Nudges, Wise Interventions, Persuasion and Norms

Assumptions of Traditional Economics

• People are fundamentally rational, possess good self-control

• People will consider all relevant information in decisions

• Humans are unbiased -- Errors are random and will cancel each other out

Assumptions of Behavioural Economics

• People are often irrational, influenced by emotion, lack self-control

• People’s access to information, attention, memory, time, and energy are limited

• Humans are biased -- Error is often systematic, some errors are more likely than others

Nudges

• Any aspect of the choice architecture that alters people’s behaviour in a predictable way without forbidding any options or significantly changing their economic incentives

• To count as a mere nudge, the intervention must be cheap and easy to avoid

• Nudges are not mandates

• Putting fruit at eye level counts as a nudge -- Banning junk food does not

Choice Architecture

• Changing the environment in a specific way to encourage a specific behaviour

Key Features of Nudges

1. Take into account human psychology and pitfalls of human decision making

2. Situation designed to make some choices easier and more likely

3. Maintains free choice not to act according to the nudge

4. Transparent, not hidden

Common Nudge Principles

• Default Rules -- Default is what happens if you do nothing, people like doing nothing

• Reduce Friction -- Simplification, ease, convenience, reminders, attention

• Sometimes, increase friction

• Use of social norms -- Injunctive and descriptive

• Pre-commitment strategies

Wadala Train Experiment in Mumbai India

• 8-10 deaths per day train crossings

• 3000 deaths per year from people crossing train tracks

• Experiment:

  • Painted railway ties at the final mile

  • Two horn blasts instead of one

  • Graphic imagery as a reminder

  • Cost a small percentage of budget

• Results:

  • Deaths reduced by 70% within 6 months

  • Rolled out across the region

Wise Psychology Interventions

• Nouns versus verbs

• Growth vs. Fixed Mindset

• Newlyweds Inviting a Third

• Do I Belong Here?

Nouns vs. Verbs

• Calling people “voters” transformed it into an identity -- “Voting” was an action or chore

Growth vs. Fixed Mindset

• Failure is information for improvement vs a reason I’m not cut out for this

Newlyweds Inviting a Third

• Every 4 months, a 7-minute activity -- How would “a neutral third party who wants the best for all” respond to this conflict or issue?

Do I Belong Here?

• Under-represented students re-interpreting challenges of university as common to all students, not indicators they don’t belong

Wise Interventions

• The psychological “wisdom” or insight into how people make sense of and explain their experiences, how they understand the contexts they find themselves in

• Identifying those psychological mechanisms can help people discover the tools they need to be more adaptive

Wise Interventions -- Problem

• Achievement Gap

• Some students can struggle in school

• Precipitating Factors

• Perpetuating Factors

Precipitating Factors

• Historical/systemic racism/bias, poverty, less access to resources, less family or communities stability/support, current bias/stigma → lowers trust that teachers have positive intentions

Perpetuating Factors

• What does a failure mean?

• What if I get critical feedback on an essay?

• The way students interpret these new events can perpetuate and reinforce the problem

Wise Interventions -- Characteristics

• More simple, brief, and precise than large multi-component intervention programs

• Alters a particular way a person thinks or feels about themselves or others/the world

• Focus on the psychological processes

• Relies on a precise understanding of mechanisms -- What is causing or perpetuating the problem and how to alter that pathway

Example -- School Success

• Students wrote essay and got feedback

• Intervention group:

  • “Im giving you these comments because I have very high expectations and I know that you can reach them

• Control group:

  • “Im giving you these comments so that you’ll have feedback on your paper”

• Results:

  • Control group was more likely to make less revisions and get lower grades

  • Intervention group was more likely to make more revisions and get better grades

Features of Wise Interventions

• Psychological Theory

• Recursion

Psychological Theory

• Informs creation of a precise tool or exercise to change a specific psychological process in a real-world setting

