. 28).

When our behaviours and our self-beliefs conflict with one another, it is often the latter that get adjusted and not the former, because of our desire to maintain a consistent self-image. This is what makes the “foot in the door” marketing technique so successful, for once people have complied with a small request, such as filling in a short questionnaire, they automatically find themselves prone to complying with larger, costlier requests, such as buying a product. As MINDSPACE explains,

Once they have made the initial small change to their behaviour, the powerful desire to act consistently takes over – the initial action changes their self-image and gives them reasons for agreeing to subsequent requests (“I did that, so I must have a preference for these products”). (Dolan et al., 2010, p. 28).

This complicates the intuitive idea that behaviour change follows from a change in attitude or beliefs. Rather, to a significant extent, attitudes and beliefs also flow from behaviours (cf. Festinger, 1957, pp. 3-6).

Similar techniques are used in magic and hypnosis, with the magician/hypnotist making seemingly innocuous requests at the start (“would you mind taking one step to your right? That’s great”; “now, if you would be so kind as to hold this for a moment while I [...]”). The unwitting member of the audience does not know why he/she is being asked to do these things, but they do it anyway: they are put in a state of hypnotic suggestion. Having complied with these initial trivial requests, they are far more likely to obey direct commands later on. The point is that small and easy changes to behaviour can be leveraged to produce much more significant behavioural change further down the track.

Virtue-signalling in the “Covid-19” Era

Citizens were offered the opportunity to feel good about themselves in two important ways in the “Covid-19” context. First, they could “follow The Science™” and “trust the experts,” thus deriving the smug satisfaction that they knew better than to question the narrative. Second, they took measures to “protect others” (SPI-B, 2020a, p. 3) and were not “selfish” like those who refused to engage in the raft of pharmaceutical and non-pharmaceutical interventions being demanded of them. Thus, they were invited to believe that they were both smarter and more virtuous than those who did not comply with the “measures” – a powerful appeal to Ego.

Thus, the unthinking masses demonstrated their good behaviour by not seeing friends and family, treating other human beings as vermin-like vectors of disease, wearing down the skin on their hands through too much hand sanitization, allowing a (temperature) gun to be pointed at their heads, hiding their faces behind dehumanising pieces of cloth, etc. The fundamental attribution error meant that they attributed any lowering in case, hospitalisation, and death rates to their own virtuous behaviour, while blaming any increases on those not complying (Sidley, 2020).

Little did they realise that such behaviours, even when seemingly innocuous, were cementing their beliefs about themselves (i.e., smart and virtuous) and about the narrative legitimising those beliefs. Their egoistic desire for self-consistency meant that it was psychologically very difficult for them to change those beliefs.

As Schwab and Malleret (2020, p. 164) wrote during the first “lockdown,” “This period of enforced collective reflection could give rise to a change in behaviour that will in turn trigger a more profound reconsideration of our beliefs and convictions.” They already knew, for instance, that increased reliance on digital platforms would, “little by little, gain ground on formerly ingrained habits” (Schwab & Malleret, 2020, p. 109), helping to win acceptance of online over offline communication and the increasing digitization of everyday life.

Having complied with supposedly small requests for behaviour change at first (e.g., standing on floor stickers, following one-way systems, and “it’s just a mask”), the rule takers unwittingly predisposed themselves to complying with a much larger, costlier request later on, namely, to take an experimental substance into their bodies, more than once. Prima facie, it seems extraordinary that so many people would do this, especially given the lack of long-term safety data, but once one understands the multi-pronged psychological tactics deployed against them, it makes more sense.

Conclusion

There can be little doubt that the gamut of applied behavioural psychology techniques was deployed against the public in 2020/21 to enforce compliance with state power and ultimately to get as many people as possible to receive injections.

All nine elements of MINDSPACE were clearly in evidence. The Messengers were carefully selected, the Incentives were deliberately calibrated, the Norms and Defaults were set in a calculated manner, Salience was maximised, the public was Primed to behave in certain ways, Affect was ruthlessly manipulated through a campaign of terror, the public was made to signal Commitment through a range of offline and online stunts, and Ego was cynically exploited.

Far from this being in the public interest, ethicists were not consulted and the public was not informed this was happening. Techniques which are known to be able to get people to do things which they otherwise would not were deployed against the public without its informed consent. Many people needlessly received life-changing injuries, or were killed, by the “vaccines,” in part as a result of this unethical manipulation of their “Automatic Brain.”

Evidently, applied behavioural psychology was weaponised in 2020 along with everything else in the Omniwar. This should come as no surprise, given its origins in US Army psy-ops and the highly likely involvement of British intelligence in SAGE and SPI-B. Going forwards, it means that Western populations are faced with governments known to be willing to use methods of unconscious manipulation against the people without their informed consent.

References

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Image Credit: Dolan et al. (2010)