How Can Governments and Businesses Avoid the Big Mistake?

- The Psych Report

08/05/16 09:37

"

How Can Governments and Businesses

Avoid the Big Mistake?
December 5, 2015 / / in Books, Business, Politics / by David Halpern

Image: Adapted from Hugh DAndrade

[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Capitoldome.png#le] and WH Allen
[http://www.eburypublishing.co.uk/editions/insightfulthinking/9780753556535]

n a 2006 Downing Street seminar, Robert Cialdini had one

message that struck particularly deeply, and led to quite a

bit of nervous laughter around the State Dining Room. He

talked about how often policymakers, in his opinion, not only
missed the power of social norms and inuence, they often
inadvertently used them in a way that actually backred.
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He argued that too often, in their haste to impress upon

colleagues or the public the gravity of a particular issue,
policymakers would inadvertently reinforce the very behavior
they were trying to discourage. For example, a campaign
concerning knife crime would end up communicating the
message that most young people carried knives, or a
campaign to reduce tax evasion or benet fraud would
inadvertently communicate that everyone was at it. Such
campaigns, or speeches, were the policy equivalent of putting
a no ball games sign on a high brick wallwell-meaning, but
almost bound to prompt the thought well, now that you
mention it, that is a great surface for a ball game.

In the years since that seminar I have lost count of the

number of examples of Robert Cialdinis big mistake that I
have seen. In most cases the eect has not been evaluated
but we know enough about of the power of descriptive social
norms to be troubled. Examples include: posters telling
immigration ocers that some of their colleagues have been
caught and punished for selling work visas (Never thought of
thatI wonder how much they made); signs in doctors
surgeries about the number of people who missed their
appointments in the last month ( so Im not the only one);
and national campaigns bemoaning the low number of
women on top company boards (well, weve got a woman on
our board of twelve, so thats pretty good, then).
Unfortunately, certain institutions in society also
inadvertently make, or amplify, the big mistake. The media
itself is one of these, albeit echoing our own human interest
in stories about crime, threat or deceit. No wonder that the
majority of the public, in the UK and elsewhere, continue to
feel that crime is rising (at least at a national level), despite
every reliable measure documenting its fall over the last 20

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years. Similarly, welfare and regulatory systems often

inadvertently signal that most people are not to be trusted,
since they are routinely built around the assumption, and
tests, that people are cheating and breaking the law. The
evidence on social norms suggests that such signaling is likely
to increase levels of cheating.

[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0753556537/ref=as_li_tl?
ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0753556537&linkCode=as2&tag=thepsyrep20&linkId=QNVMKC2TFW6D2V62]
Yet it is often possible to ip around these campaigns and
eects. Take the example of getting more women on
company boards, an issue widely championed by
campaigners and indeed Prime Ministers, but often
embodying a clear example of the big mistake. The normal
centerpiece of campaigns to get more women on boards is a
statistic along the lines isnt it shocking that only 25 per cent
of board members are women? (less in some countries). It is
shocking, but its also likely to be a message that
inadvertently normalizes the situation. On the other hand, if
such campaigns made the equally valid point that 90 percent
of companies have women on their boards, then the
signaling is very dierent. Following discussions with Iris
Bohnet, an expert on gender inequality, and Emily Walsh,
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special adviser to the UKs Business Secretary, parts of the

UKs campaign to encourage more women on to boards has
indeed been reframed in this way.
Similarly, most industrialized countries are wrestling with the
problem of obesity, so reecting these particular social norms
is likely to backre. Indeed, there is specic evidence that
obesity is contagiouswhen those around you get fat, so do
you, and with it your sense of what is healthy shifts, too. This
can raise dicult issues, including occasionally the
temptation to nudge the presentation of numbers to prevent
the situation getting worse. The weight curves given to US
parents to plot their childs development, for some years,
have not been the actual weight curves of US children.
Rather, they are generally distributions of healthy weight,
driven by the concern that if parents used the actual weight
curves of US children it would exacerbate the problem of
obesity even further.
Cialdinis big mistake provides a clear example of why
governments and businesses can benet from learning even
just a little about behavioral insights. Even if you have no
interest in actively using nudge approaches you should at
least want to know where you have inadvertently stumbled
into deploying them against yourself.

