Essentially, Britain is teaching governments around the world how to follow its model of nudging citizens into doing what is ‘best’ for them. Nudge has become a big business and it’s still growing. In the autumn of 2020, I noticed 10 new behavioural science roles advertised in the NHS and Public Health England.
I wanted to interview the founder of the Nudge Unit, David Halpern. I sent an email via the Behavioural Insights Team website to explain I wanted to discuss the use of fear to influence behaviour and encourage compliance during the Covid epidemic. Richard O’Brien, the Head of Communications, replied to me to emphasise that the unit is ‘operationally and legally separate’ from the government, but he said he was a great admirer of my work and would like to build a connection with me. We spoke on the phone and he told me that discussing the use of behavioural science and the use of fear during the epidemic was not ‘something David or BIT could comment on’.
I was disappointed by the lack of engagement and transparency. If not the behavioural scientists at the Nudge Unit, then who would comment on the government’s use of behavioural science? It was all a bit cloak and dagger. There was also something irregular about our exchange. Richard suggested I might be able to work with BIT on a creative project to showcase their work. I asked him to tell me more and send me a brief so we could talk further, but stressed that it must be kept separate from the questions I wanted to ask him at that point. However, after a dazzle of compliments (he was ‘impressed’, ‘flattered’ and an ‘admirer’) there were no further details and no brief to pitch for. More to the point, I never got that interview.
Could the offer of work, and therefore a fee, have been a ploy to distract me? Had the project materialised, and if I agreed to undertake it, it could have compromised an interview. He must have known that. I wondered though if I had become too cynical? Was I peering so far up the magician’s cloak sleeve that I couldn’t enjoy the magic held in front of me? I checked in with a couple of trusted contacts to ask their opinion.
I described the exchange to Gary Sidley, a retired consultant clinical psychologist. He chuckled drily, and said, ‘It sounds like a way of neutralising you. A classic tactic is to neutralise an opponent by being seen to collaborate.’ I also spoke to an anonymous scientific advisor deeply embedded in Whitehall. They told me that flattery is a very common tactic used by the government when people ask difficult questions. This echoed my suspicious gut feeling.
Even without talking to the nudgers, we know a lot about what they do and how they work. A 2018 document, Improving people’s health: Applying behavioural and social sciences to improve population health and wellbeing in England1 has the laudable aims of addressing ‘the problems currently impacting on population health, such as smoking, poor diet and physical inactivity’. The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) launched DHSC Collaborate in 2018 to deploy behavioural science to these ends. The document gives case studies like reducing tobacco use and smoking-related diseases.
It’s hard to argue with the value of some of these campaigns, although it has caused political controversy for years. Back in 2015, Claire Fox, Director of the Institute of Ideas, which campaigns for free speech and debate, said: ‘Nudge theory is about denying certain choices or making other choices harder. It is used to avoid having arguments and instead to manipulate people without them realising. It is a real assault on people’s capacity to make up their own minds. It treats us like mice in a laboratory. If people don’t do something, it’s not because they are incapable of doing it. It’s because they have chosen not to.’2
A key difference is that until 2020, the health conditions that the NHS and Public Health England have wanted to target have been well understood, whereas a novel virus is less well understood. The result is that the use of behavioural psychology to encourage compliance during the Covid epidemic could have been heavy-handed if the dangers of the virus were over-estimated, and if its transmission was not fully understood. Also, creating fear and appealing to fear is far more serious than other uses of behavioural psychology. Perhaps because the DHSC’s goals in 2018 seemed noble and sensible, and the methods seemed harmless, this blueprint didn’t contain any discussion of the ethics of using tools which affect us subconsciously.
In 2010, the authors of MINDSPACE: Influencing behaviour through public policy3 at the Institute of Government, a think tank, included a whole chapter on the ‘legitimacy of government involvement in behaviour change’ because they know it is ‘controversial’. Although they say that ‘public acceptability’ should not be the determining condition for going forward with behaviour change, they acknowledge that the use of behavioural science ‘has implications for consent and freedom of choice’ and offers people ‘little opportunity to opt out’.
As such, the report conceded that ‘policy-makers wishing to use these tools… need the approval of the public to do so.’ Yet to date, the public has not been consulted nor formally given approval. A review4 of Halpern’s book, Inside the Nudge Unit, postulated that nudge implies a ‘sanguine acceptance of a technique of government that has manipulation and even deception as a prominent feature’. Making no bones about it, nudge is clever people in government making sure the not-so-clever people do what they want.
A 2010 House of Lords Science and Technology Select Committee report, Behaviour Change,5 also brought up issues of
