This issue

– feeling good about giving
– commerce Claus
– new year resolutions that stick
– five scientific findings about Christmas
– what you read in The Bridge
Plus what I'm reading.

Research brief: Feeling good about giving ​

A Harvard Business School Working Paper reviews the evidence linking charitable behaviour and happiness. The paper found happier people give more and giving makes people happier, such that happiness and giving may operate in a positive feedback loop. Read our brief on the paper.

Commerce Claus ​

An article in New Republic discusses the behavioural economics of Christmas. It is an inescapable fact of life that people who receive holiday gifts often don’t like what they get and the article suggests ways to make it through festive the season more easily. 

Giving gifts involves relationships as well as commodities. This provides value not only to the recipient but also to the giver. Gifts also represent messages—“signals”—from giver to recipient and the signals tend to differ for individual givers and receivers. Gift-giving is fraught in part because the messages that people want to send can be subtle and gifts are an extremely crude means of communication. 

Behavioural economics provides the following lessons for gift-givers: 

• Don’t assume that other people like what you like so beware of projecting your own response onto your purchasing decisions.  
• Avoid unrealistic optimism: people probably won’t react as enthusiastically as you expect.  
• Unless you are dealing with people very close to you, don’t assume that the gift will matter a whole lot. You’ll probably remember it better than they will. 

For gift recipients: 

• If you receive a gift card, use it immediately. In 2018, it was reported Australians lost $148 million in unused gift cards. 
• Even though gifts send messages, do not assume you can interpret the message. 
• Re-gifting isn’t worth the risk as gift-givers tend to have keen memories. 

Making New Year resolutions that stick 

We are creatures of habit and according to an article in The Conversation, it takes around 66 days to form a habit. However research shows only 40% of people can sustain their new year’s resolutions after six months. The article presents the following advice to help you keep them: 

Prioritise your goals 

A common mistake is being overly ambitious with New Year resolutions. It’s best to prioritise goals and focus on one behaviour. The ideal approach is to make small, incremental changes. 

Change your routines 

Habits are embedded within routines. Disrupting routines can prompt us to adopt new habits. 

Monitor your behaviour 

Actively monitoring goals appears to be the most effective strategy for pursuing goals. A meta-analysis of 100 studies found that self-monitoring was the best of 26 different tactics used to establish healthy eating and exercise activities. 

Imagine your future self 

To make better decisions we need to overcome our tendency to prefer rewards now rather than later. One way to fight this bias is to futureproof our decisions. This helps prevent regressing to old habits when under pressure. 

Set goals and deadlines 

Setting self-imposed deadlines or goals helps change behaviour and form new habits. Deadlines work particularly well when tied to self-imposed rewards and penalties. Another way to increase motivation is to harness the power of peer pressure and share your goals with others. 

A Psychology Today article outlines five scientific findings about Christmas: 

1. Singing Christmas carols can increase physical and psychological well-being. Scientists found group singing can lead to a decrease of the adrenocorticotropic hormone, a marker of stress. Group singing also leads to an increase in oxytocin, a hormone that has been linked to social bonding. 

2. A study used magnetic resonance imaging to locate the Christmas spirit in the human brain. People that celebrated Christmas showed increased brain activity when viewing Christmas-related pictures in the regions associated with spirituality and somatic senses. 

3. Research found spending money on gifts for other people can make you happier than spending it on yourself. 

4. Christmas can be taxing on the heart with researchers finding increased heart failure hospital admissions over the holiday period. They concluded emotional stressors, overeating, less exercise and postponing medical appointments during holidays could contribute to this increase in heart failure. 

5. Christmas can be a time of overindulgence with one study showing Christmas was associated with an average weight gain of about 500g. 

What you read in The Bridge ​

With more than 15,000 subscribers in Australia and New Zealand, Bridge readers are highly engaged with diverse interests. However some patterns emerged during the year including a strong appetite for practical guides as well as research briefs on innovation, policy making and public sector capability. 

Here are the most popular articles read during the year. 

Research briefs 

A brief on agile government was by far the most read research brief during the year. This was followed by a look at the perverse effects of innovation and the impact on public value. The third most read brief explored the role of prevention and early intervention in public policy. Read the briefs: 

• Agile: a new way of governing 
• The dark side of public innovation 
• Understanding prevention and early intervention in public policy. 

Bridge articles 

It was a tie for the most read Bridge article of the year with line honours shared between a co-design tool kit and an article on making decisions during uncertainty. Next was a paper on COVID-19 and public sector capacity followed by a behavioural economics guide.  

• Sprinting for good co-design tool kit 
• How to make rational decisions in the face of uncertainty  

• COVID-19 and public-sector capacity 

• The behavioural economics guide  

1. The new class of Australian crime writers 

I’ll be putting policy wonk reading aside over the summer. Instead I will return to my other passion - crime fiction. This article profiles the emergence of Oz noir. These are crime stories set in country towns, the bush or the outback. The rural landscape in Australian crime novels is often harsh and unforgiving which makes it an exceptionally good setting for crime and other misdeeds. If you are new to the genre, I recommend Jane Harper’s The Dry, Emma Viskic’s And Fire Came Down, and Mark Brandi’s Wimmera.

2. The inner life of cats 

Yes, I am a cat person and have come to accept the adage that dogs have masters and cats have slaves. Despite this, I am still trying to understand my feline’s inscrutable behaviour. This Scientific American article examines the mysterious inner life of cats including what cats think of their owners and can you get a cat to love you. Despite my new found knowledge, I know Molly will still rule the roost at home. 

If you’re feeling left out because you’re a dog owner, you can read this BBC article on why dogs look like their owners. 

New ANZSOG research on Greater China available for free​

Australia’s relationship with China has never been more important, and ANZSOG’s Greater China Dialogue on Public Administration has been building research links and deeper understanding between the jurisdictions since 2011.

Papers from the 2018 and 2019 Dialogues have recently been published in the Australian Journal of Social Issues and the Asia Pacific Journal of Public Administration – and are now available free until the end of February. These articles by academics from Australia and Greater China, are highly relevant for practitioners, including on using new technology, urban governance and designing governance structures. 

‘Til the next issue

Maria Katsonis