Excerpted from Inside the Nudge Unit: How Small Changes

Can Make a Big Dierence
[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0753556537/ref=as_li_tl?
ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0753556537&linkCode=as2&tag=thepsyrep20&linkId=QNVMKC2TFW6D2V62] , WH Allen. Copyright

2015 David Halpern. Reprinted with permission. Available in

the United States December 15, 2015.

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David Halpern

[http://www.behaviouralinsights.co.uk/people/dr-davidhalpern/] is the Chief Executive of the Behavioral Insights

Team and Board Director. He has led the team since its
inception in 2010. Prior to that, David was the founding
Director of the Institute for Government and between 2001
and 2007 was the Chief Analyst at the Prime Ministers
Strategy Unit. Before entering government, David held tenure
at Cambridge and posts at Oxford and Harvard. He has
written several books and papers on areas relating to
behavioral insights and well-being, including Social Capital
(2005), the Hidden Wealth of Nations (2010), and most
recently Inside the Nudge Unit (2015).

More on The Psych Report

[http://thepsychreport.com/politics/the-behavioral-insightsteam-5-years-on-a-conversation-with-owain-service/]
The Behavioral Insights Team 5 Years On: A Conversation
with Owain Service
[http://thepsychreport.com/politics/the-behavioralinsights-team-5-years-on-a-conversation-with-owainservice/]
http://thepsychreport.com/business-org/how-can-governments-and-businesses-avoid-the-big-mistake/

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[http://thepsychreport.com/books/last-mile-lawyereconomist-a-marketer-behavioral-scientist-go-into-a-bar/]
A Lawyer, an Economist, a Marketer, and a Behavioral
Scientist Go into a Bar
[http://thepsychreport.com/books/last-mile-lawyereconomist-a-marketer-behavioral-scientist-go-into-a-bar/]

[http://thepsychreport.com/politics/executive-order-formallyestablishes-us-nudge-unit/]
Executive Order Formally Establishes US Nudge Unit
[http://thepsychreport.com/politics/executive-orderhttp://thepsychreport.com/business-org/how-can-governments-and-businesses-avoid-the-big-mistake/

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formally-establishes-us-nudge-unit/]

Further Reading and Resources

Halpern, D. (2015). Inside the Nudge Unit: How Small

Changes Can Make a Big Dierence. London, UK: WH

Allen.
[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0753556537/ref=as_li_tl?
ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0753556537&linkCode=as2&tag=thepsyrep20&linkId=DJQKJTUIMJK7ZH3Z]
Behavioral Insights Team. (2015). Update Report 20132015.
[http://www.behaviouralinsights.co.uk/publications/thebehavioural-insights-team-update-report-2013-2015/]
Behavioral Insights Team. (2010). MINDSPACE: Inuencing
Behavior through Public Policy
[http://38r8om2xjhhl25mw24492dir.wpengine.netdnacdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/MINDSPACE.pdf] .
Nesterak, M. (2014). Nudging the UK: A Conversation with
David Halpern. The Psych Report.
[http://thepsychreport.com/conversations/nudging-theuk-a-conversation-with-david-halpern/]
Schwartz, B. (2014). Why Not Nudge? A Review of Cass
Sunsteins Why Nudge. The Psych Report.
[http://thepsychreport.com/essays-discussion/nudgereview-cass-sunsteins-why-nudge/]
Nesterak, E. (2015). How Do We Solve the Last Mile? The

Psych Report. [http://thepsychreport.com/businessorg/how-do-we-solve-the-last-mile/]

Tags: behavioral insights team, business, gender,

government, halpern, nudge, obesity, policy, social norm, UK
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