When governments (local or central) think about communicating with people it’s usually about adopting a broadcast model. One-way systems of telling people what to do and what not to do. Don’t do this, don’t do that, eat less, exercise more, eat five fruits a day the list is endless. But people don’t always do what is best for them – for many reasons. Lots of it has to do with habits and choices and norms and values. The recently published Nudge by Richard Thaler and Cass Sustein (Sustein is one of Barack Obama’s advisors) describes the problem as being the difference between acting like Mr. Spock or Homer Simpson.
Mr. Spock attributed such knowledge and humanity to us mortals he believed that we would act rationally like economic man (or woman) but in fact we are all a bit more like Homer Simpson than we care to admit. Sometimes although we plan to do something, in fact we don’t sometimes we have problems with self-control, sometimes we are impulsive and their point is that in these circumstances both private and public institutions can do something, without forcing things, to make peoples lives a lot better.
Take pensions, for example. According to Thaler and Sunstein people should have an opt out rather than an opt in opportunity to take out a pension. Most people don’t think about taking out a pension until they are older. Applying the Nudge principle everyone would automatically be included in the pension scheme with the option to opt out if you wanted. Most people stick with the default setting and stay in – the same princple applies in other countries for organ donation. Last year, a study of 22 countries found that donation rates were 25 to 30 per cent higher in countries with presumed consent, such as Spain, Austria and Belgium (Journal of Health Economics)
So, public policy makers could think of ways of designing policies where the default setting will be for the greater good – but where individuals always have the choice to do what they want to do as individuals. What we should not design are policies that are based on the assumption that human beings undertake rational chocies all the time. Understanding the psychology of choice and persuasion is therefore critically important in the public realm.
