Nudging to the right (From Times Series)

Nudging to the right

4:00pm Thursday 11th September 2008 in

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As Barnet Council gears up to 'nudge' us into being better citizens, there is increasing evidence of the sway the theory is holding over policy makers at Conservative HQ.

In July the shadow chancellor George Osborne announced in the Guardian that the Conservative party is “at the forefront of this new intersect,” and that the party is “engaging” with one of the authors of Nudge, the book that announced behavioural psychology to popular culture, on policy development.

At the tail end of August there was some evidence that Andrew Lansley, the shadow health minister, has taken to behavioural psychology too.

“Tell people that biology and the environment cause obesity and they are offered the one thing we have to avoid: an excuse," he said.

“As it is, people who see more fat people around them may themselves be more likely to gain weight. Young people who think many of their friends binge-drink are likely to do so themselves. Girls who think their peers engage in early sex are more likely to do so themselves. Peer pressure and social norms are powerful influences on behaviour and they are classic excuses.

“Our need, and not just in relation to public health issues, is to act on the environment, while fostering positive peer pressure and social norms. We have to take away the excuses.”

His sentiments echo an academic paper written by behavioural psychologist Robert Cialdini, who has been prominent in the thinking of council officers as they develop their drive to pioneer a reform in the approach to Government's communication with citizens. In the 2003 paper Cialdini argued that people tend to behave in the same way they believe other people behave, an idea borne out in studies that feature in the book Nudge.

Cialdini wrote: "Within the statement 'Many people are doing this undesirable thing' lurks the powerful and undercutting normative message 'Many people are doing this.'”

The result, he says, is that people are in fact more likely to then do the undesirable. Adverts saying too many people are littering has the effect of normalising littering. We become more likely to litter because we know other people are already doing it. Mr Lansley’s argument is that we - whether politicians or society at large - should foster a culture in which obesity, drug taking and early-teenage having sex are not the norm.

“We must not constantly talk about tackling obesity and warning people about the negative consequences of obesity,” Mr Lansley went on. “Instead we must be positive - positive about the fun and benefits to be had from healthy living, trying to get rid of people's excuses for being obese by tackling the issue in a positive way.”

When I spoke about the nudging pilots with Mike Freer he said in no uncertain terms that this is not about politics and there is across the board acceptance that the methods of government have to change. And the £100,000 grant to fund the pilots came from a Labour government, of course.

But there’s no doubt that the borough is at the sharp end of a philosophy that the Conservatives have taken to heart. So why is it so appealing to the Conservatives in particular?

If you look at Mr Lansley’s argument, it isn’t just about behavioural psychology - it’s about “excuses” as well. On the one hand he says that society, peer pressure and cultural norms are responsible for unwanted behaviour, and on the other he calls these excuses. This recalls Maggie Thatcher’s veneration of the Victorian values of personal responsibility - taking responsibility for your own problems and those of your immediate environment. And the brand of “choice architecture” espoused by the authors of Nudge emphasises the importance of choice, which the Conservatives have aligned to the reining-in of the nanny state, a modern version of Thatcher’s aversion to state control.

But does the reality match the rhetoric? Mr Lansley’s speech brought with it the policy announcement that the Tories would abandon the “traffic-light” colour coding for nutritional information on food packaging. For a party taking aim at the nanny state, it was not the best of targets. People are annoyed about detention-without-charge and ID cards, not a square that tells you there’s a lot of salt in your pasta bake.

This illustrates that nudging is a means to an end, not an end in itself. Governments will be judged on what they achieve, not how they achieve it.

Nudging itself is apolitical. By definition, choice architecture can be used to promote any choice. But the Tories have clearly grasped the mantle with greater vigour than Labour. Barnet's pilots will probably not have any ideological tint. But if nudging can deliver the promises the Conservatives are making, Barnet residents might just be the first to find out.