The basic idea of a period of rest (Sabbath) turns up in many cultures and there are many variations on it. It can last for three minutes, a day, week, month, year, or life time. There are secular Sabbaths in China and Russia.
The Christian fathers were hot on the topic. “Six days shalt thou labour and do all thy work.” “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. (Exodus: chapter 20).
There is less traffic on the road outside my house than is usual on weekday mornings. Vans and trucks are especially noticeable by their absence. But, come the afternoon, there will be an upturn of obesity in family cars going to and from the 24/7 supermarkets where they hunt for and gather their week’s supplies which they transport to the car parks in groaning trolleys.
Very little of what happens in large supermarkets is left to chance. There is now an emerging discipline of ‘behavioural economics’ which is informed by ‘experimental psychology’. Supermarkets home in on the consumer’s ‘fast thinking’ which is rooted in the unconscious and which can be ‘nudged’ so that it goes this way rather than that.
References:
Behavioural economics and the related field, behavioural finance, study the effects of social, cognitive, and emotional factors on the economic decisions of individuals and institutions and the consequences ... Wikipedia
Experimental psychology refers to work done by those who apply experimental methods to the study of behaviour and the processes that underlie it. Experimental psychologists employ human participants and animal subjects to study a great many topics, including, among others sensation & perception, memory, cognition, learning, motivation, emotion; developmental processes, social psychology, and the neural substrates of all of these … Wikipedia
I found the following books to be informative, well written and a bit scary.
- Daniel Kahneman (2011) Thinking; fast and slow
- Richard Layard (2011) Happiness – lessons from a new science
- Richard H Thaler and Cass R Sunstein, (2012). Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness
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