tag:theconversation.com,2011:/fr/topics/cass-sunstein-10807/articlesCass Sunstein – The Conversation2019-09-11T12:17:26Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1104862019-09-11T12:17:26Z2019-09-11T12:17:26ZThe problem of living inside echo chambers<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290731/original/file-20190903-175700-1h9ic1n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Echo chambers are resistant to voices from outside.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/download/confirm/564945160?src=-1-0&size=huge_jpg">Beth Kuchera/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article was published on Sept. 11, 2019</em></p>
<p>Pick any of the big topics of the day – <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-49560557">Brexit</a>, <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/03092019/hurricane-dorian-climate-change-stall-%20%20record-wind-speed-rainfall-intensity-global-warming-bahamas">climate change</a> or <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/12/us/politics/trump-immigration-policy.html">Trump’s immigration policies</a> – and wander online. </p>
<p>What one is likely to find is radical polarization – different groups of people living in different worlds, populated with utterly different facts.</p>
<p><a href="https://qz.com/933150/cass-sunstein-says-social-medias-effect-on-democracy-is-alexander-hamiltons-nightmare/">Many people</a> want to <a href="https://www.adweek.com/digital/arvind-raichur-mrowl-guest-post-filter-bubbles/">blame</a> the “social media bubble” - a belief that everybody sorts themselves into like-minded communities and hears only like-minded views. </p>
<p>From my perspective as a <a href="https://objectionable.net/">philosopher</a> who thinks about <a href="https://philpapers.org/rec/NGUCAA">communities</a> and <a href="https://philpapers.org/go.pl?id=NGUCIA&aid=NGUCIAv1">trust</a>, this fails to get at the heart of the issue. </p>
<p>In my mind, the crucial issue right now isn’t what people hear, but whom people believe. </p>
<h2>Bubble or cult?</h2>
<p>My research focuses on <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/episteme/article/echo-chambers-and-epistemic-bubbles/5D4AC3A808C538E17C50A7C09EC706F0">“epistemic bubbles” and “echo chambers.”</a> These are two distinct ideas, that people often blur together.</p>
<p>An epistemic bubble is what happens when insiders aren’t exposed to people from the opposite side. </p>
<p>An echo chamber is what happens when insiders come to distrust everybody on the outside.</p>
<p>An epistemic bubble, for example, might form on one’s social media feed. When a person gets all their news and political arguments from Facebook and all their Facebook friends share their political views, they’re in an epistemic bubble. They hear arguments and evidence only from their side of the political spectrum. They’re never exposed to the other side’s views. </p>
<p>An echo chamber leads its members to distrust everybody on the outside of that chamber. And that means that an insider’s trust for other insiders can grow unchecked.</p>
<p>Two communications scholars, <a href="https://www.asc.upenn.edu/people/faculty/kathleen-hall-jamieson-phd">Kathleen Hall Jamieson</a> and <a href="https://www.asc.upenn.edu/people/faculty/joseph-n-cappella-phd">Joseph Cappella</a>, offered a careful analysis of the right-wing media echo chamber in their 2008 book, <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/echo-chamber-9780195398601">“The Echo Chamber.”</a></p>
<p>Rush Limbaugh and the Fox News team, they said, systematically manipulated whom their followers trusted. Limbaugh presented the world as a simple binary – as a struggle only between good and evil. People were trustworthy if they were on Limbaugh’s side. Anybody on the outside was malicious and untrustworthy. </p>
<p>In that way, an echo chamber is a lot like a cult. </p>
<p>Echo chambers isolate their members, not by cutting off their lines of communication to the world, but by changing whom they trust. And echo chambers aren’t just on the right. I’ve seen echo chambers on the left, but also on parenting forums, nutritional forums and even around exercise methods. </p>
<p>In an epistemic bubble, outside voices aren’t heard. In an echo chamber, outside voices are discredited. </p>
<h2>Is it all just a bubble?</h2>
<p>Many experts believe that the problem of today’s polarization can be explained through epistemic bubbles.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290732/original/file-20190903-175686-juq3kd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290732/original/file-20190903-175686-juq3kd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290732/original/file-20190903-175686-juq3kd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290732/original/file-20190903-175686-juq3kd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290732/original/file-20190903-175686-juq3kd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290732/original/file-20190903-175686-juq3kd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290732/original/file-20190903-175686-juq3kd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Do social media feeds limit people’s ability of being exposed to a wider variety of views?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/wroclaw-poland-april-10th-2017-woman-624572783?src=-1-15">Daniel Krason/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>According to legal scholar and behavioral economist <a href="https://hls.harvard.edu/faculty/directory/10871/Sunstein">Cass Sunstein</a>, the main cause of polarization is that <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/titles/10935.html">internet technologies</a> have made the world such that people don’t really run into the other side anymore.</p>
<p>Many people get their news from social media feeds. Their feeds get filled up with people like them - who usually share their political views. Eli Pariser, online activist and chief executive of Upworthy, spotlights how the <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/309214/the-filter-bubble-by-eli-pariser/9780143121237/">invisible algorithms</a> behind people’s internet experience limit what they see. </p>
<p>For example, says Pariser, Google keeps track of its user’s choices and preferences, and changes its search results to suit them. It tries to give individuals what they want – so liberal users, for example, tend to get search results that point them toward liberal news sites. </p>
<p>If the problem is bubbles, then the solution would be exposure. For Sunstein, the solution is to build more public forums, where people will run into the other side more often. </p>
<h2>The real problem is trust</h2>
<p>In my view, however, echo chambers are the real problem. </p>
<p><a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/eprint/F2sFqWtZfpgU9nfK8u3E/full">New</a> <a href="https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Filter-Bubbles%2C-Echo-Chambers%2C-and-Online-News-Flaxman-Goel/9ece17d2915f65c66c03fa28820447199addec45">research</a> suggests there probably aren’t any real epistemic bubbles. As a matter of fact, most people are regularly exposed to the other side. </p>
<p>Moreover, bubbles should be easy to pop: Just expose insiders to the arguments they’ve missed. </p>
<p>But this doesn’t actually seem to work, in so many real-world cases. Take, for example, climate change deniers. They are fully aware of all the arguments on the other side. Often, they rattle off all the standard arguments for climate change, before dismissing them. Many of <a href="http://opr.ca.gov/facts/common-denier-arguments.html">the standard climate change denial</a> arguments involve claims that scientific institutions and mainstream media have been corrupted by malicious forces.</p>
<p>What’s going on, <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/episteme/article/echo-chambers-and-epistemic-bubbles/5D4AC3A808C538E17C50A7C09EC706F0">in my view</a>, isn’t just a bubble. It’s not that people’s social media feeds are arranged so they don’t run across any scientific arguments; it’s that they’ve come to systematically distrust the institutions of science. </p>
<p>This is an echo chamber. Echo chambers are far more entrenched and far more resistant to outside voices than epistemic bubbles. Echo chamber members have been prepared to face contrary evidence. Their echo-chambered worldview has been arranged to dismiss that evidence at its source. </p>
<p>They’re not totally irrational, either. In the era of <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-great-endarkenment-9780199326020">scientific specialization</a>, people must <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/2027007">trust</a> doctors, statisticians, biologists, chemists, physicists, nuclear engineers and aeronautical engineers, just to go about their day. <a href="https://philpapers.org/go.pl?id=NGUEAT&aid=NGUEATv1">And they can’t always check</a> with perfect accuracy whether they have put their trust in the right place. </p>
<p>An echo chamber member, however, distrusts the standard sources. Their trust has been redirected and concentrated inside the echo chamber.</p>
<p>To break somebody out of an echo chamber, you’d need to repair that broken trust. And that is a much harder task than simply bursting a bubble.</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>C. Thi Nguyen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Rush Limbaugh is said to have presented the world as a simple binary – as a struggle only between good and evil. That worked, as a philosopher explains, because many people live in echo chambers.C. Thi Nguyen, Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of UtahLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1162202019-04-30T19:36:58Z2019-04-30T19:36:58ZOur smartphone addiction is killing us – can apps that limit screen time offer a lifeline?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/271830/original/file-20190430-136810-osnlyw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The solution to too much screen time may just be more apps.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/hand-woman-using-smartphone-on-wooden-588975182?src=rTE4vAM3oE0IuGyUkXh7jQ-1-42">THE YOOTH/Shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>We’re <a href="https://www.pcmag.com/article/361587/tech-addiction-by-the-numbers-how-much-time-we-spend-online">squandering increasing amounts of time</a> distracted by our phones. And that’s taking a <a href="https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/Time,%20Money,%20and%20Subjective%20Well-Being_cb363d54-6410-4049-9cf5-9d7b3bc94bcb.pdf">serious toll</a> on our mental and physical well-being. </p>
<p>Perhaps ironically, software developers themselves have been on the forefront of efforts to solve this problem by creating apps that aim to help users disconnect from their devices. Some apps reward you for staying off your phone for set periods of time. Others “punish” or block you from accessing certain sites or activities altogether.</p>
