Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life

by Rory Sutherland

Americans aren’t terribly good at designing roundabouts, or ‘traffic circles’ as they call them, simply because they don’t have much practice.* In one instance, a British team was able to reduce the incidence of accidents on a traffic circle in Florida by 95 per cent by placing the painted lines differently. In one Dutch town traffic experts improved traffic safety by removing road markings altogether.*

Psycho-logic isn’t wrong, but it cares about different things and works in a different way to logic. Because logic is self-explanatory, our preference is to use it in all social and institutional settings, even where it has no place. The result is that we end up using inappropriate software for the operating system, neglecting the psycho-logical approach.