  • Psychological precision often allows “small” to be effective

  • Often affects only those who need the shift in meaning-making

    • Can avoid remedial programs, give to everyone, those who need it will benefit

Recursion

• Often “one-time” interventions that dissipate over time

• Interventions with recursive dynamics are designed to be repeatedly triggered by the environment and build over time -- Snowball or cascade effect

Benefits of Recursion

• Wise interventions alter a precise, psychological process that unfolds over time, not a “moment” in time -- Can improve outcome for years

• Most effective in recursive contexts where similar patterns repeat

• Recursive Dynamics -- Process gets triggered again and again and creates new habitual responses, and one effective response creates room for the next and the next

Wise Interventions -- Conditions that Affect Effectiveness

• Process targets must matter in the setting at hand

• Targeted psychological process must be effectively changed and not be understood as remedial

• Timing matters -- Long term outcomes only if critical recursive processes are altered

• Often requires structural/material resources to be available to support the intervention

Ikizer and Blanton

• Led people to:

  • See the problem as smaller

  • Blame individuals for the problem, personal responsibility for solving it

  • More so for programs targeting Black Americans

  • Stronger among conservatives

Persuation

• 6 Major Principles

  • Reciprocity

  • Scarcity

  • Authority

  • Consistency

  • Liking

  • Consensus

Reciprocity

• People are obligated to give back to others the form of a behaviour, gift, or service that they have received first

• Key to using the reciprocity principle is to be the first to give and to ensure that what you give is personalized and unexpected

Scarcity

• People want more of those things they can have less of

• It is not enough to simply tell people about the benefits they will gain -- It is important to point out the uniqueness and what they stand to lose if they fail to consider the proposal

Authority

• People follow the lead of credible, knowledgable experts

• It is important to signal what makes you a credible, knowledgeable authority before you make your influence attempt

Consistency

• People like to be consistent with the things they have previously said or done

• Activated by looking for, and asking for, small initial commitments that can be made

Liking

• People prefer to say yes to those that they like

• We like people who are similar to use, we like people who pay us compliments, and we like people who cooperate with mutual goals

Consensus

• Especially when uncertain, people will look to the actions and behaviours of others to determine their own

• Scientifically validated principles of persuasion that provide for small, practical, often costless changes that can lead to big differences in your ability to influence and persuade others in an entirely ethical way

Social Norms

• Descriptive norms

• Injunctive norms

• Dynamic norms

• Illusory norms -- Pluralistic ignorance

• Positive deviance

Norms and School Conflict

• Surveyed 24,191 students

• Asked them to nominate the top 10 students at their school who they chose to spend time with, in/outside of school/online/FTF

• Mapped each schools social network

• Identified “social referents” -- Students with a lot of influence/diverse networks

• Intervention co-developed with students

• Results

  • “Social referents” worked with researchers to model new norms

  • Because of their influence, norms spread

  • Extended to new generation of students

Social Norms Marketing Approach

• Identify Target Behaviour

  • Impact -- Can it make a difference?

  • Probability -- Are people less likely to do it?

  • Market Opportunity -- Is current behaviour lacking?

• Target Audience

  • Size

  • Readiness

  • Reachability

• Barriers and Benefits

  • What makes the behaviour harder?

  • What would make it easier/more attractive?

• The 4 P’s

  • Place -- Where

  • Price -- Costs/Benefits

  • Product -- Materials/Activities

  • Promotions -- How to reach people

Ways to Change Norms

• Could an I-Frame/Light-touch/wise intervention change norms?

  • Enough individual change → shift norm perceived by others

  • Persuasion techniques -- Consensus communicates norms

• Could nudges change norms?

• Could an S-Frame/Heavy-Handed intervention change norms?

Using our Powers for Good vs. Evil?

• Nudge vs. “Sludge”

  • People may be nudged to unhealthy choices

  • Sludge is the opposite -- Choice architecture and systems designed to be difficult, inconvenient or promote maladaptive choices

• Could there be “unwise” interventions?

  • Interventions that encourage people to think the worst of others or otherwise interpret situations more negatively?

• Might we create antisocial or maladaptive norms?

• Persuasion… for what ends?

  • Where is the line between persuasion and propoganda?