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Morocco World
5 days ago
- Politics
- Morocco World
When Conservatism Turns Selective: A Response to a Misguided Narrative on Women and Modernity
There's nothing inherently wrong with being a conservative. Some of the most thoughtful voices in history have leaned on tradition not to resist change, but to ask deeper questions about its consequences. But there's a line, and that line is crossed when conservatism becomes a selective moral judgment, especially when it turns women into scapegoats for the discomforts of a shifting world. In a recent televised debate, Professor Dr. Mohammed Talal Lahlou, a researcher and trainer in islamic financial capital and a self-proclaimed defender of conservative values, argued that gender equality is the reason women today are unhappy, referencing a study conducted by a researcher from the University of Michigan with no methodological framing, and no intellectual caution. The tone was confident, the claim bold, but the reasoning was hollow. When Data Becomes a Crutch, Not a Compass Throwing statistics into a discussion without context or analytical depth is not a sign of intellectual rigor, it's a form of rhetorical short-cutting. Professor Lahlou cited percentages as if they were self-evident truths, without addressing critical variables such as economic shifts, unpaid labor, gendered social expectations, or mental health stigma. He never asked why these women might report unhappiness, and more importantly, he never questioned men's roles in the systems that shape that unhappiness. He didn't mention the erosion of male responsibility, the abandonment of shared roles within families, or the economic pressures that force women into double and triple shifts. His conservatism lacked introspection, it was structured to diagnose, not to understand. The study by Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers Conducted in the United States between the 1970s and the 2000s, it highlights a counterintuitive phenomenon: despite objective progress in rights, education, and professional integration, the reported happiness level of American women declined, reversing the historically favorable trend compared to men. This paradox, often instrumentalized in conservative discourse, cannot, however, be applied to the Moroccan context of 2025 without falling into a simplistic and anachronistic interpretation. The two historical, social, and cultural realities are radically different. In the United States, women experienced empowerment within an individualistic, post-industrial society, marked by relatively protective laws. In Morocco, by contrast, the proclaimed equality faces structural resistance, persistent patriarchal norms, and a glaring gap between legal texts and social practices, especially in rural areas. Invoking Stevenson's study to disparage equality or to blame it for women's malaise in a country where such equality remains largely unfinished thus constitutes a methodological and intellectual misunderstanding. It amounts to ignoring cultural specificities, asymmetries in access to rights, and above all the mental load that Moroccan women continue to bear alone in the name of progress they are asked to embody without ever being fully supported. Not All Conservatism Is Created Equal To be fair, not all conservative thought is simplistic or unfair. There are intellectual conservatives who interrogate social transformations with honesty, who challenge liberal ideologies without defaulting to misogyny. But what we saw in this exchange was a rigid and outdated posture, cloaked in academic vocabulary and framed through selective outrage. A Word on the Other Voice in the Room Interestingly, and tellingly, his opponent Professor Ahmed Assid a progressive, secular thinker with whom many might disagree ideologically, demonstrated a far more robust approach to debate. He didn't manipulate numbers. He didn't speculate recklessly. He grounded his views in lived experience, in analysis, and in argumentation. Whether one agrees with his positions or not, one cannot ignore that his discourse respected the rules of honest thinking. He embodied what debate should be: not a battle of slogans, but an exchange of ideas. And in contrast, the professor's reliance on moral absolutism and cherry-picked data felt shallow, and frankly, desperate. Professors Should Think, Not Preach The role of a professor is not to present ideological convictions as if they were objective facts. It is to engage with nuance, to welcome complexity, and to accept the uncomfortable parts of the truth even when they challenge personal or cultural convictions. What we witnessed instead was the use of academic authority to moralize, to generalize, and to repackage old anxieties as empirical wisdom. But the burden of unhappiness does not lie in equality, it lies in the resistance to completing it. Women are not in crisis because they are equal. They are exhausted because they are still asked to carry the weight of equality alone, while many social systems and many men continue to operate as if nothing has changed. This isn't about rejecting conservatism. It's about rejecting intellectual shortcuts disguised as values. Because true intellectual integrity, no matter the ideology is never afraid of the full picture. Tags: ConservatismGenderModernityWomen in Morocco
Forbes
23-03-2025
- Science
- Forbes
Want To Really Change Behaviors? Start By Understanding How Societies Already Channel People, Says Prof. Lahlou
Understanding, predicting, and changing behavior is the holy grail of managers, politicians, and academics alike. I sat down with eminent social psychologist Prof Saadi Lahlou of the London School of Economics to discuss how his research and latest book can inform business practices. Drawing from several decades of pioneering work and new research methods in psychology, Pr Lahlou argues that, if we are to truly change behaviors, we must first understand the built environment and regulations that shape our actions. For decades, Lahlou argues, the social sciences and their applications in fields as diverse as marketing and industrial psychology have focused primarily on individual psychology and interpersonal dynamics. In doing so, they often sidelined the profound influence of the built environment. From the corridors of a building to the design of everyday objects or public spaces, the physical world directly shapes our range of possibilities. Material constraints often dictate behavior as strongly as social expectations. And usually, these two levels of determination combine. Why People do What They Do Saadi Lahlou Think about your trajectory when you fly with an airline: from the moment you check-in at the counter to the moment you collect your baggage on the conveyor belt on arrival, your behavior is entirely predictable, right down to your seat, apart from minor details (such as what you bought in the duty-free shop). Every passenger behaves predictably, regardless of age, nationality, and other classic marketing variables. This