Doing and thinking: the ethics of ‘nudge’
I attended this IPA event last night. Rory Sutherland and Matthew Taylor talked about the value of understanding behavioural economics for both advertising and social change. One question that came up was ‘What about the ‘dark side’ to this?’ – the idea that in knowing more about human psychology and brain functioning we can manipulate people to undue ends.
The first thing to say is that the power of manipulation that behavioural economics bestows is not of the 1960s-commie-paranoia-mind-washing variety. It is much weaker than that. Moreover, I actually think this question is less interesting than it sounds – its apparent power presumes something similar to the following argument: ‘don’t develop genetic therapies for diseases, because some mad scientist might create a super-race of beings and take over the world etc.’ This is faulty reasoning: the problem is not the genetic therapy but the mad scientist with the requisite power, resources and social influence to ‘take over the world’. And that problem is one we face and deal with all the time. (Think of Rupert Murdoch.)
A more interesting question concerns the ethics of ‘nudging’. The latter is based on two behavioural principles: that people are very bad at making decisions concerning long-term outcomes (such as their health), and that situations or ‘choice architecture’ (both social and physical) heavily influence behaviour. (The single most effective reducer of obesity? Using smaller plates.)
The ethical question is this: are we paternalistically interfering in people’s lives when we nudge them, or are we enabling them to do what they already want to do, but find hard? Nudging has been labelled ‘libertarian paternalism’ and the question is whether we think the two terms complement one another or that paternalism trumps.
One response is the one made by Sunstein and Thaler, that when people are nudged they are simply being aided to choose their ‘preferred preferences’. For example, if the healthy eating options are first in the canteen-line, a person might opt for them at first unthinkingly – she’s hungry, she goes for the first thing she sees. But then she might realise what she is doing. If the nudge continues to work, this is because her behaviour has been guided by a ‘choice architecture’ that enables her to more easily do what she already wanted to, but found difficult. Or so the argument goes.
I think this is fine. But it suggests that the only way a piece of behaviour can be encouraged without paternalism is if that behaviour chimes with an antecedent deliberated-upon choice. And this seems to me like an unwarranted bit of neo-classical prejudice. What is wrong with guiding someone to a behavioural pattern that is not the result of an antecedent consciously-endorsed decision?
Imagine that I have always pooh-poohed the idea of healthy eating, even though I’m overweight. ‘Life is for the living’, I have said many a time: ‘I enjoy my food, and being happy is the most important thing in life.’ One day, the canteen at work puts the healthy-food options first in line. I start eating more healthily. After a few weeks, I realise the nudge has taken place – I realise what I’m doing every lunchtime. But I think, ‘actually, it’s not so bad, this healthy-eating lark; I feel better, I think I might stick with it.’
What has happened here is that a capability has been built – a capability to feel the benefits of healthy eating, something I could not do before. My ‘preferred preferences’ have changed rather than simply been realised. The direction of change has been from behaviour to attitudes. (I did something without thinking; after a while realised I liked it; I consequently changed my ‘higher order’ preferences about what kind of life I want to lead.)
Is this unethical (overly paternalistic)? I don’t think so. I can still go back to unhealthy eating if I want, but now that choice is informed by an ability to viscerally feel the benefits of healthy eating, and is much the better for it.
What I am trying to get at is an implicit prejudice even Thaler and Sunstein display – that all ethical behaviour-change results from behavioural patterns conforming to attitudes we already hold and have consciously endorsed. But another way that nudges can work is through developing a behavioural capability. When this occurs someone can end up consciously endorsing a behavioural pattern they actively rejected before. The nudge, through guiding behaviour, has allowed a person to see the options clearly and make a properly informed choice for the first time.
What stops us from having this equally benign aspect of libertarian paternalism in view is the implicit prejudice that only behaviour-determining choices can be ethical, not choice-determining behaviours – that only the former do not override our free will. But that just falsifies how we actually make lots of informed choices – not by disembodied choosing, but by realising after a period of time the benefits of doing something.
Comments
3 Comments on Doing and thinking: the ethics of ‘nudge’
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Richie on
Tue, 16th Jun 2009 1:32 pm
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Matt Grist on
Wed, 17th Jun 2009 1:15 am
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Rowland on
Thu, 30th Jul 2009 12:45 pm
Good blogging!
