Paternalistic policies are presented as being in our best interests. Behavioural economics assumes that we are not rational, that we know this, and we welcome the release from anxiety and guilt. According to the select committee report, when the government guides our decisions for us it ‘acts as surrogate willpower and locks our biscuit tins’. Locking up biscuit tins is bossy and patronising. Rationally I know I ‘shouldn’t’ eat too many biscuits – or whatever public health issue you would like to insert into that metaphor – but it is my choice. And I would argue that people should be given factual information to guide choices rather than being manipulated at a subconscious level into making choices the government thinks are best for us. But locking us up is a serious measure with vast repercussions. The behavioural science framework for making the population comply with being locked down involved powerful techniques which deserve public consultation. That the consultation hasn’t happened so far is concerning, but now, more than ever, the use of propaganda and nudge needs to be brought into the public forum for debate.
Gary Sidley was one of the few psychologists I noticed airing concerns about the ethics of behavioural science during the Covid epidemic. He was keen to stress that ‘covert strategies are interesting and they have a role. For instance, if you can try and minimise the likelihood of vandalism, that seems like it would be a legitimate use.’ His concern was that there has been no public consultation about the acceptability of the tools, and they were too contentious for such a major public health policy: ‘Using fear, public pressure and scapegoating are probably tools that would be rejected by the British public if we had a vote.’
He told me that none of us are immune to the bombardment of fear. He worried about the continued use of these tactics for his children and grandchildren. I asked where he thought it would take us and he said: ‘I don’t want to think about that really. It’s not a good place. There is something distinctive about using fear to get people to conform which is so distasteful and ethically unacceptable. Fear impacts on every aspect of our being.’
Not all this fear came from the Behavioural Insights Team; there are other actors. As the Nudge Unit wouldn’t speak to me I can’t pretend I know its role in detail, but I assume it was a key contributor, given it is central to UK government, and that David Halpern is part of SPI-B, the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behaviour which reports into SAGE, the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies. Controlling information, countering disinformation, using behavioural psychology and leveraging fear can be wrought by different parts of the government machinery: the Cabinet Office, the Rapid Response Unit, the Counter Disinformation Cell, GCHQ, the Home Office’s Research, Information and Communications Unit (RICU), Prevent and the 77th Brigade, which is part of the army. (An explanation of the units is below.)
I spoke to an independent scientific advisor, deeply embedded at Whitehall, who needs to remain anonymous. I interviewed them about pandemic planning and death registrations (for Chapter 11, ‘Counting the dead’) but was struck by their anger about the government’s use of behavioural psychology. Indeed, it’s one of the reasons they wanted to help me with my research. They told me that they are ‘stunned by the weaponisation of behavioural psychology over the last five years’ and that ‘psychology and behavioural science are feted above everything else. The psychologists didn’t seem to notice when it stopped being altruistic and became manipulative. They have too much power and it intoxicates them.’
The advisor told me that in their experience, the application of behavioural science in disaster planning used to be more about predicting how people would behave and what they would need, but became more about ‘how to make people do what we want’. Essentially, it became about manipulation, ‘spin’ and ‘disaster management for the social media age’.
Off the record we talked about the use of propaganda, not just creating fear, but also shaping positive responses after disasters, and steering ‘radicals’ in different directions. Government units are created entirely for these purposes and their methods are opaque. ‘I never used to be cynical,’ my anonymous source told me, ‘you couldn’t find a more positive person. Now if I see a cute seven-year-old in the news, I wonder which government department is behind it.’
In the advisor’s opinion, ‘Everything about the government messaging this year has been designed to keep the fear going. The story about a Kawasaki-like disease in children, for example.’ Funnily enough, I had noticed the story about a potential link between Kawasaki disease in children, which broke on the BBC6 the same day as a story about Ofsted saying children should return to school.7 At the time, incidences of Kawasaki disease were lower than normal for that time of year,8 probably because children were at home and not catching as many viruses. That context was not part of the dramatic articles about Kawasaki, which lit up social media with alarm. I mused it was odd that two such conflicting stories were in the news on the same day, although of course the news fell in a fast flurry around us all year. But could this push–pull be designed to create confusion? Or were the media and their sources struggling to keep up with confusing and conflicting stories? My source said stories are leaked to the media to help push certain narratives forward.
Another example of that was an article in The Independent which ran in February 2021 with the headline ‘Hospitals prepare for increase in children suffering rare disease triggered by Covid’.9 This came out just when the clamour for schools
