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Podcast: New Books in Public Policy
Episode: Joy Knoblauch, "The Architecture of Good Behavior: Psychology and Modern Institutional Design in Postwar America" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2020)
Description: Inspired by the rise of environmental psychology and increasing support for behavioral research after the Second World War, new initiatives at the federal, state, and local levels looked to influence the human psyche through form, or elicit desired behaviors with environmental incentives, implementing what Joy Knoblauch calls âpsychological functionalism.âRecruited by federal construction and research programs for institutional reform and expansionâwhich included hospitals, mental health centers, prisons, and public housingâarchitects theorized new ways to control behavior and make it more functional by exercising soft power, or power through persuasion, with their designs.In the 1960...