Some recent podcasts on behavioural science and policy

Below are some recent podcasts from events I participated in on behavioural science and public policy. My contributions are at least somewhat unified by a focus on the emergence of a new type of interdisciplinary behavioural science and the implications of embedding this area into policy, including ethical and evidence issues surrounding emerging types of professional practice.

1. The first is from the Irish Economic Podcast series created by Niall Farrell. A description is below. Niall has conducted 22 interviews at time of writing on economics in Ireland and it was good to discuss the history of behavioural economics in this context, including the role of FY Edgeworth, who is one of the key figures in the development of modern economics and a key thinker on the unification of psychology and economics. Niall also recently interviewed Pete Lunn who leads the ESRI Behavioural Research Unit. The two interviews combined give some sense of how this area has become a contribution to public policy in Ireland and the wider international context. I am looking forward to organising a monthly session of the Irish Behavioural Science and Policy Network from September onwards to discuss similar issues on an ongoing basis. There is a sign-up page and description on this website.

Ep. 4 discusses behavioural science - the psychology of decision-making. Economics has a reputation for not fully appreciating the complexities of human decision-making. Many economic theories assume that we all make 'rational' decisions - that we can perfectly process all the details like a computer and come up with the best outcome (or, in econ-speak, we 'maximise utility'). In this episode, I am joined by Prof. Liam Delaney of the UCD Geary Institute. Liam explains that this simplification was not always present and that somewhere in the early stages of the discipline, the psychology fell by the wayside, only to be re-introduced very recently. We discuss this development, taking a detour to discuss Longford's under-appreciated Francis Edgeworth (often overshadowed locally by his Aunt Maria!) and his contribution to the development of economics. We discuss the various psychological factors that affect our decision-making and how behavioural economists try to understand them. We discuss nudging - how public bodies can use psychology to guide us towards choices that are in our best interest (like taking out a pension or eating a healthy diet) and touch on the ethical issues of these policies. We also consider the risk that firms may use this knowledge to 'nudge' us towards outcomes that are not necessarily in our interest. We wrap up by discussing how working in this field has affected Liam's decision-making.

2. The second is from an LSE event held in early March organised by the Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science as part of the LSE Festival. The event, chaired by Matteo Galizzi, included contributions from myself, Adam Oliver, Jet Sanders, and Barbara Fasolo, all from LSE. It examined the recent developments in behavioural science and policy, including ethical issues and the potential for behavioural science to improve public policy and management practices.

Insights from psychology and behavioural economics are shaping policy-making all over the world, and the LSE is helping to make this happening. In the last decade methods and insights from behavioural science have been increasingly applied to inform policy decision-making all over the world. The UK has led this global trend since 2010, when the Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) - the ‘nudge unit’ - was set up within the Cabinet Office. Since then, behavioural units have been created in more than 200 public institutions – not only governments, but also international institutions (e.g. World Bank, WHO, OECD, EU), and national regulators (e.g. in the UK the Financial Conduct Authority - FCA; NEST; Public Health England - PHE) – as well as in many NGOs and non-profit companies. Since the very beginning, the LSE has been a key part of this fast-growing trend. On the teaching side, for example, the LSE Executive MSc in Behavioural Science is the world-first (and only) executive Master programme to have trained, to date, more than 250 leaders of such behavioural units across the world. On the research side, moreover, the LSE has behavioural expertise that has been regularly applied to policy projects for the betterment of society. This event will discuss these trends and the various research collaborations that behavioural scientists across all the LSE have been developing in a variety of policy domains by working together with numerous partner institutions.

3. The third is from an LSE event examining "behavioural science in the context of great uncertainty" as part of the LSE Covid Policy response series. The overall series has seen an incredible range of contributions from across the social and behavioural sciences. This session was chaired by Julia Black and heard contributions from myself, Grace Lordan, Nic Chater, Paul Dolan, and Ulrike Hahn. We are currently working on a series of workshops that will examine the emergence of behavioural science and policy, including examining historical development, disciplinary boundaries, ethical issues, emerging evidence structures, crises, emerging forms of practice, and professionalisation.

The impacts of COVID-19 and how we deal with them hinge on how politicians, firms and the public respond. What lessons can we learn from behavioural science about how we act in a time of crisis characterised by great uncertainty? What lessons can behavioural science learn about how it can be best placed to provide guidance in an uncertain world? Answers to these questions are crucial to not only mitigating the impacts of COVID-19 but also to dealing better with future crises, not only caused by viruses but also by other shocks.

4. As part of a series of 17 panel sessions co-organised with my colleagues in UCD and UL, I chaired a session on behavioural responses to covid in Ireland, along with Professsors Molly Byrne, Pete Lunn, and Orla Muldoon. As can be seen, the technology was something we were still learning but the contributions were very interesting and give a sense of the combination of experimental behavioural science, social psychology, and health psychology that underpinned some of the research contributions to the covid response in Ireland. The other sixteen sessions covered areas from human rights to macroeconomic issues, EU dimensions and many others. I am particularly interested in how the emerging behavioural science literature might collaborate with people working on citizen participation and I will post soon on some recent very interesting work on this area. Along with Emma Watson, a researcher at UCD Geary, we maintained a set of reading lists on behavioural science and covid throughout the period that should be useful to anyone looking for a grounding on the literature on this topic.

5. The first workshop of the PERITIA H2020 project led by Professor Maria Baghramian is available below. I lead a work-package in PERITIA, along with Dr. Till Weber now in Newcastle, which will look at experimental measures of trust as part of wider project examining trust in experts more generally in the context of climate change. The PERITIA website also includes a number of contributions from the wider team on the covid response, including some opeds I co-wrote on adherence to restrictions and on well-being aspects.

6. A somewhat older event but hopefully still relevant is a session I participated in as part of an initiative to increase dialogue between psychology and public policy in the UK and Ireland. I gave talks at both the Psychological Society of Ireland (PSI) and British Psychological Society events in 2008. In the BPS version, my co-speaker was Professor Ashley Weinburg from Salford who spoke about the role of psychology in understanding politics and political communication. I spoke about the increasing development of behavioural science in policy, in particular on the role of psychology in this process. I was pretty exhausted for various reasons on the day and I thank Ashley for being a very enthusiastic and engaging presence.  The BPS summary of my talk is below.

In his talk, Delaney commented on the increasing use of the behavioural sciences by Government. Although psychology can undoubtedly benefit the public by helping shape more effective policies, he argued that the ethical implications of manipulating our behaviour should be recognised. The Behavioural Insights Team, also known as the ‘Nudge Unit’, was the world’s first government institution that applied evidence from the behavioural sciences (particularly psychology and behavioural economics), to help people longer, healthier and better lives. He explained that by arranging the ‘choice architecture’ in a particular way, individuals could be nudged into making small changes in their behaviour without impinging on their perceptions of free will. Delaney said this has been used to shape policy recommendations to help people change their behaviours in many ways; for example in the areas of finance, recycling, education, health. Nonetheless, he argued that the use of psychological principles poses ethical dilemmas as insight into human behaviour can be also used to influence people by stealth, deception and coercion.  Delaney also commented on the potential of ‘Big Data’ to boost economic growth, saying that it has the potential to compromise privacy, as the recent Cambridge Analytica scandal illustrated. Delaney concluded that the use of psychology in shaping public policy to initiate behaviour change is ‘not a fad’ and is now deeply embedded in our political and social institutions. We need to be aware that they can be used for manipulation and coercion as well as for ‘people’s own good’.