Manipulating Consent
Nudge: The Gentle
Science of Good Governance
By The New Scientist
By The New Scientist
NOT long before David Cameron became UK prime minister, he
famously
prescribed some holiday reading for his colleagues: a book
modestly entitled Nudge.
Cameron wasn't the only
world leader to find it compelling. US president Barack Obama
soon appointed one of its authors, Cass Sunstein, a social
scientist at the University of Chicago, to a powerful position
in the White House. And thus the nudge bandwagon began rolling.
It has been picking up speed ever since (see "Nudge
power: Big government's little pushes").
So what's the big idea? We
don't always do what's best for ourselves, thanks to cognitive
biases and errors that make us deviate from rational
self-interest. The premise of Nudge is that subtly
offsetting or exploiting these biases can help people to make
better choices.
If you live in the US or
UK, you're likely to have been nudged towards a certain decision
at some point. You probably didn't notice. That's deliberate:
nudging is widely assumed to work best when people aren't aware
of it. But that stealth breeds suspicion: people recoil from the
idea that they are being stealthily manipulated.
There are other grounds
for suspicion. It sounds glib: a neat term for a slippery
concept. You could argue that it is a way for governments to
avoid taking decisive action. Or you might be concerned that it
lets them push us towards a convenient choice, regardless of
what we really want.
These don't really hold
up. Our distaste for being nudged is understandable, but is
arguably just another cognitive bias, given that our behaviour
is constantly being discreetly influenced by others. What's
more, interventions only qualify as nudges if they don't create
concrete incentives in any particular direction. So the choice
ultimately remains a free one.
Nudging is a less blunt
instrument than regulation or tax. It should supplement rather
than supplant these, and nudgers must be held accountable. But
broadly speaking, anyone who believes in evidence-based policy
should try to overcome their distaste and welcome governance
based on behavioural insights and controlled trials, rather than
carrot-and-stick wishful thinking. Perhaps we just need a nudge
in the right direction.
This article appeared in
print under the headline "Gently does it"
This article was originally published at
The New Scientist.
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