<p>But over the past year, Apple <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/27/technology/apple-screen-time-trackers.html">has been removing or restricting</a> some of the top screen time or parental control apps from its App Store, according to a New York Times analysis. At the same time, Apple – <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-29/apple-says-it-pulled-parental-control-apps-over-privacy-concerns?srnd=technology-vp">which cited privacy concerns</a> for removing the apps – launched its own screen-time tracker that comes pre-installed on new iPhones. </p>
<p>Limiting iPhone users’ access to other types of apps is a bad thing because certain ones may work better for some people than others. And <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2017.03.043">research</a> by myself and others shows that excessive technology use can be problematic. In extreme cases, it is linked to depression, accidents and even death. </p>
<p>But what makes some apps work better than others? Behavioral science, <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=zKUs7bQAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">my area of expertise</a>, can shed some light. </p>
<h2>Why we need help</h2>
<p>Technology is <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2286877/ex-google-boss-says-youre-addicted-to-your-smartphone-and-its-time-to-kick-the-habit/">designed</a> to be addictive. And a society that is “<a href="https://www.textrequest.com/blog/mean-mobile-dependent/">mobile dependent</a>” has a hard time spending even minutes away from their app-enabled smartphones. </p>
<p>In 2017, U.S. adults <a href="https://www.pcmag.com/article/361587/tech-addiction-by-the-numbers-how-much-time-we-spend-online">spent an average of three hours and 20 minutes a day</a> using their smartphones and tablets. This is double the amount from just five years ago, according to an annual survey of internet trends. <a href="https://flurrymobile.tumblr.com/post/157921590345/us-consumers-time-spent-on-mobile-crosses-5">Another survey</a> suggests most of that time is spent on arguably unproductive activities like Facebook, gaming and other types of social media.</p>
<p>This addiction has consequences. </p>
<p>The most serious, of course, is when it leads to fatalities, like those that result from <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/16/business/tech-distractions-blamed-for-rise-in-traffic-fatalities.html">distracted driving</a> or even <a href="http://doi.org/10.4103/jfmpc.jfmpc_109_18">taking selfies</a>. </p>
<p>But it also takes a serious toll on our mental health, as my own research has demonstrated. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2017.03.043">One experiment</a> I conducted with a colleague found that looking at Facebook profiles of people having fun at parties made new college students feel like they didn’t belong. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167217727496">Another study</a> suggested that people who spent more time using social media were less happy. </p>
<p>Ultimately, our phones’ constant connection to the internet – and our constant connection to our phones – means that we miss out on bonding with those that we care about most, <a href="https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/Time,%20Money,%20and%20Subjective%20Well-Being_cb363d54-6410-4049-9cf5-9d7b3bc94bcb.pdf">lowering everyone’s happiness</a> in the process.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/271832/original/file-20190430-136807-ta1946.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/271832/original/file-20190430-136807-ta1946.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/271832/original/file-20190430-136807-ta1946.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/271832/original/file-20190430-136807-ta1946.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/271832/original/file-20190430-136807-ta1946.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/271832/original/file-20190430-136807-ta1946.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/271832/original/file-20190430-136807-ta1946.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Some selfies just aren’t worth it.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/grand-canyon-february-19-tourist-taking-591699578?src=iB_4FAUZJnXpu05RX4Dg_g-1-1">Hayk_Shalunts/Shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Trying to unplug</h2>
<p>The good news is that most of us aren’t oblivious to the negative effects of technology and have a <a href="http://www.pewinternet.org/2018/08/22/how-teens-and-parents-navigate-screen-time-and-device-distractions/">strong desire to disconnect</a>.</p>
<p>As you might expect in a market economy, businesses are doing their best to give us what we want. Examples include a Brooklyn-based startup <a href="https://www.inc.com/wanda-thibodeaux/how-this-dumb-phone-is-helping-people-everywhere-kick-smartphone-habit.html">selling bare-bones phones</a> without an internet connection, hotels offering families <a href="https://www.travelandleisure.com/travel-news/wyndham-hotels-discount-smartphone-lock">discounts</a> if they give up their mobiles during their stay, and resorts creating packages built on the idea of creating sacred spaces where consumers <a href="https://www.nextavenue.org/digital-detox-8-places-unplug-and-unwind/">leave their devices at home</a>.</p>
<p>And app developers have also risen to the challenge with software aimed at helping us use our phones less. </p>
<h2>Goal setting is key</h2>
<p>Apple’s screen-time app is a good first step because it shows you how much time you are spending on apps and websites – and possibly raise some red flags. However, many apps go much further.</p>
<p>Research suggests that you should download applications that ask you to set <a href="http://kops.uni-konstanz.de/bitstream/handle/123456789/10101/99Goll_ImpInt.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y">specific goals</a> that are tied to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1103170108">concrete actions</a>. Making commitments upfront <a href="http://DOI.org/10.1257/jep.25.4.191">can be a powerful motivator</a>, even more so than financial incentives. </p>
<p>For example, <a href="https://inthemoment.io/">Moment</a> asks users to set specific technology-limiting goals tied to their daily actions, such as setting up an alert when you pick up the phone during dinner time. <a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=co.offtime.kit&hl=en_US">Offtime</a> prompts users with warnings when they are about to exceed the limits for an online activity they’ve set. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/271840/original/file-20190430-136810-42srhi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/271840/original/file-20190430-136810-42srhi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/271840/original/file-20190430-136810-42srhi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1067&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/271840/original/file-20190430-136810-42srhi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1067&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/271840/original/file-20190430-136810-42srhi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1067&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/271840/original/file-20190430-136810-42srhi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1341&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/271840/original/file-20190430-136810-42srhi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1341&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/271840/original/file-20190430-136810-42srhi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1341&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Apps like Moment, RealizD and ZenScreen can help keep you off your phone.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://www.flipdapp.co/">Flipd</a> takes it a step further and actually completely blocks certain phone apps once users have exceeded pre-determined targets – even if you try to reset the device – making it the ultimate commitment app. Similarly, <a href="https://getcoldturkey.com/">Cold Turkey Blocker</a> prevents users from accessing literally any other function of their desktop computers for a certain period of time until they have completed self-set goals, like writing. While this might not affect phone use, it could help you be more productive at work. </p>
<h2>Defaults are your friend</h2>
<p>Another helpful trait in an application involves configuring default settings to encourage less technology use. </p>
<p>In their award-winning book “<a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/690485/nudge-by-richard-h-thaler-and-cass-r-sunstein/">Nudge</a>,” Nobel Prize winner Richard Thaler and Harvard law professor Cass Sunstein showed how adjusting the default for a company’s retirement plan – such as by requiring employees to opt out rather than opt in – <a href="http://www.nber.org/chapters/c4539.pdf">makes it easier</a> to achieve a goal like <a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/380085">saving enough</a> for your golden years.</p>
<p>Your phone’s applications can take advantage of that technique as well. <a href="https://freedom.to/">Freedom</a>, for example, is an app that automatically blocks users from visiting “distracting” apps and websites, such as social media and video games. Unfortunately, it is one of the apps that Apple removed from its store.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.ransomly.com/">Ransomly</a> alters the default setting of a room – such as the dining room – to be phone and screen free by using a sensor and app to automatically turn off all devices when they’re in the vicinity. </p>
<h2>Rewards and punishments</h2>
<p>Offering rewards is another strategy that is grounded in behavioral research.</p>
<p>We tend to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/374702">highly value rewards earned through effort</a>, even when they have no cash value. Indeed, smartphone software frequently takes advantage of this idea, such as in various apps that offer “badges” for hitting certain daily fitness milestones. </p>
<p>Productivity apps incorporate these rewards as well by providing users with points for prizes – such as shopping discounts and yoga experiences – when they meet their screen-time goals. Since static rewards become demotivating over time, choose an application that provides <a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/679418">uncertain and surprising rewards</a>. </p>
