This article was first published in the December 2015 issue of WIRED magazine. Be the first to read WIRED's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
Governments are deploying behavioural insights to shape our actions. Do you want to give them that power?
If you've recently renewed your car tax, chances are you were nudged. As you finished, a "thank you" page asked if you'd like to join the Organ Donor Register. It's the most basic form of nudge. You were simply asked, and could click "join" if you felt like it. This prompt, placed on gov.uk in early 2013, has led to hundreds of thousands more people joining the register each year.
Eight variations of the message were tested. One simply said: "Every day thousands of people who see this page decide to register", beside a picture of a group of happy, healthy people. It was based on the principle of social norms -- people are influenced by others. Another, based on reciprocity, said, "If you needed an organ transplant, would you have one? If so please help others."
One of the above led to a jump of around 40 percent in those joining from the page; the other led to a slight drop, relative to no message at all. The other six boosted joining by 20 to 35 percent. But can you guess which led to the 40 per cent rise? Enough to recommend a policy based on your hunch? It was the one with the picture that caused the numbers to drop; the most effective was the one encouraging people to reciprocate, and the gap between the two was equivalent to 100,000 people joining per year.
This was one of many trials that have been conducted over the last five years by the 10 Downing Street Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) -- or "Nudge Unit" -- set up by David Cameron in 2010. Such trials brought two insights into the heart of government.
First, how seemingly small changes in processes or wording have big impacts on real people, unlike the "econs" of textbooks. Second, the importance of trialling. Even with the best expertise in the world, you can't be sure how exactly humans will react. From this new viewpoint, the traditional approach to policy looks very strange: why would passing a law, or spending billions on a tax subsidy, lead to the behaviour that the policymaker expects?
The team, itself an experiment, was staffed by psychologists, economists and civil servants familiar with government -- and ideally people with a background in all three. It had a sunset clause: if it failed to achieve a ten-fold return on its cost, and affect at least two major policy areas, it would be shut down on its second anniversary.
It worked<sup>1</sup>. It showed that small changes to the wording of letters, such as "Nine out of ten people pay their tax on time", brought forth millions in tax paid; and that carefully worded texts more than doubled the number of jobseekers turning up for a job interview. Dropouts from further education could be cut by a third and the number of debtors paying a court fine without bailiffs could be boosted three times over.
Other interventions were more elaborate. Jobseekers got back to work faster if advisers asked how they would be using their time in the coming week rather than what they did last week -- the approach that had been used for 30 years. The team used behavioural insights to boost take-up of business support schemes; reduce fraud and error; increase savings; reduce mistakes and missed appointments; and increase recruitment levels and performance among minority groups. The team also advised on policy issues such as how to speed up loans to small businesses and ensuring e-cigarettes are more widely available.
In the wake of these results, the Prime Minister decided to expand the team. Demand grew, not just from the UK public sector but internationally. In 2013, the Behavioural Insights Team was turned into a social-purpose company, co-owned by the Cabinet Office, the innovation charity Nesta and the employees. It now helps governments who face a range of challenges, including obesity, social mobility, productivity and even extremism.
Nevertheless, the growing use of behavioural science and active experimentation by governments and businesses raises wider questions. After all, who nudges the nudgers?<sup>2</sup>
In the US, where the idea of nudging was popularised by Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler, the argument runs that nudges should be "choice enhancing", or at least not-reducing. For example, changing the default on workplace pensions from an opt-in to an opt-out has led to millions more savers -- more than five million in the UK alone since 2012 -- but still keeps the choice of opting out.
However, many of the choices we make every day, and that are susceptible to nudging, operate on a relatively unconscious level. Using larger plates in a restaurant buffet leads people to eat more (and produces more food waste), and diners are unaware of the effect. But how do we all feel about governments, or businesses, deciding how big the plates should be?
The greater use of nudging brings with it a need to strengthen the ways through which citizens can nudge the nudgers, such as through the use of deliberative juries whereby members of the public give a direct steer as to what is, or is not, deemed an acceptable nudge.
Following the Nudge Unit's success, similar units are being set up in Australia, Germany, and Singapore. Even the White House created a Social and Behavioural Sciences Team, and in September published its early results. These showed, just as in the UK, that small changes in wording and processes could boost the number of veterans taking up benefits, help disadvantaged students, and increase revenue declared and received by government commissioners. Governments are scaling up these approaches, applying them to seemingly intractable problems.
Many citizens and entrepreneurs are using the techniques too. Behavioural interventions have proved capable of boosting social and economic outcomes, and are cheap and non-intrusive. But they also involve decisions that shouldn't be left to behavioural scientists alone. We all have a role in nudging the nudgers.
1. Even the Daily Mail was impressed: "How a packet of sweets can help TREBLE the number of bankers who will give money to charity," it wrote on July 23, 2015.
2. Experimenting with the public brings anxiety. Governments need to avoid the recent mishaps of tech giants, burned by public reactions to their unseen experiments.
David Halpern will be speaking at the fourth annual WIRED Health event on March 9, 2017 at the Royal College of General Practitioners, London. For more information, visit wired.uk/health2017, book your tickets online at wired.uk/health-tickets or email the team at wiredevents@condenast.co.uk.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
