Talk at LSE Seminar on Colonial Context of Behavioural Science

Spoke a couple of weeks ago at a new seminar series developed by Miriam Tresh and Maxi Heitmayer on marginalisation in psychology & behavioural science LSE Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science. Decolonisation is frequently discussed in UK universities and is a theme of the series. I spoke about growing up in Ireland and learning economics and psychology in a university against the background of the debate of the role of political economy in the Irish famine. Some nationalist thinkers would have seen 19th century British political economy as being everything from flat wrong to sinful to a thin cover for intentional mass displacement policies. My own personal relationship to this like many people is complex. I was heavily influenced by philosophers like Hume and experienced them as liberating compared to several traditions of thought I encountered growing up. Hume's racist remarks are very difficult to process and I can understand why some would just want to leave him in the past but also why ignoring him would make it difficult to understand where much of modern work comes from. Such figures loom very large in the history of behavioural science. A lot of the history of behavioural science more generally is set against a backdrop of racism and almost total exclusion of women in places in ways that clearly limited how theory, methods, & applications emerged. As might be apparent I didn't provide a simple narrative for all this in the talk but spoke about different ways of navigating it to encourage audience to think through their own relation to these issues. Also examined different ways of studying these issues in the context of behavioural science including reading scholars like Sen and Folbre, and also reflected on the opportunities for an ethically grounded behavioural science emerging in a rapidly globalising environment in this area, one that isn't predestined to replicate past mistakes. There are various reactions to these types of discussions online and I was relieved if not surprised to hear a whole set of thoughtful and interesting points from the audience. People who work in policy worldwide in these areas will frequently encounter situations where complex historical and political factors will shape attitudes and willingness to engage with some of these literatures and students and researchers will often have very complex relationships to these issues and it is good to have space to think these issues through. I look forward to hearing from a wide range of other people on this.

17th Annual Irish Economics, Psychology, and Policy conference

17th Annual Irish Economics, Psychology, and Policy conference

We are glad to announce that the 17th annual one day conference on Economics and Psychology will be held on Wednesday, December 11th, 2024 in person at the Economic and Social Research Institute. Details of the 16 previous workshops are available here https://bsp.ucd.ie/annual-economics-and-psychology-conferences/

The purpose of the conference is to develop the links between Economics, Psychology, and cognate disciplines throughout Ireland. A special theme of these events is the implications of behavioural science for public policy. To facilitate a large number of presentations and sufficient time for chats during the breaks, each presentation will be short, with each speaker being provided 15 minutes for their presentation including Q+A. Lunch and coffees will be provided to speakers and attendees. The provisional schedule is below which is subject to some minor changes. 

If you would like to attend but not present, please use this link to register and leave the answers on paper and abstract blank.

https://lse.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_3I42JKab5tv3qFE

Best Regards,

Liam Delaney, Emma Howard, Feidhlim McGowan, Leonhard Lades, Shane Timmons.

Please note the names represent the scheduled presenters and many of these paper are co-authored works which will be indicated in the talk. 

09:00 – 09:20: Welcome 

Session 1: Chair Emma Howard 

09:20 – 09:35: Patricia Lentz “Administrative Burdens as Barriers to Afforestation: A Sludge Audit of Ireland’s Afforestation Scheme”.

09:35 – 9:50: Kate Laffan (LSE) “Empathetic Forecasting Errors: Barriers to Sustainable Lifestyle Shifts?”. 

9:50 – 10:05: Margaret Samahita (UCD) "Luxury beliefs": Signaling through ideology?”.

10:05 – 10:20: Diarmaid Ó Ceallaigh (ESRI) “Effects of inducements on sports gambling and decision-errors: An experimental study”.

10:20 – 10:35: Deirdre Robertson (ESRI)  “A behaviourally-informed app can encourage switching of financial products”.

10:35 – 11:00: Tea/Coffee

Session 2: Chair Leonhard Lades 

11.00 – 11:15: Roland Umanan (TCD) “What Matters for Consumer Credit Choice? Evidence from the Philippine Digital Credit Market”.

11:15 – 11.30:  Maria Lee (ESRI) “The role of fairness and effectiveness in obesity policy perceptions”.

11:30 - 11.45: Eve Smyth (HMRC) “The Engagement to Action Gap in Digital Tax Communications”.

11:45 - 12.00: Adam Schier (ESRI)  “The Effects of Emissions Labels on Consumer Choice of Lower-Emission Flights”.

12.00 - 1215: Phillip Ryan (UCD) “Irregular Behaviour: Public Policy Interventions and Disability”.

12:15 – 13:00: Lunch

13:00 – 14:00: Keynote by Faisal Naru on “Behavioral public policy bodies: New developments & lessons”. Chaired by Liam Delaney

Session 3: Chair Feidhlim McGowan 

14:00 – 14:15: Giorgia Conte (TCD)  “Parental leave policy and fertility decisions: the case of Denmark”.

14:15 – 14:30: Aaron Deegan (Department of Health) “Changing Behaviour: Reducing Unnecessary Antibiotic Prescribing. A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis”.

14:30 – 14:45: Marta Talevi (UCD)  “Incentives for the energy transition: Feed-in tariffs, rebates, or a hybrid design?”.

14:45 – 15:00: Vessela Daskalova (UCD) “Signalling Identity”. 