<p>An even more powerful motivator than earning rewards can be losing them. That’s because research shows that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1257/jep.5.1.193">losing has a larger impact on behavior than winning</a>, so if you’re serious about changing your behavior try an application that incurs critical costs. Examples include <a href="https://www.beeminder.com/">Beeminder</a>, which takes US$5 from your credit card for every goal you don’t meet, and <a href="https://www.forestapp.cc/en/">Forest</a>, which provides you with the chance to grow a beautiful animated tree – or to watch it slowly wither and die – depending on whether or not you meet your technology goals.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/271841/original/file-20190430-136800-1xo6xog.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/271841/original/file-20190430-136800-1xo6xog.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/271841/original/file-20190430-136800-1xo6xog.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/271841/original/file-20190430-136800-1xo6xog.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/271841/original/file-20190430-136800-1xo6xog.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/271841/original/file-20190430-136800-1xo6xog.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/271841/original/file-20190430-136800-1xo6xog.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Time’s up.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/bangkok-thailand-feb-172019-man-use-1314294920?src=ihdGnBZfjLQ0dvU4oNkMVA-1-40">Thaspol Sangsee/Shutterstock.com</a></span>
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</figure>
<h2>Persistence pays</h2>
<p>Persistence is one of the hardest parts of accomplishing any new goal, from losing weight to learning how to cook.</p>
<p>Research suggests that capitalizing on <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/2372732214550405">social motivations</a> – like the need to fit in – can encourage <a href="https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2016.12858">persistent behavioral change</a>. </p>
<p>Constant connection to technology undermines happiness, relationships and productivity. Applications that take advantage of the latest insights from behavioral science can help us disconnect and get on with living our lives.</p>
<p><em>This is an updated version of an article originally published on Dec. 4, 2018.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/116220/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ashley Whillans receives funding from Harvard University's Mind Brain and Behavioural Interfaculty Initiative and Foundation of Human Behavior Initiative. She is affiliated with the Harvard Kennedy School's Behavioural Insights Group. She consults as a behavioral scientist for Edleman and Maritz. Neither of these organisations directly benefit from this article.
</span></em></p>Software makers including Apple have been creating apps aimed at limiting how much time we spend using our smartphones. A behavioral scientist explains how – and whether – they work.Ashley Whillans, Assistant Professor of Business Administration, Harvard UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1010742018-09-03T03:00:23Z2018-09-03T03:00:23ZSpeaking with: law professor Cass Sunstein, on why behavioural science is always nudging us<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233425/original/file-20180824-149466-koz5r0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Governments can use nudges to influence our choices</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>What can governments do to stop increasing obesity rates, help people save or get them to file their tax returns on time? The default answer used to be some kind of tax or penalty. Just make people pay more and they’ll do the right thing, right?</p>
<p>But what if you could encourage certain behaviour without forcing the issue? That’s where nudges come in. These are small changes in design or presentation, like putting healthy food near the cash register, or sending reminders out around tax time. </p>
<p>For this episode of Speaking with, The Conversation’s Josh Nicholas chats with Cass Sunstein, a Harvard professor who worked as a “regulatory czar” for years in the Obama administration. Sunstein literally <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3450744-nudge">wrote the book on nudges</a> along with Richard Thaler, who <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-richard-thaler-won-the-2017-economics-nobel-prize-85404">won the 2017 economics Nobel Prize</a>. The book is called Nudge: Improving decisions about health, wealth and happiness. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-promise-and-perils-of-giving-the-public-a-policy-nudge-24887">The promise and perils of giving the public a policy 'nudge'</a>
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<p>As the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/my-health-record-22162">controversial My Health Record</a> has shown, behavioural science is now considered a standard part of the public policy toolkit. My Health Record was created to be “opt out”, in order to “<a href="http://theconversation.com/sludge-how-corporations-nudge-us-into-spending-more-101969">nudge</a>” people into remaining in the system.</p>
<p>This takes advantage of a bias we have towards the default setting: many of us won’t expend the effort to opt out. Many governments – including Australia’s – now have professional “<a href="https://theconversation.com/government-behavioural-economics-nudge-unit-needs-a-shove-in-a-new-direction-80390">nudge units</a>” stocked with behavioural scientists, working on problems such as tax avoidance and organ donation. </p>
<p>Today on Speaking with, Professor Sunstein talks about nudges and public policy, when and where they work and how policymakers should use them.</p>
<p><em><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/speaking-with.../id934267338">Subscribe</a> to The Conversation’s Speaking With podcasts on Apple Podcasts, or <a href="http://tunein.com/radio/Speaking-with---The-Conversation-Podcast-p671452/">follow</a> on Tunein Radio.</em></p>
<p><strong>Music</strong></p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Blue_Dot_Sessions/The_Contessa/Wisteria">Free Music Archive: Blue Dot Sessions - Wisteria</a></li>
</ul><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/101074/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Governments and businesses are using "nudges" to influence our choices, but how? On this podcast episode, Cass Sunstein, a Harvard professor who wrote the book on nudges, unpacks behavioural science.Josh Nicholas, Deputy Editor: Business + Economy, The ConversationLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/889702017-12-21T14:25:25Z2017-12-21T14:25:25ZBehavioral economics finally goes mainstream: 4 essential reads<p>The year 2017 may turn out to be when behavioral economics entered the mainstream after a leading practitioner in the field won a Nobel prize for his work. </p>
<p>Behavioral economics is the study of how psychology affects the economic decision-making processes of individuals and institutions. Research in the field has led governments like those in the U.K. and U.S. to create teams of behavioral scientists to find ways to tweak citizens’ behavior to improve their welfare, for example, by helping more people enroll in retirement plans.</p>
<p>Throughout 2017, we asked experts in economics, psychology and other areas to address the power of this burgeoning field, as well as its potential for misuse. </p>
<h2>1. Ethics of ‘defaults’</h2>
<p>One of the ways behavioral scientists try to nudge people’s behavior is through “default” choices. </p>
<p>For example, by setting the default option for an employee’s 401(k) enrollment to “yes,” it’s much more likely that he or she will save for retirement because it forces workers to make an active choice to decline the program. But if the default is set to “no,” participation in the program is usually a lot less because people tend not to bother. </p>
<p>Another example is making being an organ donor the default choice when getting a driver’s license.</p>
<p>Is it ethical to ask people to “opt out” rather than “opt in”? <a href="https://theconversation.com/default-choices-have-big-impact-but-how-to-make-sure-theyre-used-ethically-65852">It’s a question</a> Northeastern University’s Mary Steffel, Indiana University’s Elanor Williams and University of Cincinnati’s Ruth Pogacar explore in recent research. </p>
<p>“The power of defaults to guide people’s choices has made them an extremely popular way for policymakers and marketers alike to nudge people toward a particular decision,” they wrote. “But defaults can also be used to help businesses profit from consumers, sometimes by prompting people to choose things that are not in their best interests.”</p>
<h2>2. Do people like to be nudged?</h2>
<p>Beyond the ethics, do people actually like when governments nudge them toward “better” behavior through defaults, labels and other means?</p>
<p>Who better to answer this question than Cass Sunstein, who co-wrote “<a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300122237/nudge">Nudge</a>,” one of the seminal books on behavioral economics. The term quickly took off as shorthand for the kind of small interventions governments have been using to help citizens make better decisions. His co-author, Richard Thaler, won the 2017 Nobel prize in economics.</p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/do-people-like-government-nudges-study-says-yes-85567">Sunstein’s research suggests</a> the answer is “yes,” most people “welcome nudges that help them live better lives.”</p>
<p>“I have found that this enthusiasm usually extends across standard partisan lines,” he explained. “This is an important finding because it suggests that most people do not share the concern that nudges, as such, should be taken as manipulative or as an objectionable interference with autonomy. By contrast, a lot of people object to mandates and bans, apparently on the ground that they limit freedom.”</p>
<p>He concludes: “If we really care about welfare, autonomy and dignity, nudging is often required on ethical grounds. We need a lot more of it. The lives we save may be our own.”</p>
<h2>3. Behavioral science wins its second Nobel</h2>
<p>In October, the University of Chicago’s Richard Thaler won the Nobel for his work in three areas: “limited rationality,” “social preferences” and “lack of self-control.”</p>
<p>Jay Zagorsky, an economist at Ohio State University, <a href="https://theconversation.com/economist-who-helped-behavioral-nudges-go-mainstream-wins-nobel-85430">explained</a> what made the award – the second that has gone to a pioneer in behavioral economics – significant. </p>
<p>“It may be hard to believe, but before these scholars came along, many economists assumed that humans acted like Spock on "Star Trek,” he wrote. “People were supposed to be perfectly rational calculating machines that looked at all the information and made correct choices. However, even a most casual view of the real world suggests this is not a good assumption.”</p>
<p>Thaler’s award “highlights the growing importance of incorporating how humans actually behave into economic thinking,” he continued. </p>
