This is hidden brain.
Im Shankar Vedantam.
A few years after the communist revolution brought Mao Zedong to power, Chinas leader ordered his people to exterminate four pests, rats, flies, mosquitoes, and sparrows.
The birds were eating chinas grain.
Chairman Mao had recently collectivized agriculture, and he wanted to kill off the birds consuming his countrys food.
During the great sparrow campaign, as the effort was called, millions of birds were killed.
People shot sparrows or banged on pots and pans until the birds fell to the ground in exhaustion.
But the eradication of the sparrows produced an unintended consequence.
Insect population soared because one of their natural predators had been eliminated.
Locusts swept across China's fields, decimating crops and contributing to a great famine.
Official figures put the death toll at 15 million people.
Unofficial numbers were two to five times higher.
While the scale of the disaster was unimaginable, China is hardly alone when it comes to wrongheaded policies.
From nations and governments to companies and families, humans regularly fail to foresee how initiatives can backfire.
This week, we continue our series success 2.0 with a look at one of the principal sources of failure in our unintended consequences, how to expect the unexpected when we plan for the future.
This week on hidden brain.
Much of life is about getting others to behave in the way we want.
We come up with carrots and sticks to persuade children to do their homework, prompt partners to pick up their socks, and motivate coworkers to do their best.
But often these inducements are ineffective.
Sometimes they even backfire.