Our environmental and social problems are pressing, and many countries are short of money and deadlocked in politics. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if it turned out there was a new way to make real progress cheaply and without getting involved in party politics?
About two decades ago, along with many of our colleagues in the behavioral sciences, we thought it might. The idea was elegant: social problems often arise from people making “bad” choices, either for themselves (eating unhealthy, smoking, gambling—the list goes on!) or for others (for example, by damaging the environment by littering). The old fashioned approach to bad decisions is to tax them or ban them. But the new strategy focused on a more nuanced, psychologically nuanced approach: redesigning the way options are presented to make the “right” choice easy, natural, and appealing. Bad options are still available, but smart policy ensures that they are chosen less often.
Such “nudges” seemed to offer the hope of solving big social problems through small changes that reshaped individual behavior. Concerned about rising obesity? Try smaller portion and plate sizes and move the salad bar to the front of the dining room. Are you concerned about climate change? Deploy “green energy” to homeowners by default.
For a while, it looked like a nudge revolution might be on its way. An army of researchers (ourselves included) have been looking for small tweaks to the “choice architecture” that could lead to changes in individual behavior and make a big difference to society. Now we had a chance to use psychological knowledge for a better world.
If only. After nearly 20 years, the results have been few and far between: even if nudges work, their effects are small, fade quickly, and usually don’t get bigger. And it turns out that by reinforcing the idea that social problems should be viewed through the lens of individual behavior, scientists have unwittingly provided ammunition for powerful business interests to oppose the old-fashioned (but effective) policy tools of taxation and legislation that fundamentally alter the system of rules and incentives that shape society—and could threaten their bottom line.
In retrospect, none of this should have surprised us (even though it did). The social problems we face did not arise from changes at the individual level, given that human psychology is largely constant throughout history. Instead, they are the result of seismic systemic changes such as mechanization and electrification fueled by coal, oil and gas over two centuries, or the rise of ultra-processed foods over the past 40 years. These shifts are not the responsibility of individuals—and individuals, however driven, cannot solve the problems of carbon emissions or unhealthy diets on their own. Indeed, there is a real danger that the individual focus will be a distraction, deceiving policymakers and citizens alike into thinking that there is a viable alternative to these laws and taxes.
If we’re right, we might expect corporations fighting regulation to be particularly active in devising ineffective but plausible-sounding solutions at the individual level. But wait – that already happened. Consider a personal “carbon footprint” to help us track our individual damage to the planet. Where did this idea come from? The United Nations? Greenpeace? No, it comes from a huge advertising campaign in the early 2000s by one of the world’s largest fossil fuel companies, BP.
Whatever the social or environmental problem, opponents of systemic change want to bring the problem back to the individual. As behavioral scientists, we have fallen into a trap. No longer.
Behavioral scientists Nick Chater and George Loewenstein the new book is It On You (WH Allen)will be released on January 27th
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