<h2>4. The dark side of the ‘nudge’</h2>
<p>But just as this knowledge can be used to improve the welfare of citizens and consumers, it can also be used for more nefarious purposes. For example, nudges can be used both to increase turnout on Election Day or suppress the votes of certain groups. </p>
<p>“This can be positive to the extent that those designing interventions have good intentions,” <a href="https://theconversation.com/can-trump-resist-the-power-of-behavioral-sciences-dark-side-71782">writes</a> Jon M. Jachimowicz, a Ph.D. student in Management at Columbia University. “But what happens when someone uses these insights to systematically influence others’ behavior to favor his or her own interests – even at the expense of everyone else’s?”</p>
<p>Jachimowicz describes the successes of governments in the U.K. and U.S. in using behavioral science for positive ends and then considers its dark side, along with his fear that President Donald Trump or others might abuse the power of nudges.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/88970/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
After two Nobel prize wins for behavioral economists, the burgeoning field has demonstrated its importance in shaping effective economic and government policy.Bryan Keogh, Managing EditorLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/855672017-10-11T19:02:27Z2017-10-11T19:02:27ZDo people like government ‘nudges’? Study says: Yes<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189823/original/file-20171011-9777-513r2q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A product's calorie label is a common form of nudging behavior. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>On Oct. 9, Richard Thaler of the University of Chicago <a href="https://theconversation.com/economist-who-helped-behavioral-nudges-go-mainstream-wins-nobel-85430">won the Nobel Prize</a> for his extraordinary, world-transforming work in behavioral economics. In its <a href="http://www.kva.se/en/pressroom/pressmeddelanden/ekonomipriset-2017">press release</a>, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences emphasized that Thaler demonstrated how nudging – or influencing people while fully maintaining freedom of choice – “may help people exercise better self-control when saving for a pension, as well in other contexts.” </p>
<p>In terms of Thaler’s work on what human beings are actually like, that’s the tip of the iceberg – but it’s a good place to start.</p>
<p>In 2008, Thaler and I wrote “<a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300122237/nudge">Nudge</a>,” emphasizing the massive potential of seemingly small interventions that steer people in particular directions but that also allow them to go their own way. That’s how a GPS nudges. Other common nudges include a calorie label, a reminder that you have a doctor’s appointment next week, a warning that a product contains peanuts and so-called default rules, such as automatically shifting a small percentage of your salary to a pension program unless you opt out. </p>
<p>Some skeptics have raised concerns that <a href="http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/nudges-manipulate-except-when-they-dont/">nudging can be akin to manipulation</a>. My research shows most people disagree – and welcome nudges that help them live better lives.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189829/original/file-20171011-9733-1js51wf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189829/original/file-20171011-9733-1js51wf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=301&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189829/original/file-20171011-9733-1js51wf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=301&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189829/original/file-20171011-9733-1js51wf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=301&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189829/original/file-20171011-9733-1js51wf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=379&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189829/original/file-20171011-9733-1js51wf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=379&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189829/original/file-20171011-9733-1js51wf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=379&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The FDA uses cigarette warnings to nudge behavior.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Evan Vucci</span></span>
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</figure>
<h2>A world of nudges</h2>
<p>In <a href="http://www.behaviouralinsights.co.uk/">numerous</a> <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-science-of-human-behavior-is-beginning-to-reshape-the-us-government-48145">nations</a>, public officials have been drawn to nudges, especially in recent years. </p>
<p>In the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, the Netherlands and many other nations, officials have used nudges to implement public policies. Examples include disclosing information about the ingredients of food, providing fuel economy labels on cars, offering warnings about cigarettes and distracted driving, automatically enrolling people in pension plans, and requiring disclosures about mortgage payments and credit card usage. With an emphasis on poverty and development, the World Bank devoted <a href="http://www.worldbank.org/en/publication/wdr2015">its entire 2015 report</a> to behaviorally informed tools, with a particular focus on nudging. Examples cited include setting defaults that encourage saving and texting reminders to help people to pay bills on time.</p>
<p>The reason for the mounting interest is clear: If governments can achieve policy goals with tools that do not impose high costs – while preserving freedom of choice – they will take those tools seriously. </p>
<p>But governments also care what citizens actually think. Do they approve of nudges?</p>
<p>My research, analyzed in my book, “<a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/the-ethics-of-influence/E29EDE19EBCB53F6D8691730668115F7">The Ethics of Influence</a>,” supports a single and perhaps surprising conclusion: In many nations, strong majorities favor nudges – certainly of the kind that have been seriously proposed, or acted on, by actual institutions in recent years. My surveys show that people like mandatory calorie labels. They favor graphic health warnings for cigarettes. They approve of automatic enrollment in savings plans. In general, they like nudges that promote healthy and safety, and have no ethical complaints.</p>
<p>In the United States and Europe, Professor Lucia Reisch of Copenhagen Business School and I have found that this enthusiasm usually extends across standard partisan lines. In the United States, it unifies Democrats, Republicans and independents. This is an important finding, because it suggests that most people do not share the concern that nudges, as such, should be taken as manipulative or as an objectionable interference with autonomy. By contrast, a lot of people object to mandates and bans, apparently on the ground that they limit freedom.</p>
<h2>When nudging goes wrong</h2>
<p>At the same time, <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/the-ethics-of-influence/E29EDE19EBCB53F6D8691730668115F7">most people reject nudges</a> that are taken to have illegitimate goals. Nudges that favor a particular religion or political party will meet with widespread disapproval, even among people of that very religion or party. </p>
<p>This simple principle justifies a prediction: Whenever people think that the motivations of public officials are illicit, they will disapprove of the nudge. To be sure, that prediction might not seem terribly surprising, but it suggests an important point, which is that people will not oppose nudges as such. Everything will turn on what they are nudging people toward. </p>
<p>Most people also oppose nudges that they see as inconsistent with the interests or values of the people whom they affect. </p>
<p>If public officials nudge people to give money to a cause they dislike, citizens will disapprove. More surprisingly, they will also dislike it if officials adopt a default rule by which citizens automatically give their money to a good charity. Apparently people think that if they are going to give to charity or lose some of their money, it had better be a result of a conscious choice. By contrast, most people favor automatic voter registration and automatic enrollment in pension plans and green energy, apparently because citizens think that those nudges are in most people’s interests. </p>
<h2>Why we need more nudging</h2>
<p>Simple as they are, these principles capture most people’s ethical judgments in many nations (including the United States and Europe): Nudges are acceptable, even wonderful, if they will promote people’s health, safety or welfare. They are unacceptable if they have illegitimate goals or if they would compromise the interests or values of the people they affect.</p>
<p>It is true, of course, that surveys cannot settle the ethical issues. We need to investigate the ethical issues in some depth. As “The Ethics of Influence” shows, that investigation requires us to investigate some big philosophical issues, involving human welfare, human autonomy and human dignity. </p>
<p>One of my conclusions is that if we really care about welfare, autonomy and dignity, nudging is often required on ethical grounds. We need a lot more of it. The lives we save may be our own.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85567/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cass Sunstein has in the past received funding from Pepsi and from the US government. I do not receive any funding now, but I was a consultant for Pepsi over the summer of 2017, and I worked in various positions in the US government from 2009-2012.</span></em></p>Government initiatives to prod people to make better decisions got a lot of attention after Richard Thaler won a Nobel in economics for his working on nudging.Cass Sunstein, University Professor, Harvard UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/854302017-10-09T18:52:43Z2017-10-09T18:52:43ZEconomist who helped behavioral ‘nudges’ go mainstream wins Nobel<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189440/original/file-20171009-6960-9uqy7s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">As a founder of behavioral economics, Thaler has helped change the way economists look at the world.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Paul Beaty</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="http://www.kva.se/en/startsida">2017 Nobel Prize in economics</a> was awarded to University of Chicago’s <a href="http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/Richard.Thaler/index.html">Richard Thaler</a> for his work in <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/behavioral-economics-14384">behavioral economics</a>, which is the integration of economics with psychology. </p>
