On the misplaced politics of behavioral policy interventions

One common criticism of “nudges” — general-purpose interventions derived from behavioral science that can be applied to a range of policy objectives — is that such interventions are manipulative and coercive. In this article we show that this criticism sometimes reflects a partisan nudge bias, whereby attitudes toward policy goals or policymakers distort feelings about policy interventions. In particular, people find nudges more ethically problematic when they are applied to policy objectives they oppose, or when applied by policymakers they oppose, while they find the same nudges more acceptable when they are applied to political objectives they support or by policymakers they support. Both political liberal and conservative respondents exhibit partisan nudge bias, as do practicing policymakers. Furthermore, partisan differences disappear when nudges are described without mention of a particular policy objective, suggesting that nudges are not inherently partisan. Thus, we argue that in order to have an honest debate about the appropriateness of behavioral policy interventions we must strip away the policy objectives to which they are applied and the parties that endorse them. Introduction Insights from the behavioral and social sciences have recently been put to use in crafting effective public policies. These approaches are typically designed to nudge behavior that policymakers believe will promote individual or societal interests while preserving freedom to choose.1 For instance, one powerful behavioral insight is the bias for people to select options designated as the default. As such, policies promoting automatic enrollment of employees into retirement saving plans with the ability to opt-out (rather than enrolling them only if they opt-in) have substantially increased retirement saving rates in the United States.2 However, such behavioral interventions (sometimes called “nudges”) have also sparked controversy. In the United Kingdom, the conservative administration of David Cameron has been at the forefront in applying behavioral insights to public policy, drawing strong criticism from the British political left. For example, one contributor for The Guardian, a ∗We are grateful to David King at the Harvard Kennedy School for assistance in data collection for Study 3A, and to Catherine McLaughlin and Christian Flynn at the Harvard Institute of Politics for their assistance in data collection on Study 3B. We also thank Dan Walters and Carsten Erner for their useful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. †Correspondence should be addressed to David Tannenbaum, Chicago Booth School of Business, 5807 S. Woodlawn Ave, Rm 373. Email: [email protected].