IN 2009, Gus O’Donnell*, then Cabinet Secretary and head of the Home Civil Service, commissioned a report into how Behavioural Science could be employed to achieve desired policy outcomes. Canny TCW readers will instantly realise that ‘desired’ and ‘outcomes’ are windmill words, which are similar to weasel words, but windmill words just keep going round and round on an ever-spinning reel, so you can never pin them down. What does and what does not qualify as a desired outcome? In whose estimation is it desired? For whom is it an outcome, and for whom not? Round and round and round.
In the foreword to the published report, enigmatically titled MINDSPACE, Gus didn’t mince his words: ‘The biggest policy challenges we are now facing – such as the increase in people with chronic health conditions – will only be resolved if we are successful in persuading people to change their behaviour, their lifestyles or their existing habits. Fortunately, over the last decade, our understanding of influences on behaviour has increased significantly and this points the way to new approaches and new solutions.’
In their introduction, the authors of the report, Paul Dolan, Michael Hallsworth, David Halpern, Dominic King and Ivo Vlaev, had this to say: ‘For policy-makers facing policy challenges such as crime, obesity, or environmental sustainability, behavioural approaches offer a potentially powerful new set of tools. Applying these tools can lead to low cost, low pain ways of “nudging” citizens – or ourselves – into new ways of acting by going with the grain of how we think and act.’
If you’ve ever done any woodwork, going with the grain is important in allowing your tools to work smoothly without damaging them or the wood, and to achieve a good finish. You are not ‘nudging’ the wood. You are chiselling it, planing it and sanding it; reshaping it to your design and to your purpose. What is shaved off becomes swarf, sawdust, and is discarded or used as absorbent for oil spills, blood or vomit. How does that make you feel, O Shaved-Off Ones?
The Mindspacemen identified nine factors which they considered significant influences on behaviour. These are:
1. Messenger. Where or who the message is coming from. You will pay heed to a source with credentials more than one without.
2. Incentive. If you have an identifiable desire or need.
3. Norms. We feel encouraged to do something when we see others doing that something.
4. Defaults. We do what is habitual or takes the least effort.
5. Salience. We pay attention to anything novel, or which seems relevant to us.
6. Priming. Your internal state influences your perceptions and readiness to respond to associated stimuli. Watch a scary film at the cinema, then find yourself inadvertently avoiding the dark alley on the way home.
7. Affect. This is an affected word for feelings.
8. Commitments. If you have promised to do something.
9. Ego. Another word for pride, vanity or self-esteem. We do things that inflate our ego, and avoid things that deflate it.
You probably have no objections to the Government wanting to look after you, but you may prefer to be consulted. Historically, the way this was done was for the Central Office of Information to openly advise you. The Public Information Films that used to be shown on television were not cryptic, the message was loud and clear. Overt exhortations are laudable. You can contemplate them, and decide for yourself whether they’re a good idea. It’s comforting to be given the option. Nudging removes you from the equation. Its purpose is to get you to do things which are in accordance with the goals of those who are designing the nudging, whether you concur or not. To give a simple example: if a supermarket stacks chocolate bars next to the checkout, busy, tired and hungry wives may pop a couple of bars on to the conveyor belt without thinking about it. But if the chocolate is replaced with packs of sugar-free chewing gum, the busy wife (unless she wears dentures) will pop a couple of packets of those on to the belt instead. She has been painlessly nudged, and there’s something in it for everyone: her dentist, the supermarket, the Wrigley’s corporation. Nobody suffers. Neat, you must agree. Or maybe you don’t? Do you object to being nudged?
The Government’s dilemma is understandable. Suggest overtly that people do something and people might not do it. Furthermore, people would cotton on to what the Government wants them to do, and then they definitely might not do it (and by simple logic, deduce what the Government does not want them to do; often very useful information).
Being overt has other unintended consequences. If the Government wanted to tackle obesity in the population, it could arrange to have eye-catching posters displayed in shop windows and at bus stops, showing a pendulous-bosomed, camel-faced lady floating perilously in an under-inflated rubber dingy, gorging herself on a Cornetto. The caption could read: ‘Cut Down On Those Calories, Caroline — Otherwise You’re Not Going To Be Floating Anyone’s Boat!’ But that might risk putting people off rubber boats and seaside holidays for life, so you need to be careful. It’s easy to go too far.
What does all this mean? At best, it suggests that the Government doesn’t give a tinker’s cuss what the British public wants, or does not want. From here the Government will be heeding ‘experts’ and ‘scientists’ and ‘specialists’ and other unaccountable technocrats, who shall dictate government policy. The nudge units are there to engineer our compliance.
The Mindspacemen do re-enter earth’s gravity to give this concern a graceful orbit: ‘Behavioural approaches embody a line of thinking that moves from the idea of an autonomous individual making rational decisions to a ‘situated’ decision-maker, much of whose behaviour is automatic and influenced by their ‘choice environment’. This raises the question: who decides on this ‘choice environment’? This question has attracted remarkably little attention. [You think so?] Policy-makers wishing to use these tools summarised in MINDSPACE need the approval of the public to do so. Indeed, these approaches suggest an important new role for policymakers as brokers of public views and interests around the ecology of behaviour.’
Bless their little space helmets.
Here follows a reimagined No-Nudge Mindspace Programme. Download free of charge.
M Make up your own Mind.
I Inveigh against Imposition of Involuntary Interventions.
N Nobody Never tells No one else what or what Not to do, Not ever.
D Do it now before they make it illegal, and if they do make it illegal, Disobey.
S Scathing Sarcasm Silences Specious Scientism.
P People! Please Ponder Passionately and Purposefully.
A Absolutely Act for yourself Alone.
C Care about yourself. Cultivate your Common sense, and Cleave only to thine own Conscience.
E Easy peasy lemon squeezy.
Message Ends.
Critics will no doubt pile in and declare that if Mr Jamnik is so darned clever, why doesn’t he come up with something better than Mindspace? Well, I shall spike their guns:
Do everything to enhance your Health.
Ends are important, but not by any means.
If there is something for which you have a natural Aptitude, pursue it.
Riches? You can’t take it with you.
Surround yourself with people whom you Trust and who want the best for you.
It’s Your life, and you can do whatever you like with it.
Enjoy your Food and buy quality produce — you are what you eat.
Be Open and sincere, but always mind your own business.
Locate at least one person to Love, and let them love you back.
Don’t Kid yourself, at the very least.
Follow these simple guidelines, and with a bit of luck and a fair wind, you will become one of the down-to-earth HEARTY FOLK and not a Flaky Other.
You can download the Mindspace document here.
You can see how it used to be done here:
Windmills of your Mind:
*During the covid era, Augustine Thomas O’Donnell was chair of the Behavioural Insights Team Advisory Board at the Cabinet Office. The BIT is no longer between the Government’s teeth. In December 2021 it was sold for £15,400,000 to Nesta, the innovation charity. It continues its mission to design, test and scale solutions for the biggest challenges of our time. You can visit its glossy and unapologetic website here.