<p>While the award was not a total surprise, since Thaler’s name was floated earlier on the <a href="https://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2017/10/03/who-will-win-the-2017-nobel-prize-in-economics/">list of potential winners</a>, it highlights the growing importance of incorporating how humans actually behave into economic thinking. It marks the second time a pioneer in the burgeoning field of behavioral economics – which hardly existed a few decades ago – has won a Nobel, the first being psychologist <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/laureates/2002/">Daniel Kahneman</a> in 2002. </p>
<p>It may be hard to believe, but before these scholars came along, many economists assumed that humans acted like <a href="http://www.startrek.com/database_article/spock">Spock</a> on “Star Trek.” People were supposed to be perfectly rational calculating machines that looked at all the information and made correct choices. However, even a most casual view of the real world suggests this is not a good assumption.</p>
<p>So who is Thaler and what’s so important about his work?</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189442/original/file-20171009-6984-1ymailk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189442/original/file-20171009-6984-1ymailk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189442/original/file-20171009-6984-1ymailk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189442/original/file-20171009-6984-1ymailk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189442/original/file-20171009-6984-1ymailk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189442/original/file-20171009-6984-1ymailk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189442/original/file-20171009-6984-1ymailk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Before Thaler and his peers came along, economists assumed people behaved a lot like Spock.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Bob Galbraith</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Thaler’s impact</h2>
<p><a href="http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/Richard.Thaler/vitae/CV.pdf">Richard Thaler</a> was born in 1945 in East Orange, New Jersey. He studied at Case Western and the University of Rochester, where he earned a Ph.D. in economics in 1974. </p>
<p>His doctoral thesis offered one of the earliest <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Value_of_Saving_a_Life.html?id=luXjtwAACAAJ">estimates of the value of saving a life</a>, calculations that <a href="http://www.law.harvard.edu/programs/olin_center/papers/pdf/Viscusi_517.pdf">governments</a> and businesses use to determine how much they should spend to prevent fatalities. For example, when the government is considering new air quality regulations that will cost companies money, it compares the price tag against the value of lives saved if the changes are implemented. </p>
<p>Thaler estimated that a life saved was worth about <a href="http://www.nber.org/chapters/c3964.pdf">US$200,000</a> in 1967 dollars, or about <a href="https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm">$1.5 million</a> in 2017 terms. Today, government agencies value a life <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/17/business/economy/17regulation.html">five to six times higher</a> than that. </p>
<p>Thaler may be best-known for the bestselling book “<a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300122237/nudge">Nudge</a>,” which he co-wrote with Harvard law professor Cass Sunstein. “Nudge” is credited with inspiring former Prime Minster David Cameron to create the U.K.’s <a href="http://www.behaviouralinsights.co.uk">Behavioral Insights Team</a>, which uses psychological principles to improve the effectiveness of public services. Former President Barack Obama <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-science-of-human-behavior-is-beginning-to-reshape-the-us-government-48145">set up a similar group</a> in the White House.</p>
<p>Thaler and Sunstein argue people should not be forced to do things with bans or laws. Instead, small interventions, or nudges, that make the right choice easier are the best way to go. They offer examples such as putting healthy food where people can see and reach it easily while relegating unhealthy options to out-of-the-way spots. Since people usually make the easy choice, moving food around will result in less junk food being eaten.</p>
<p>Another example is making automatic retirement contributions the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-science-of-human-behavior-is-beginning-to-reshape-the-us-government-48145">default choice</a> when someone begins a new job. This means new employees will have to fill out paperwork to stop contributions instead of to start them. As a result, more people save for retirement.</p>
<p>More specifically, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences selected Thaler for his <a href="http://www.kva.se/en/pressroom/pressmeddelanden/ekonomipriset-2017">work in three areas</a>: “limited rationality,” “social preferences” and “lack of self-control.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189441/original/file-20171009-6973-acys7v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189441/original/file-20171009-6973-acys7v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189441/original/file-20171009-6973-acys7v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189441/original/file-20171009-6973-acys7v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189441/original/file-20171009-6973-acys7v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189441/original/file-20171009-6973-acys7v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189441/original/file-20171009-6973-acys7v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Thaler and Sunstein showed how making healthier options more visible makes it more likely people will choose them.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Hans Pennink</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Limits of our reason</h2>
<p>Thaler pointed out that because people often can’t solve many problems in their economic lives, they simplify and use rules of thumb. These simplifications, however, lead to strange and sometimes bad choices.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/19/AR2007051900316.html">Mental accounting</a> is one area of strange choices that Thaler was the first to identify. Because our financial lives are complex, we mentally put money in separate buckets and spend only the money available in that bucket. </p>
<p>For example, <a href="http://www.economiapsicologica.com.br/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/thaler-mental-accounting-and-consumer-choice.pdf">Thaler describes a couple</a> who receives $300 in cash compensation from an airline for lost baggage. The couple takes the $300 and spends it on a fancy dinner. They splurged for the dinner only because, in their heads, they classified $300 as a windfall. But if their salaries had simply increased by a total of $300, they would likely not have splurged on eating out but instead mentally classified the extra money as spending for rent and other bills.</p>
<h2>Adding emotion to economics</h2>
<p>He also won the Nobel for his work on social preferences and fairness. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/1806070">Thaler, with co-authors Kahneman and Canadian economist Jack Knetsch</a>, showed in 1986 how customers don’t expect companies to maximize profits in all situations. For example, when there’s a blizzard, people don’t expect stores to raise the price of shovels, even though demand will naturally soar as the snow piles up. Thaler and his co-authors showed that customers will tend to punish businesses that do. This is a surprising result since it shows that businesses that maximize <a href="http://businessmacroeconomics.com/">profits</a> in the short term, as many do, can be penalized in the long term if customers think the companies are acting unfairly.</p>
<p>This work has relevance today for understanding consumers’ reactions to drug companies pushing <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/17/insider/insider-high-drug-prices-opioids.html">prescription drug prices ever higher</a> and to businesses <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/price-gouging-in-texas-gas-prices-hurricane-2017-9">price-gouging</a> after hurricanes. Thaler points out <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/2647056">that emotions</a>, like feelings about fairness, are an important but overlooked area of economics.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189439/original/file-20171009-6990-13dgu9j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189439/original/file-20171009-6990-13dgu9j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189439/original/file-20171009-6990-13dgu9j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189439/original/file-20171009-6990-13dgu9j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189439/original/file-20171009-6990-13dgu9j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=550&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189439/original/file-20171009-6990-13dgu9j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=550&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189439/original/file-20171009-6990-13dgu9j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=550&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Daniel Kahneman makes a toast with his wife Anne Treisman after winning the Nobel Prize in economics.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Daniel Hulshizer</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Paying for self-control</h2>
<p>A third area cited by the Swedish Academy was the contribution Thaler and economist Hersh Shefrin made on ideas about <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1806070?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">self-control</a>.</p>
<p>The economists noted that people spend money to avoid making poor choices or to avoid engaging in the wrong kinds of behaviors. For example, Thaler and Shefrin wrote that people “pay to go to ‘<a href="http://www.foxnews.com/travel/2013/04/22/americas-top-10-weight-loss-resorts.html">fat farms</a>’ which essentially are resorts that promise not to feed their customers.”</p>
<p>Individuals not only pay for self-control but also create special rules to ensure they don’t go beyond self-imposed limits. Smokers, for instance, often buy cigarettes by the pack instead of by the carton. This ensures they smoke less each day, even though they pay more per cigarette. </p>