is because they have been 'channeled' through material barriers and corridors, as well as social controls (security etc.), all the way through – regardless of their purpose for travelling. Lahlou says his team's observations show that people are channeled in most aspects of life. And that makes sense, otherwise society would not function. Imagine the chaos if someone parked in the middle of the road or played football in a shopping center. Prof Lahlou's key findings came from rethinking the research methods used to study behavior. Traditional research methods have long struggled with the challenge of accessing the inner workings of human thought in real time. Relying heavily on retrospective interviews and self-reporting, these approaches, still widely used in marketing and management, are plagued by recall bias and rationalization. The difficulty of capturing observable behavior alongside actual subjective experience has meant that many theories remain speculative rather than evidential. Such limitations help explain why typical marketing or behavioral interventions - such as those used in behavioral 'nudges' - often fall short when removed from the context of lived experience. Subcam Technology SAADI LAHLOU Prof Lahlou invented the "Subcam", a system for recording real-life experiences, while running a research lab at EDF, a leading French energy provider. He designed a set of miniature video cameras worn unobtrusively on glasses to record both visual and auditory data, giving researchers a first-person perspective on everyday activities. This innovation not only captures what people do, it also allows them to later reconstruct their thought processes with remarkable accuracy by watching their own first-person recording in 'replay interviews'. The dual-level insight provided by Subcam - the merging of objective recordings with subjective recollections - provides a richer, more comprehensive data set than traditional self-report methods could ever achieve. In fact, this is every psychologist's dream: introspection without disrupting activity. Subcam technology effectively mitigates many of the biases inherent in traditional declarative research methods. By capturing natural behavior in real-world settings, it becomes possible to verify participants' recollections against the recorded context. This approach increases data reliability, while providing a granular understanding of how the physical environment interacts with social regulation. Most importantly, it allows us to analyze what happens at the point of action, where actual decisions and actions are taken: what people actually think and do, rather than what they say they think and do. This technique is a game changer in behavioral science. While nudge theory and choice architecture have provided useful insights into consumer behavior, they often overemphasize cognitive factors while neglecting the immediate physical and regulatory constraints that actually operate at the point of action. Recognizing the significant impact of immediate stimuli and contextual factors at the point of action provides a more robust framework for both academic research and practical marketing. Many current interventions are designed away from the point of action, trying to persuade or influence people in advance, missing the opportunity to influence actual behavior in real time. But this does not work well. If you want people to adopt a given behavior, you need to intervene at the point of action. There you combine what is physically possible to do (affordances), what is expected of the person (regulation), and what the person knows to do (competence). These somewhat redundant three layers of determinants robustly channel a trajectory of predictable behavior. Take the plane again. While every passenger knows he or she should buckle up, airlines combine the provision of an adjustable seatbelt, a reminder at the point of action, and a control by the flight attendant. This is costly: airlines do it because they really want passengers to adopt the desired behavior - mere nudges would not be enough. Prof Lahlou's approach to behavioral intervention is inspired by observing what actually works to channel behavior. His method is based on a three-layer model, which he outlines in his book. The first layer, the material environment, defines what is physically possible or impossible - and how to implement it. The second layer, social regulation, represents the societal norms and expectations that further guide behavior - and how to implement them. The final layer, embodiment and habituation, and how to implement them, completes the picture. Considering all three layers together provides a clearer understanding of why consumers may gravitate towards certain experiences while rejecting others - and provides a step-by-step method for implementing channeling. Lahlou's book is set to become an instant classic, providing, in crystal-clear language accessible to the non-specialist, the essential basics of human psychology that enable the implementation of channeling devices, which he calls "installations". The general idea is to use a person's motives as the driving force of their behavior, and then to direct this behavior at each critical decision point. This is done at the point of action by channeling with the three layers above. Another important feature of the book is a general strategy for change interventions: "Change goals and trajectory, leverage motives". While motives (e.g., hunger, ambition, security) are difficult to change, it is rather easy to change the goal of the behavior (the representation of the final desired state), as long as the goal satisfies the motive. For example, for the hungry person, eating pizza or spaghetti can become valid alternative goals as long as they satisfy hunger. And it is even easier to channel the way the goal is achieved (e.g., use this or that specific recipe, buy this or that brand) by designing channeling installations along the way. This strategy provides ample practical scope for changing behavior by playing with the levels at which the change-maker has agency (design, regulation, information). As Professor Lahlou persuasively argues, changing behavior requires a fundamental shift in our approach to understanding it. Embracing innovative technologies like Subcam, drawing inspiration from the solutions societies have invented to channel people, and recognizing the profound influence of material environments and social regulation can reshape both academic inquiry and marketing strategies, for anything from promoting sustainability to selling luxury goods. On an optimistic note, while he fears that his powerful method may be misused for the wrong purposes, Prof Lahlou hopes that his research will inspire the next generation of change-makers that he is training in his Master's program in Social and Environmental Psychology at the London School of Economics. Students will be inspired by the reading of this book, which is destined to become as widely influential on the topic as Nudge by Thaler and Sunstein.
