Fair enough, but SPI-B did suggest tactics that are manipulative and coercive. ‘I would hope to think that all psychologists are guided by high moral principles and would use their knowledge, experience and expertise for the cause of good – which is why perhaps recommendations are often at odds with what the government is hoping to hear,’ he told me. ‘Clearly, using fear as a means of control is not ethical. What you do as a psychologist is co-construction. Using fear smacks of totalitarianism. It’s not an ethical stance for any modern government.’ So why did SPI-B suggest it? ‘The government were frightened people wouldn’t obey instructions. To some extent it’s why they held off in locking us down. I don’t know if using fear was even a conscious decision by the government. But by some sleight of hand the public clamoured for lockdown, so it became inevitable we would lock down,’ Morgan said.
Was it ethical to use fear, I asked? ‘Well, I didn’t suggest we use fear.’ But your colleagues did. What do you think of that? He paused. ‘Oh God.’ Another reluctant pause. ‘It’s not ethical,’ he said.
Finally, I was curious what Morgan had learnt during the epidemic and his role on SPI-B: ‘By nature I am an optimistic person, but all this has given me a more pessimistic view of people. People are passive and biddable. A lot of people don’t question, their thinking is shaped by other people, especially the media and social media and that is a dangerous thing. As a society we are set up to encourage a passive and biddable population.’
When MPs questioned David Halpern and Stephen Reicher during a Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee on 19 January 2021,12 not one MP asked about the ethics.
We mustn’t let the calls for consultation about the ethics and acceptability of the use of behavioural science, especially about something as profound as fear, drift into a pre-pandemic past. Good ethics must never be behind us if we want to fulfil the potential ‘force for good’ that psychology can offer government.
First, the public must understand how behavioural psychology is used on them. This book is a start. An independent third party must inquire into the use of behavioural psychology during the Covid-19 pandemic. Of course, behavioural psychology didn’t start during the pandemic. It also isn’t the preserve of the psychologists anymore: we witnessed many clumsy attempts at nudge from ministers ‘having a go’. Rather, the pandemic response has revealed the psychocratic influence deeply embedded in various government departments, the NHS and Public Health England. So, an inquiry should start with a historical literature review of behavioural psychology and the use of it by government to understand its trajectory and to contextualise its use during the pandemic. There should be a full analysis of the tactics used and their impacts, by experts including psychologists, behavioural scientists, mental health specialists, politicians, political scientists, sociologists, civil liberties organisations and lawyers, as well as representatives of the public. The results must be shared and debated and consensus reached on the acceptable and ethical use of nudge in the future.
20. THE END, OR IS IT A PREQUEL?
As I finish A State of Fear, it is one year since Fright Night, when our prime minister, Boris Johnson, told us that ‘the coronavirus is the biggest threat this country has faced for decades. All over the world we are seeing the devastating impact of this invisible killer… From this evening I must give the British people a very simple instruction – you must stay at home.’
The past year will have meant many different things to many different people. Your experience will have coloured your view of an extraordinary year. It was a year of death and illness, from Covid and also illnesses which lost out in priority, one way or another, to Covid. It was a year of more contentment for some, as they evaded the rat race, life became simpler, they spent more time with family. It was a year of separation, loneliness and hardship for others. It was a year of liberties lost. It was a year of fear.
Some fears we relish and return to: the scariest rollercoaster or the made-you-jump-the-most-times horror film. I think once this debacle is over, people will want to forget the worst and romanticise the best, to storify the saga into a bearable memory. But that would be dangerous. We must use the emotional distance and space to critically assess which rubicons were crossed.
When I started investigating this book, the idea that our fear had been weaponised against us was not popular currency, but is now starting to circulate. At the time of this strange anniversary, a Guardian front page headline read ‘Covid checks at pubs “could nudge young people to get vaccine”’1 [italics my emphasis], explicitly noting the blatant use of behavioural psychology. In the same week, Professor Tim Spector told Times Radio that the prime minister’s warnings of a third wave were designed to ‘keep the population fearful’.2 Variants are now often referred to as ‘scariants’ in an acknowledgement of increasingly obvious attempts to scare the British public into complying with the rules.
Although the vaccine programme has been successful in its aims, and cases, hospitalisations and deaths are falling, the campaign of fear continues. More punitive fines are dangled like threatening bombs, most lately a £5,000