<p>Thaler’s work on self-control is becoming more important as the internet and almost instant delivery make more of the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Temptation-Finding-Self-Control-Age-Excess/dp/0143120808">world’s temptations easier to access</a> without waiting. Understanding how people actually operate results in better public policies that can achieve the same results without costing people money.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189443/original/file-20171009-6999-ui1k38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189443/original/file-20171009-6999-ui1k38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189443/original/file-20171009-6999-ui1k38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189443/original/file-20171009-6999-ui1k38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189443/original/file-20171009-6999-ui1k38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189443/original/file-20171009-6999-ui1k38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189443/original/file-20171009-6999-ui1k38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Even though regular smokers would save money by buying cigarettes by the carton, many purchase one pack at a time as a means of self-control.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Ed Wray</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>It’s all about us</h2>
<p>The award is worth <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/about/amounts/prize_amounts_17.pdf">9 million Swedish kronor</a>, which at today’s exchange rate is about $1.1 million. Unfortunately for Thaler, since he is an American, the <a href="https://taxfoundation.org/nobel-prize-award-subject-income-taxation/">entire award is taxable</a> income – unless it is donated to a charity.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/09/business/nobel-economics-richard-thaler.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news">Asked how he would spend the money</a>, he said: “This is quite a funny question… I will try to spend it as irrationally as possible.”</p>
<p>The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science, the only award not created by <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/alfred_nobel/will/">Alfred Nobel in his will</a>, also brings enormous prestige to the winner. Economist Friedrich Hayek, who won the prize in 1974, <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/laureates/1974/hayek-speech.html">said it confers</a> on an individual an “influence over laymen: politicians, journalists, civil servants and the public generally.”</p>
<p>Beyond this influence, why should you care? The <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/laureates/">list of past economics Nobel Prize winners</a> contains many people whose work is fascinating to economists but whose relevance to the lives of regular people is tenuous. </p>
<p>Richard Thaler’s work, however, has direct relevance for pretty much everyone. His early research helps save lives. His later research helps people save for retirement and helps save us from our own worst tendencies. The Swedish Academy made an astute choice in lauding his work.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85430/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jay L. Zagorsky does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Richard Thaler won the 2017 Nobel Prize in economics for his groundbreaking work incorporating how humans actually behave into economic thinking.Jay L. Zagorsky, Economist and Research Scientist, The Ohio State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/779272017-05-25T10:20:52Z2017-05-25T10:20:52ZOur ‘selfish’ genes contain the seeds of our destruction – but there might be a fix<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170358/original/file-20170522-25008-1fmr6bo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Flawed.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/dna-molecule-located-front-colored-background-143348383?src=jcWIVlvK8cEfb5WZWboRiA-1-26">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The human race is in so much trouble that it needs to colonise another planet within 100 years or face extinction. So <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/05/stephen-hawking-human-extinction-colonize-planet.html">says</a> the physicist Stephen Hawking in an upcoming BBC documentary, Stephen Hawking: Expedition New Earth. According to Hawking, “with climate change, overdue asteroid strikes, epidemics and population growth, our own planet is increasingly precarious”. </p>
<p>If this makes you nervous, it should. Colonising another planet will be much easier said than done, and lots of people would likely be left behind to face whichever disaster comes first. So is there an alternative?</p>
<p>You first have to appreciate that this is mainly a population issue. According to the <a href="http://www.htxt.co.za/2017/04/26/world-population-crosses-7-5-bil/">official count</a>, the number of humans recently passed the 7.5 billion mark. While estimates of the carrying capacity of Earth vary widely, most people would accept we are causing serious damage. And with the population <a href="http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/news/population/2015-report.html">set to</a> hit nearly ten billion by 2050, that may be <a href="http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/wpm/wpm2001.pdf">as much as</a> ten times more than the planet’s resources can sustain. </p>
<p>If we could yet reverse <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/06/falling-birth-rates-could-spell-end-of-the-west---lord-sacks/">this growth</a>, we might be able to avoid Hawking’s solution (at least if we are prepared to ride our luck over the asteroid strike). Standing in our way are two flaws hardwired into human DNA: our genes and our inability to make rational choices. If we can overcome them, I would argue that our days on this planet may not be numbered after all. </p>
<h2>Fatal flaws?</h2>
<p>Our genes problem famously stems from Richard Dawkins’ <a href="https://archive.org/stream/TheSelfishGene/RichardDawkins-TheSelfishGene_djvu.txt">The Selfish Gene</a>. It contains the idea that all organisms are merely conduits for genes that hop from generation to generation through different bodies. They do this purely in their own interests, not necessarily the interests of the organisms themselves. </p>
<p>Our genes have been able to do this because our ancestors were unable or unwilling to resist the urge to procreate. We have stemmed this <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/jul/18/how-uk-halved-teenage-pregnancy-rate-public-health-strategy">to some extent</a> by teaching kids about contraception (notably by appealing to “selfish” arguments about their future happiness, not saving the planet). Nonetheless the population continues to grow. </p>
<p>Also relevant is another idea in The Selfish Gene known as kin selection. It suggests that not only is our ultimate drive to spread the genes contained within our bodies, we are also compelled to protect and nurture the genes in our relatives – and by extension the people in our motherland. </p>
<p>Originally <a href="http://nectunt.bifi.es/to-learn-more-overview/kin-selection/">discussed by</a> Darwin, this idea implies we are all essentially racist – consciously or subconsciously favouring those who share our genes. It is one of the <a href="http://discovermagazine.com/2011/jan-feb/03">more controversial</a> areas in The Selfish Gene, since it is difficult if not impossible to separate nature and nurture. All the same, the fact that we have more genes in common with people closer to home means there is at least an evolutionary argument for favouring them. </p>
<p>If the idea is right, it is an additional explanation for our inability to think in terms of what is best for humanity as a whole. If you were to reduce your population on behalf of humanity, for example, it might mean fewer young people – threatening economic problems. One solution is immigration from countries who have many young people. But are we prepared to supplement our own gene pool with young foreigners? </p>
<p>Something else in our nature may also be driving us towards unprotected copulation. Just as we are prisoners to the desire of our selfish genes, we also find it difficult to think unemotionally. In his bestselling book from 2011, <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11468377-thinking-fast-and-slow">Thinking, Fast and Slow</a>, the Nobel laureate Daniel Kahnemann convincingly explained why we struggle to make good choices to seemingly simple problems, particularly those with a strong emotional element. That includes resisting the urge to breed. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170360/original/file-20170522-25027-fcfcrs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170360/original/file-20170522-25027-fcfcrs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170360/original/file-20170522-25027-fcfcrs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170360/original/file-20170522-25027-fcfcrs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170360/original/file-20170522-25027-fcfcrs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170360/original/file-20170522-25027-fcfcrs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170360/original/file-20170522-25027-fcfcrs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170360/original/file-20170522-25027-fcfcrs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Daniel Kahnemann, author of Thinking, Fast and Slow.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/erikbenson/9585678357">Buster Benson</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>If he is correct, it means that even appealing to people’s own rational self-interest about population control would not be enough. As for arguing it would benefit the greater good of humanity, we may as well forget it. As Kahnemann <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2011/nov/14/daniel-kahneman-psychologist">himself said</a> in an interview, you can’t learn your way out of this trap. “It’s not a case of ‘Read this book and then you’ll think differently’. I’ve written this book, and I don’t think differently.” </p>
<h2>What it means</h2>
<p>Is there any hope of addressing these aspects of the human condition? Certainly there is no general acceptance that human breeding is a bad thing, and not just when other nationalities do it. Even people who understand that there are way too many humans continue to produce their own little addition. And in our societies, we overwhelmingly celebrate births as great thing. </p>
