If you have read this far, then I hope A State of Fear has helped you. Once you know how nudge works, it is much easier to spot it happening. You should be more psychologically resistant to behavioural psychology techniques, including the weaponisation of fear. Think of this book as an anti-nudge handbook. Patrick Fagan has kindly shared an excerpt from an essay which continues this ‘Fight back against the nudge’ in Appendix 3.
5. AN INQUIRY INTO THE ROLE OF BEHAVIOURAL PSYCHOLOGY AND NUDGING
Cass Sunstein, the godfather of nudge, said that humans are more like Homer Simpson than homo economicus.8 It’s not a great compliment. Well, behavioural psychologists are humans too. What of their limitations, and those of the politicians who wield nudge to influence and manipulate us? Psychology has been used to understand, influence and help individuals. I believe it is now time for us, the individuals, to ask psychologists to turn their expertise back on themselves and on the government. How did their fears influence them? Why did they weaponise our fear against us?
In March 2020, an induction into a ‘Cult of Fear’ started without us even being aware of it. It began with our leader telling us to stay in our homes, except for necessary and reasonable exemptions, and obviously the Thursday evening ritualistic clapping and pot-banging for the NHS. It continued with the government attempting to manage the minutiae of our lives, including the advice to take our own serving spoons to someone else’s house for Christmas dinner.
Fear messaging was used to encourage compliance with the rules. This has changed our lives and our relationships with each other. It has also changed our relationship with the government. This was predicted in the report MINDSPACE: Influencing behaviour through public policy,9 which warned:
‘People have a strong instinct for reciprocity that informs their relationship with government – they pay taxes and the government provides services in return. This transactional model remains intact if government legislates and provides advice to inform behaviour. But if government is seen as using powerful, pre-conscious effects to subtly change behaviour, people may feel the relationship has changed: now the state is affecting “them” – their very personality.’
Indeed, the use of behavioural psychology and specifically fear has affected our personalities, our mental health, our sense of agency. And this model of governance has been followed without the public consultation that the same document proposed.
David Halpern has said that ‘if national or local governments are to use these approaches, they need to ensure that they have public permission to do so – i.e. that the nudge is transparent, and that there has been appropriate debate about it’.10 Furthermore, the MINDSPACE: Influencing behaviour through public policy discussion document he co-authored recommended a public consultation about the use of behavioural insights.
The Science and Technology Select Committee’s 2011 report Behaviour Change11 noted that there are ‘ethical issues because they involve altering behaviour through mechanisms of which people are not obviously aware’ and ‘ethical acceptability depends to a large extent on an intervention’s proportionality’. Well, using fear to make people obey lockdown rules was a huge intervention.
The report goes on to acknowledge that changing people’s behaviour is controversial and that the ‘evidence-base of any proposed behaviour change intervention’ and ‘why it is a necessary and proportionate means of addressing a well-defined problem’ should be given. Evidence and a cost-benefit analysis for non-pharmaceutical interventions, such as lockdowns, tier restrictions and face coverings, was not submitted to MPs or the public.
The report also makes an important point that the government argues that non-regulatory approaches are more ‘respectful of the freedom of the individual’ but that the report authors disagree. Well, quite.
Since 2010 there have been a few gentle suggestions that consultation and debate about the ethics of behavioural psychology are needed. We are still waiting. I emailed the Behavioural Insights Team in December 2020 and March 2021 to ask David Halpern for his views about why the public have not been consulted about the use of the MINDSPACE and EAST behavioural psychology tools. Halpern and BIT did not reply. I also asked Laura de Moliere, Head of Behavioural Science at the Cabinet Office, and again received no reply.
I went back to two of the SPI-B advisors to discuss the ethical considerations and need for public consultation.
SPI Two is the advisor who memorably told me that thoughts of the potential dystopia we might be entering kept them awake at night and that ‘psychology has been used for wicked ends’. I asked what we needed to do to develop a good and trusting relationship with government. They flipped it around: ‘We need the government to be honest and trust people. That’s not been the case. There is also an issue with the advisers. A lot of SPI-B are numbers driven. They look at the “R”, and they don’t see people. Humanity is missing from the discussion and decisions. We need to consider our relationship with the state. We should consider what we allow government to do to us, including mind control by governments.’
I spoke to Gavin Morgan, the educational psychologist on SPI-B, several times in the course of researching this book. He was keen
