Why We Need More Than Just a Nudge
Call it a bout of myopia or a lack of imagination, but it did not occur to me two months ago — watching the lockdown of some 57 million people in Hubei — that we would all soon find ourselves homebound, too.
The world has ceased its normal operation. Even as a profound anxiety over an uncertain future prevails, the greatest contribution most of us can make is simply to stay home, wash our hands, be kind to each other online. A small and selfless sliver of the population — nurses and doctors, grocers and restaurateurs, factory workers and delivery drivers — quietly keeps society open and moving. For the rest of us, life is on something like a pause.
Self-isolation, the watchword of the day, has quickly moved from recommendation to requirement. Almost all affected countries, or localities therein, have instituted some form of mandatory social distancing. But we did not end up here overnight. While Italy moved into lockdown on the 9th of March in an effort to contain the virus’s rapid spread, here in the UK the government opted instead to issue “very strong advice” for people to avoid crowded public venues. The next day, life in my London neighborhood kept moving: the tube and buses ran, the pubs’ pints poured. It would take ten more days for the government to formally call for closures.
The UK’s range of responses has illustrated both the potential contributions, and the crucial limitations, of behavioral science in policy-making. I’ve highlighted three main lessons therefrom on how to best use behavioral science in crafting public policy:
References
[1] Camerer, C., Issacharoff, S., Loewenstein, G., O’Donoghue, T., & Rabin, M. (2003). Regulation for Conservatives: Behavioral Economics and the Case for “Asymmetric Paternalism”. University of Pennsylvania Law Review, 151(3), 1211-1254.
[2] Collinson, S., Khan, K., & Heffernan, J. M. (2015). The effects of media reports on disease spread and important public health measurements. PloS one, 10(11).
[3] Loewenstein, G., & Ubel, P. (2010). Economics behaving badly. The New York Times, 14.
[4] Lunn, P., Belton, C., Lavin, C., McGowan, F., Timmons, S., & Robertson, D. (2020). Using behavioural science to help fight the coronavirus (No. WP656). Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI).
[5] Thaler, R. H., & Sunstein, C. R. (2003). Libertarian paternalism. American Economic Review, 93(2), 175-179.
About the Author
Andrew Lewis
Andrew is a writer and behavioral scientist focused on belief construction and how people evaluate new information. He is a PhD candidate in Politics at the University of Oxford, and a doctoral researcher at its Centre for Experimental Social Science (CESS). He was previously at Carnegie Mellon University where he worked at the BEDR Policy Lab and Center for Behavioral and Decision Research (CBDR), and was a research and teaching assistant to George Loewenstein.
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