On Being Nudged

Nations, NGO’s and other institutions aim at and pursue well-being policy in order to make our lives better. Indeed, to be in a state of well-being is for your life to be going well. However, “well-being” is value laden; it is normative. So somebody else’s ideas of the “good life” may have to be imposed on people. Some may not like that. This is where nudges come in. Nudges aim to circumvent such impositions.

Thaler and Sunstein introduced nudges in order for policy makers (governments) to help us help ourselves. So what counts as a nudge? A nudge is “any aspect of choice architecture where an individual behaviour can be reliably altered, without affecting freedom of choice or changing economic incentives” (not in a major way, anyhow). Consider going in to a shop. To be nudged is to have quality and healthy food placed at eye level, since most of us purchase eye level items. If the eye level items are healthy, then your behaviour has been altered, assuming items you bought previously were unhealthy. The fact that we tend to purchase eye level items has been exploited, even if it is for our own benefit. Should nudges be used? Do they undermine our autonomy?

First, it should be said that nudges are not a mandate; junk food won’t be banned. Thaler and Sunstein claim that nudges are (1) libertarian, where individual choice is not impacted, and (2) nudges are paternalistic, where state intervention is for our own benefit. I mentioned earlier that nudges exploit our biases. What are biases and which biases might be exploited? Take the status-quo bias, our intuitive tendency to follow the status quo instead of seeking alternative options. The state, for instance, may exploit such a bias by making pensions opt-out instead of opt-in. That way, people who wouldn’t normally save for retirement now would.

Hausman and Welch think nudges are “alarmingly intrusive”. They argue that nudges are not libertarian because they exploit our biases and “cognitive errors”. In virtue of such exploitation, they go against our individual autonomy. They say that nudges are “sly, covert and subversive” - because of such “tactic” use, we should worry about being nudged. Their main point of contention is that because of bias exploitations, nudges might be a form of manipulation. The state, they say, should not exploit people’s autonomy (except maybe under rare circumstances).

The concept of nudge became a phenomenon following its introduction. The UK and US governments set up “Nudge Units” for purposes of advancing their domestic policies. So can the concept of nudging be salvaged in any way, given concerns about manipulation and subversive tactics?

Saghai believes the concept can be salvaged, so long as we restrict it to interventions. Saghai makes the distinction between “nudge” and “behavioural prod”. The former he calls “substantially non-controlling” and the latter “substantially controlling”. He gives the following criteria to salvage nudges:

(1) if A wants B to phi (to do some action) then it should be easy for B to become aware of A’s want for B to phi and for B to resist it.

(2) B has some capacity to inhibit any triggers to phi-ing

(3) B is not subject to circumstances which block (1) or (2).

Saghai accepts the shop nudge. In scenarios where we’re purchasing items in a shop, Saghai’s conditions can easily be satisfied. Luv Bovens has argued that sometimes there can be circumstances which satisfy condition (1) but would nevertheless still count as being substantially controlling and therefore would not count as a nudge. Imagine the Secretary of Health issues a public statement that the government will start a campaign to nudge people’s choices for their own benefit. Similar to how the Coca Cola Company pays for its products to be placed into images in films with the hope that it will increase its sales (a nudge that arguably satisfies Saghai’s conditions), the government decides that they will nudge citizens into becoming organ donors by placing relevant paid images into films. Correspondingly, the government issues the advice that all film images are available to view on a website. Bovens says that while subliminal images in this latter case satisfy condition (1), it is not a nudge. First, it interferes with the “process of the shift of our propensities”. Subliminal images outside of the Coke case intertwine too strongly with our biases. Secondly, we’re no longer the author of the shift in bias. So while Saghai’s condition (2) is satisfied by means of the website where viewers can see the images they are subliminally subjected to, it infringes on our self-determination, the property nudges attempt to preserve.

But, nevertheless, isn’t there something creepy or strange about our biases and other cognitive errors being exploited, even if it’s for our own benefit? Sunstein has argued that we face choice architecture everyday; they are in a way inescapable. Sunstein’s conclusion is that given this fact, we might just be better off being nudged for our own benefit.

References

[1] Thaler RH, Sunstein CR. Nudge: improving decisions about health, wealth and happiness. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008.

[2] Saghai Y. Salvaging the concept of nudge. J Med Ethics 2013;39:487–93.

[3] Bovens L. Why couldn’t I be nudged to dislike a Big Mac? J Med Ethics 2013;39:495–6.

[4] Hausman D, Welch B. Debate: To Nudge or Not to Nudge. The Journal of Political Philosophy: Volume 18, Number 1, 2010, pp. 123–136