15:00 – 15:25: Coffee

Session 4: Chair Shane Timmons 

15:25 – 15:40: Pete Lunn (ESRI) “Investigating climate change mitigation via an economic game: the externality social dilemma”.

15:40 – 15:55: Lucie Martin (ESRI) “Comparing farmer and public perceptions of climate change and climate policies in Ireland”. 

15.55 - 16:10: Liam Delaney (LSE). “On the relevance of valuing past experiences”.

16:10 – 16:25: Amy Hume (Ofcom)  “Changing User Behaviour and Harnessing BI to Enhance Online Safety in the UK”. 

1625 – 16:40: Leonhard Lades (Stirling) “Who suffers from sludge?”. 

Kahneman and Tverksy 1974

27 years in a row and counting either studying or teaching this paper in some form or another. How do people form beliefs about the likelihood of different events occurring, estimate probabilities, figure out how likely things are etc,? Many streams of work that look at it. Kahneman and Tversky in particular had large influence on how people working across a wide variety of settings in policy & regulation think about these issues. The concepts of anchoring, availability, & representativeness continue to be studied and developed in many different ways. Whether people choose worse products because of difficulty processing information; whether nudging or boosting or similar classes of interventions improve decisions; how susceptible are people to online misinformation; do people essentially pick beliefs and information to fulfill other objectives, all live areas of study that cross between psychology, economics, political science, & many real-world applications.

Some recent meta-analyses of time preferences

Most people who have studied behavioural science of various stripes will be familiar with the difference between i) asking someone to choose between 100 euro now versus 110 euro tomorrow and ii) asking them to choose 100 euro in a year versus 110 euro in a year and a day. Many very bright people have contributed to understanding why more people choose to wait for the 110 when the choice is in the future. Why do you think? One of the greatest attempts came from George Ainslie who was studying pigeons in behaviourist paradigms partly so he could help people deal with alcoholism. His idea of hyperbolic discounting was adapted by economist David Laibson who used it to develop a lot of modern ideas about how people consume and make pension decisions etc,.. In general, the reasons why people make decisions in these formats are up for discussion and a lot of recent work has examined the role of things like cash & liquidity constraints, trust in institutions, etc., alongside traditional preference explanations. Also a lot of work linking to psychological traits and several recent papers on whether time discounting more generally is a global phenomenon (e.g. here https://lnkd.in/e-geU9AM and here https://lnkd.in/eT6cga6b). Again, it will be a frustrating literature if you are looking for very unambiguous answers. 

A recent meta-analysis (currently available as a working paper pre peer-review) by Cheung, Tymula & Wang on estimates of hyperbolic discounting. So-called beta-delta preferences imply that if beta is less than one and delta is less one then people both discount the future but also discount the future more in early periods e.g. money tomorrow is worth less than money today to a greater extent than money in 31 days is worth less than 30 days. https://lnkd.in/e2GeeJ3q Another recent meta-analysis also finds strong evidence of present-bias https://lnkd.in/eq3hAmSb Both reviews find little to modest evidence of publication bias and selective reporting driving the findings. There are differences between the papers and in the literature particularly on estimates of delta and clearly a lot to sort out about what generates differences in present bias across people. Again, I think it is fair to say that these are mature literatures theoretically and empirically. They will evolve over time but the main findings are emerging from many teams and studies and a vigorous and interesting empirically-grounded theoretical discussion with a lot of practical implications.Humans are awkward & complex but it is absolutely fascinating and very rich as an area of study and at least partly underpins many real applications such as pension autoenrolment/autoescalation. Great to discuss it every year with students here.

IBPPA Seminar: Ethics as the Foundation of Applied Behavioural Science.

Gave a seminar last week with Leonhard Lades on "Ethics as the Foundation of Applied Behavioural Science." Recording and details on the website of the International Behavioural Public Policy Association https://lnkd.in/ezhUT-NM Seminar discussed the role of broad political philosophical positions as opposed to context-specific, multidimensional pragmatic ethics frameworks, dimensions of ethics in applied behavioural settings, mechanisms for integrating ethics appraisals into behavioural public policy, whether behavioural policies are "special" in terms of ethics appraisal (yes and no!). Was a very interesting discussion, with thanks to Malte Dodd for organising & Adam Oliver for general stewardship of IBPPA. Details of how to join the association available here https://lnkd.in/esskr46x

AI and the future of behavioural science | LSE Event

We recently held an event at LSE on AI and the Future of Behavioural SCience. IT was a very stimulating session. The video and description are available below.

 

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming various aspects of behavioural science. For example, AI-driven models are being used to predict human behaviour and decision-making, and to design personalized behavioural interventions. AI can also be used to generate artificial research participants on whom behavioural interventions can be tested instead of on humans. AI is creating many new opportunities and challenges in behavioural science, disrupting the discipline to the degree that researchers, practitioners, and any behavioural science enthusiasts are trying to keep up with the new developments and understand how to best navigate the rapidly changing landscape. In this public event, speakers who are associated with pioneering work on AI in relation to behavioural science, as part of their own research or organisational initiatives, will discuss their views on how AI will change and is already changing behavioural science. This will involve touching upon topics such as the implications of AI for behavioural scientists in academia, public, and private sectors, new skills that will be required by behavioural scientists of the future, and impact on behavioural science education. 

Speakers: Alexandra Chesterfield Elisabeth Costa Professor Oliver Hauser Dr Dario Krpan Professor Susan Michie Professor Robert West Chair:

Professor Liam Delaney