This strikes me as eminently sensible: construct a “skeleton of formal regulation” to keep the true sociopaths in check, but otherwise rely on peoples’ self-regulation — which springs from our innate tendency to empathize with others — to keep our behavior on the straight and narrow.

The article proposing this was written by Anjana Ahuja for the UK Times, and includes the observations of Professor Paul Zak of California’s Claremont Graduate University in California. Zak “cites a fascinating study”

in which two daycare centres adopted different approaches with late parents. One centre merely reminded parents that turning up late inconvenienced the teacher, who had to stay behind. The other centre imposed a $3 fine. After several weeks, the “penalty” centre was reporting more latecomers.

What seems to have happened is that the fine “replaced the social undesirability of inconveniencing the teacher.”

My interpretation, now: People began interacting with the rule and its consequences, instead of managing their relationship with the day care center’s teachers. But it was their relationship with the center’s teachers that had the most potential to influence their behavior.

The use of regulation to curb unwanted behavior often strikes me as a fool’s errand. It makes people feel like they’re accomplishing something, but so often the result is piles of unintended consequences, red tape, stultifying bureaucracies.

There’s probably not a person living in America today who hasn’t encountered some stupid regulation that perhaps seemed to make sense when it was enacted, but is downright bizarre in execution.

So now we add the possibility that such regulations might not even work.

Gets you wondering, doesn’t it?