This is great! One of the interesting things about social sciences (and engineering, although just like computer hacking, social engineering has unfortunately strong negative connotations) is that the real world is often counter-intuitive. In particular, people tend to believe in punishment a lot, while it commonly escalates the problem (I like the quip "emphasis on punishment is the sign of an obedience frame").
I am dismayed that I didn't do better than random chance, even though I like to read about social issues. I think this really shows the importance of empiricism in social sciences and engineering.
The problem with reward/punishment strategies is that rewards are inevitably deferred; and people who are in problematic situations likely have much lower ability to deal with deferred satisfaction. That's just how it is.
Unfortunately, because bureaucracy is mostly run by people with great skills in the area, this fact is really hard to get across, or is even rejected outright. After all, if I-Court-Judge or I-Politician could keep it together enough to get where I am, why can't anybody else manage just a little bit? And then the morality discourse kicks in and there is no way out.
Why not? You don't think the outcomes of the presented solutions were evaluated using scientific method? It would be nice if you could elaborate.
I understand your point, but if we were fair then software engineering shouldn't be called engineering either. Just like in social sciences, there is a lot of normative judgement and opinion compared to observation and experimentation. But I think both are getting better with time, and as we continue discourse, we employ empiricism more and more.
Would be nice if you explained in more detail what exactly do you mean. IMHO, this is too reductionist. I can only guess:
I imagine punishment works better on children but worse on adults. I imagine it works better against psychopaths than people who have empathy. I imagine it works better on people who coldly calculate than on people who impulsively give to emotions. I imagine it works better on people from the same ingroup than from the outgroup.
Each of these items alone can explain why you can see the effect psychologically but not socially.
I am dismayed that I didn't do better than random chance, even though I like to read about social issues. I think this really shows the importance of empiricism in social sciences and engineering.