<p>Overriding our drive to procreate is therefore a monumental task. We know that education can work <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/jul/18/how-uk-halved-teenage-pregnancy-rate-public-health-strategy">up to a point</a>. And in some countries birth rates <a href="http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.CBRT.IN">are already</a> falling, so that’s a start. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170361/original/file-20170522-25048-18mnpnf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170361/original/file-20170522-25048-18mnpnf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170361/original/file-20170522-25048-18mnpnf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=672&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170361/original/file-20170522-25048-18mnpnf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=672&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170361/original/file-20170522-25048-18mnpnf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=672&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170361/original/file-20170522-25048-18mnpnf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=845&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170361/original/file-20170522-25048-18mnpnf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=845&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170361/original/file-20170522-25048-18mnpnf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=845&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">One child China.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/xianmay-22-2009-familys-way-on-97300949?src=-o2YiveIPpfEpxPwCsofEQ-1-11">TonyV3112</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Potentially we can learn from China’s controversial one child policy. It did reduce the number of humans born in that country. If we could overcome the <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/01/child-policy-affected-china-170129130503972.html">intolerable suffering</a> that it caused by aggressively implementing a policy of true equality of opportunity for men and women at the same time, it may yet be workable. </p>
<p>To help win hearts and minds for such a change, we may be able to draw on a technique called “nudge” – as described in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/jul/20/politics.society1">the 2008 book</a> of the same name by American academics Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein. Nudging essentially persuades people to adopt behaviours that are better for either them or society as a whole. It has been <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-potential-of-behavioural-economics-beyond-the-nudge-43535">shown to</a> work on many people without them being conscious of it. </p>
<p>But first, it needs to become more widely recognised that we are at war with our own biological constraints. In the decades to come, it is just possible that we will be able to create a new civilisation somewhere else in the solar system or even beyond. But staring back at those settlers in the mirror will still be the same fundamentally flawed humans. Instead of running away, wouldn’t it be better to stand and fight?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/77927/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Baird does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Stephen Hawking thinks we need to leave the planet. Do we?John Baird, Senior Lecturer, Zoology, University of AberdeenLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/481452015-11-09T11:06:17Z2015-11-09T11:06:17ZHow the science of human behavior is beginning to reshape the US government<p>Back in September, President Barack Obama <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/09/15/executive-order-using-behavioral-science-insights-better-serve-american">signed</a> an executive order that marked a major turning point in the role that behavioral science plays in helping the federal government achieve policy goals. </p>
<p>The order, which directs federal agencies to incorporate insights from behavioral science into their programs, may turn out to be one of the most important acts of his second term. That’s certainly <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/20/opinion/sunday/cass-sunstein-making-government-logicalhtml.html">the view of Cass Sunstein</a>, a Harvard legal scholar and coauthor of the bestselling book on behavioral economics, Nudge. </p>
<p>Considering that during the last year alone Obama got Iran to agree to limit its nuclear program and inked the biggest trade deal in decades, that’s a high bar to meet. But in fact we’re already beginning to see why this may turn out to be true. </p>
<h2>Common sense pays</h2>
<p>Obama’s executive order coincided with the release of the <a href="https://sbst.gov/2015-annual-report/">inaugural report</a> by the White House’s one-year-old <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2015/09/15/designing-federal-programs-american-people-mind">Social and Behavioral Sciences Team</a> (SBST). The report documents the successes (and failures) of the team’s initial efforts to transform policymaking through a better understanding of how and why people act as they do. </p>
<p>It may seem like common sense that when you’re designing programs designed to serve people, you ought to include insights from experts in human behavior. But common sense doesn’t always come easy. Although behavioral insights are commonly used by companies in the private sector, introducing them into the federal government – particularly in a systematic and scientific way – can be very difficult.</p>
<p>But as Sunstein correctly points out, these insights have the potential to reshape government, making it more efficient and effective, increasing citizens’ welfare while preserving their ability to make their own choices. That’s the early lesson from the UK’s so-called <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/behavioural-insights-team">Nudge Unit</a>, which reports that it has <a href="http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/8e6a38ae-306d-11e5-8873-775ba7c2ea3d.html#axzz3qLqrp5zj%5D">earned back</a> more than 20 times its original investment in two years by improving tax collection, curbing student dropout rates and moved more people off of benefits and into work.</p>
<p>The same thing is now starting to happen on this side of the Atlantic. </p>
<h2>Bounded rationality</h2>
<p>Until recently, <a href="http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/richard.thaler/research/pdf/homo.pdf">most economists</a> held firmly to a <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-homo-economicus-went-extinct-1431721255">worldview</a> that assumed that people are rational utility maximizers. That is, they always behave rationally and go about their lives making fully informed decisions. </p>
<p>That can be a useful simplification in trying to understand how markets function and how economies work, but people don’t actually behave that way.</p>
<p>When we ignore the limitations of human rationality and the systematic errors those limitations produce, we end up designing policies that are logical but don’t end up working well for the people they’re supposed to serve. </p>
<p>That’s not to say that people are irrational fools, only that human beings have limitations – or as Herb Simon (winner of the 1978 Nobel Prize in Economics) <a href="http://www.economist.com/node/13350892">put it</a>: our rationality is “bounded.” Thus significant insights can be gained if we can explore the systematic ways that people’s behavior fails to rise to economists’ rational standards. </p>
<p>The behavioral science approach improves the effectiveness of public policy by recognizing these limitations and helping people overcome them, sometimes with approaches as simple as sending a <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2015/09/how_text_messages_can_keep_students_on_track.html">reminder</a> text message, <a href="https://sbst.gov/projects/tenant-satisfaction-survey/">altering</a> the time an email is sent or changing the default setting on a printer from single- to <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB124882436513388423">double-sided</a>. </p>
<p>The goal of behaviorally informed policy is to make it easier for people to make good decisions, while preserving their ability to freely choose. </p>
<h2>Small tweaks, big results</h2>
<p>The White House team, created and led by <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/author/maya-shankar">Maya Shankar</a>, a cognitive neuroscientist, partnered with an array of government agencies including the Departments of Defense, Education and Agriculture, to turn behavioral insights into more effective policy. As she puts it: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>It’s not enough to simply design good federal programs. We have to make sure that those programs effectively reach the very people they are designed to serve. Behavioral science teaches us that even small barriers to accessing programs, whether it is a complicated form or burdensome application process, can have disproportionate negative impacts on participation rates.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The trials documented in the report generally aimed to streamline access to existing government programs and improve efficiency. The focus was on <a href="https://sbst.gov/work">projects</a> in which minute, low-cost changes built on very basic psychological concepts could lead to immediate, quantifiable improvements in outcomes and produce large shifts in behavior. </p>
<p>In one such effort, the team worked with the Department of Defense to increase enrollment in a retirement program for service members. The SBST modified emails sent to members who weren’t enrolled, more clearly describing the steps required to sign up and emphasizing the benefits of saving even just a little bit each month. As a result, the number of service members who enrolled in the program <a href="https://sbst.gov/projects/tsp-enrollment/">increased</a> by 67%.</p>
<p>Generally the team tried to identify areas in which there was a breakdown in the effectiveness of policies that could potentially be improved with behavioral insights. And although the interventions were based on existing findings in fields like psychology and behavioral economics, the SBST rigorously evaluated the outcomes using randomized controlled trials, allowing them to evaluate which ones produced their intended effect and how strong those effects actually were.</p>
<p>Other projects were a little more ambitious in the behavioral insights employed, although they still made only minimal tweaks to the way policies were implemented. </p>
<p>For instance, federal vendors – who pay a small fee of 0.75% to the government based on self-reported sales – were asked to <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/109/38/15197.full">sign at the beginning</a> of their declaration form attesting that they were providing accurate information. Compared with vendors who did not sign (the existing status quo), those who signed reported slightly more sales (US$445 on average). Although that may seem modest, the intervention was virtually costless and generated $1.59 million in revenue in the third quarter of 2014 alone. </p>
<h2>Success through failure</h2>
<p>Despite the impressive success of many of the trials in SBST’s first wave of interventions, perhaps even more encouraging were its failures. </p>