Yes, so the ethical concerns about nudging rely on an unrealistic view of where our behaviours come from, the working assumption we use that all our behaviours come from conscious violition, that our behaviours have must have an internal, intrinsic rationale. Yes.. we wouldn’t be concerned, or feel our free will had been overridden, at a choice we had made as the result of a behavioural pattern we had adopted through unconscious imitation of someone we had a relationship with.
I like the emphasis you put on capabilities, and the implicit link between capabilities and freedom. Once the person has the capability to feel the benefits of healthy eating, they have more freedom, to make an informed choice. I think this is important, and it chimes with what I have been thinking about recently. Michael Sandel talks about developing/recognising a new type of freedom, a freedom to participate in political and moral debates about the community’s values. This new (or, if you like, very old and very Greek) freedom is one which acknowledges the responsibilities we have to our communities. That sounds paradoxical, when it is seen from our current view of freedom, which is the individualistic freedom of the consumer, the freedom to make free choices as long as no-one else is harmed. Today’s social challenges dictate that we need a more engaged citizenship, but the problem is when you try to sell the idea of engagement and public participation, people see it as a cost, as a burden to them. They are judging it from the perspective of individualistic freedom. Analogously to the unhealthy eater, they need the capability to feel the benefit of active citizenship, of engagement.
The direction we need to go with many public services is away from the idea of public SERVICES, away from the idea of an atomised, individual customer, with a State focus on NEEDS that need to be met… towards the idea of network of engaged, active citizens, with a State focus on giving people the CAPABILITIES, and freedom, to participate and meet their own needs through those networks. To take one example I’m interested in, where we have increasing choice in public services – in this case over a choice of schools – to ensure that choice is not restricted to the middle-classes we need to ensure that all sections of society have the CAPABILITY to make a choice, and indeed to engage with a school and participate fully in their child’s education.
So perhaps if the insights about the social – and not traditionally “rational” – brain can be appropriately packaged and absorbed by the public they can help to shape a new conception of freedom, which acknowledges the personal benefits of active citizenship. Or is that to again get attitudes and behaviour back to front? Are best nudging for active engagement and simply intervening to build capabilities? (To take a crude example – a requirement on employers to provide a week of optional paid leave, in the summer, for staff who are choosing a new school for their child.. during which time they will attend numerous open days, observe teachers and teaching styles, network with the schools and with other engaged parents, and be nudged with commitment devices for continued engagement with their child’s education.)
I’m still working this out. If you’ve had similar thoughts to all this you’ll know what I’m talking about, otherwise this comment may seem like too much gibberish..!
Hi Richie – what a great comment! So much in there I don’t know where to start.
Yes, I agree, the benefits of citizen-engagement shouldn’t just be lauded by the great and the good, but people should, throughout their lives, do stuff that gets them to feel the benefits of it. My only worry would be the danger of doing this in a way that is a pointless exercise – very boring citizenship classes for example, as opposed to getting a group of kids to set up and research a campaign or project using their citizenship rights and taking on civic responsibility. I think your suggestion about parent inductions into the educational world sounds a good idea, although I worry about the choice agenda in education more generally.
Perhaps an idea would be a series of citizenship engagements throughout different stages of life, with the emphasis on doing stuff. (That sounds very vague!)
Re your point about changing attitudes through behaviour still being too beholden to a rational actor model (in that attitudes are still what we ultimately seem to be trying to change), I guess we have to change our conception of attitudes: they very often result from unconscious cognitive processes that adjust over time and through all sorts of influences. So in a way it is attitudes that matter still, it’s just that they get formed in ways different to how we thought.
Hey Matt,
Nice post. Thaler and Sunstein emphasise that there’s no such thing as not being influenced – so we might as well make our influences beneficial.
My problem with nudging has more to do with its view of humans as necessarily split between sensuous inclination and rational duty. The remedies they arrive at to resolve the endless conflict this creates are, I suggest, essentially sadistic.
I’d be interested to hear your thoughts:
http://www.rowlandmanthorpe.com/blog/2009/07/the-sadism-of-nudge/
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