By Haoyang Yan
Original clipping:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/20/opinion/sunday/cass-sunstein-making-government-logicalhtml.html
In September 2015, Cass Sunstein, one of the authors of Nudge, published an opinion article entitled “Making Government Logical” in the New York Times. He pointed out that government programs with good intentions often went unrewarded because they were simply too hard for people to follow. Consider the student loan forms. Although they’re supposed to be helpful, how many students are able to fill them out without a headache? Fortunately, the government is aware of this problem and is dedicated to making things easier by hiring behavioral scientists who provide insights of how people think and act. The solutions seem simple: an extra text message, an extra letter, and a new signature box are surprisingly effective in increasing involvement in beneficial government aiding programs. This story only reveals a tip of the iceberg. In fact, there is a realm of literature on such behavioral aids—choice architecture and its ethics.
Choice Architecture
Previous research has shown that people’s decisions are context dependent. That is, people’s decisions are often influenced by how the choices are presented to them. The study of “choice architecture” – a term introduced by Thaler and Sunstein (2008) – explores this phenomenon. Recently, scholars have been comparing different choice constructions to find tools to aid people’s decisions. One prominent example is the use of default effect. Johnson and Goldstein (2003) employed situations in which people were presented with decision tasks such as considering whether to donate organs in the event of death from an accident. Their goal was to see if they could present the options (to be a donor or to not be a donor) in such a way that more people would choose to be a donor. They key, of course, was to do so without forcing people to choose an option that they did not really want. Johnson and Goldstein merely manipulated the default option to be either “donation” or “no donation”. People were twice as likely to donate when opting-out as when opting-in. Other applications of choice architecture include placing healthier foods at eye-level in the lunch room to “nudge” people to make healthier food choices. This effect is so powerful that even when people were informed about this effect and given the chance to modify their decisions, people were still more likely to go with the defaults, as shown in one study done by George Loewenstein, Cindy Bryce, David Hagmann, and Sachin Rajpal.
Ethics
One big empirical question related to the behavioral decision aids is ethics. Does choice architecture restrict individual freedom? Is the government hiring behavioral scientists to manipulate people? Does the government know what is in each individual’s best interest? There are probably more questions than answers. In the article, the author Sunstein proposed to hold whoever uses the behavioral interventions accountable in order to prevent misuse and to reduce distrust. It is also important to keep in mind that constructing different presentations of choice options is different than changing, limiting, or restricting choice options. Most applications of choice architecture are intended to do the former, not the latter, in people’s best interest. Another consideration is that people are consistently being presented with carefully crafted messages by another entity – businesses. If it is generally acceptable for businesses to present information in a way that aims to maximize their profit, it may also be acceptable for the government to present information in a manner that facilitates people’s choices in their best interest. Just as people are free to choose to buy or not buy products and services from businesses, they would be free to choose or not choose the “nudged” option in different forms.
Cass Sunstein’s paper, entitled “Do people like nudges?” provides a summary of findings relevant to this question. The key findings are: (1) people prefer explicit decision aids as opposed to implicit ones that change behaviors without disclosures. And (2) people’s standpoints on behavioral decisions aids are associated with their attitudes of the policy substance itself. In other words, if you want more healthy food, you see the nudge towards healthy food as acceptable, but it is another story when you do not intend to eat more healthy food.
Suggested readings:
Cass R. Sunstein. Do People Like Nudges? (May 8, 2015).
Loewenstein, G., Bryce, C., Hagmann, D., & Rajpal, S. Warning: You Are About to Be Nudged. (March 28, 2014)
Johnson, E. J., & Goldstein, D. G. (2003). Do defaults save lives? Science, 302, 1338–1339.
Thaler, R. H., & Sunstein, C. R. (2008). Nudge: improving decisions about health, wealth and happiness. New Haven: Yale University Press.