<p>Not all behavioral insight-driven interventions will work – that is, after all, why it’s critical to rigorously evaluate them. But it is in how failures are handled that will determine the team’s ultimate success. Notably, the SBST’s report was as candid about failures as successes. </p>
<p>One project involved trying to reduce the overprescription of certain drugs by informing doctors that they were prescribing them more than their peers. The technique <a href="https://opower.com/uploads/library/file/2/understanding_and_motivating_energy_conservation_via_social_norms.pdf">has been successful</a> in other contexts, such as curbing homeowners’ energy consumption by merely letting them know they used more than their neighbors. But with the doctors it had no discernible effect on prescription rates. </p>
<p>Although it can be tempting (and sometimes politically expedient, particularly in the short term) to highlight success and sweep failures under the rug, it’s critical that we understand what works and what doesn’t, so that we don’t repeat our failures and we can learn from them.</p>
<p>In some cases, interventions will fail because they’re fundamentally flawed, possibly because what worked in a carefully controlled lab environment gets washed out by the noise of the real world, or possibly because the intervention simply doesn’t work in a given context. In those cases, the interventions should be scrapped or replaced by other approaches.</p>
<p>But in other cases, a failed intervention is just a beginning. Squarely facing failure is the first step toward <a href="http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-11-03/don-t-give-up-on-fast-food-calorie-labels">designing an intervention that works</a>. Researchers can discover what the problems were and what makes the intervention work in some cases but not in others. This sort of learning will not only improve policies, it is also an enormously important contribution to the collaboration with the academic community. </p>
<h2>Applying basic research in the real world</h2>
<p>Although social psychology has its <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9780470561119.socpsy001001/pdf">roots</a> in tackling real-world problems, in recent decades its engagement with public policy has waned and applied work has become less prestigious than basic science. </p>
<p>But the two types of research – rigorously controlled laboratory research and evaluating outcomes in the field – can be symbiotic. There are <a href="http://meeting.spsp.org/whats-inside-our-convention/invited-sessions">encouraging</a> signs that social psychologists and other behavioral scientists are <a href="https://behavioralpolicy.org/about/#mission">moving in that direction</a>. </p>
<p>At the White House, for now, the focus is on tweaking existing programs. As the evidence for the SBST’s programs continues to accumulate, the hope is that behavioral insights become as central in policymakers’ thinking as economic ones, helping us build effective policies from the ground up.</p>
<p>The Social and Behavioral Sciences Team has done an impressive job so far in using small, inexpensive changes to make federal policies better serve citizens. </p>
<p>The psychologist Barry Schwartz, who penned an op-ed in the Atlantic in 2012 calling for a Council of Psychological Advisors, summed it up well when he said: “It’s fantastic to actually have an agency in government who takes psychology seriously. There’s a long way to go before it becomes a sister to the Council of Economic Advisers, but if it proves itself to be helpful, I can imagine it.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/48145/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dave Nussbaum is the Director of Communications for the Behavioral Science and Policy Association.</span></em></p>A one-year-old White House team is trying to transform policymaking through a better understanding of how and why people act as they do.Dave Nussbaum, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Behavioral Science, University of ChicagoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/275762014-06-05T00:31:47Z2014-06-05T00:31:47Z‘Nudging’ people towards changing behaviour: what works and why (not)?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/50206/original/r9r9mhgy-1401857662.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">'Nudge' theory - a form of behavioural economics - encourages rather than coerces. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Image sourced from www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Earlier this week an impressive cast of academics, policy experts and business leaders gathered in Sydney at the inaugural <a href="http://bx2014.org/">Behavioural Exchange meeting</a> to talk about “nudges”.</p>
<p>Made famous by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein’s 2008 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nudge_%28book%29">book</a>, nudges build on almost half a century of work at the intersection of psychology, behavioural economics and policy. </p>
<p>In a nutshell, a nudge is an attempt to make judgements and choices easier – but not in a coercive way. </p>
<p>The pioneers of the approach are the UK Behavioural Insights Team who in conjunction with UK government led by prime minister David Cameron have used nudges to increase the number of organ donors, improve payment rates of fines, and make job-seekers more engaged and involved (among many other things). </p>
<p>Some of these successes have been replicated by the <a href="http://bi.dpc.nsw.gov.au/">Behavioural Insights Team</a> here in NSW. For example, a study run with the State Debt Recovery Office (SDRO) demonstrated that fine notices which included a prominent “PAY NOW” stamp, and used wording like “you owe” rather than “amount owed” led to significant improvements in payment rates in comparison to a standard letter.</p>
<p>These success stories are encouraging, but they belie an important question that was perhaps not given enough attention at the meeting. Why do some nudges work and others fail?</p>
<p>The standard argument is that nudges work because they make choices simpler by capitalising on the “boundedly rational” nature of human decision making. But how, exactly, they work and which aspect of the “choice architecture” is simpler, more engaging, or more influential, can be unclear.</p>
<h2>PAY NOW or ‘you owe’</h2>
<p>For example was it the “PAY NOW” or the “you owe” that changed payment rates? This might not matter. If the goal is to improve the outcome (that is, encourage people to pay a fine on time), then perhaps understanding the process is not so crucial.</p>
<p>From a psychological perspective, however, it is also important to understand the process or the mechanism. For instance, in the SDRO study, a letter that had the words “ACT NOW” instead of “PAY NOW” was not so successful in changing behaviour – why not? </p>
<p>We can speculate but we don’t really know. Knowing why is important not just academically, but also from a practical perspective. If we don’t know why a nudge worked in the first place – and then it stops working (e.g., people return to being tardy fine-payers) – we may not know how to get it working again. Not knowing the why also makes it more difficult to generalise nudges to other contexts.</p>
<p>As many of the speakers at the conference acknowledged, a lot of the successful nudges have not been in place long enough to judge their long term success. Again, sometimes this may not matter – if the nudge is a “set and forget” such as changing defaults to become an <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/content/302/5649/1338">organ donor</a>, then nudging people to make the “right” choice once is enough. But nudging repetitive behaviours (for example, energy use in the home) is likely to require repeated reminders to avoid relapses or people becoming habituated to the message.</p>
<h2>Replication and the danger of file drawers</h2>
<p>Via teleconference, Richard Thaler reminded the audience of the key importance of replicating successful nudges – and also of recording and telling people about “failed” nudges.</p>
<p>Psychology has been through a painful period of self-reflection recently due to highly publicised <a href="https://theconversation.com/does-thinking-about-professors-make-you-more-intelligent-13876">failures-to-replicate</a>. Part of the problem has been a publication bias whereby experiments that “don’t work” get stuck in the file drawer and <a href="http://www.nature.com/news/nobel-laureate-challenges-psychologists-to-clean-up-their-act-1.11535">no one learns from them.</a></p>
<p>The field of Behavioural Insights would do well not to fall foul of a file draw problem and to resist the temptation to over-sell the product too soon. It is worth remembering that much of the pioneering work of <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/content/185/4157/1124.abstract?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=Judgment+Under+Uncertainty%253A+Heuristics+and+Biases&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&resourcetype=HWCIT">Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky</a> – on which Behavioural Insights are based – focused on situations when people’s reasoning did not “work”. We learn from errors and failures as much as from successes.</p>
<p>The machinery for doing this replication work is readily available. One of the most important messages of the meeting was emphasising the use of randomised controlled trials and the need for repeated testing and adaptation. </p>
<p>But these sorts of trials are expensive and time consuming and in some sectors there may not be much appetite for replications with larger samples. Once something “works” there might be a temptation, amongst some, to just “run with it”. It is crucial, however, for the continued success of the field that these replications are done (despite the clear practical challenges), and that failures to replicate are reported. </p>
<p>The enthusiasm for and promise of behavioural insights was very evident over the two days of the conference. The future appears bright for practitioners of “BI”, but as UK’s Behavioural Insights director David Halpern noted in his closing remarks, one needs to be cautious and not get swept up in the rhetoric. </p>
<p>Focusing a little more on the “why” and “why not” questions might just provide the kinds of insights necessary to nudge the field forward.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/27576/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ben Newell attended Behavioural Exchange 2014 as a guest of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Ben Newell receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p>Earlier this week an impressive cast of academics, policy experts and business leaders gathered in Sydney at the inaugural Behavioural Exchange meeting to talk about “nudges”. Made famous by Richard Thaler…Ben Newell, Associate Professor of Cognitive Psychology, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.