NudgeHack #2; smoking

Smoking is one of those weird things.

Those who smoke fall roughly into two camps; those who are addicted / semi-addicted and who want to cut down or quit and those who love the occasional smoke and don't see what the fuss is.

Smoking is unhealthy, there is no doubt. It's not good for you and that's the end of the debate. Some argue that Pipes or Cigars are healthier, but the key is healthier - not healthy. Some argue that Pipe smokers live longer but -as with all statistics - this has to be taken with a grain of salt, other related factors such as pace of life, risk taking, education level and so on all have their effects and despite the rise in hipster-led pipe smoking among young people those who smoke pipes are probably going to more relaxed in general and have a healthier lifestyle. So, as an added bonus to the nudge i'll give you some more advice; statistics are often abused by interested parties; cigarette companies used to make claims about health (now banned), technology and cosmetics companies make claims about popularity, and governments manipulate economic statistics all to make a point. If ever you see a statistical claim, be suspicious.

Now on to the Nudge. People want to stop smoking and the NHS has had numerable campaigns to get people off the fags. The problem is people still smoke. Now a country-wide campaign is obviously beyond our scope, but how can YOU stop, or cut down if you so desire?

The standard claim is "use willpower". Anyone who has ever tried to lose weight, exercise more, or indeed stop smoking know that this deceptively simple claim is quite useless in reality. When you really want to smoke no amount of rationalisation is going to stop you, the fact is you'll justify it to yourself as that epochal "last one", the real final end to it all. Sadly we know this won't work.

So whats the alternative? It might sound stupid but...hide the tobacco. "say what?" you might exclaim. "Just hide it? What kind of lame advice is that!". Well the simplicity is actually the key. Any nudge is, in and of itself, simple. If it's not simple - it's not a good nudge (that's a good criteria by which to judge the "nudges" popping up everywhere). Get a significant other to hide your tobacco somewhere you will never find it. Now why not just throw it away, you might ask? Well the key here is that you are allowed to smoke it at some point in the future. Set a reasonable goal, so say go one week without smoking and you can have some, then set the goal at a week and a half, then two weeks, and so on. This is based on research that a lot of goals, shortly spaced, are far more reinforcing than one big goal far in the future (see temporal discounting).

Now as a disclaimed I obviously don't condone smoking at all, but the best way to quit is slow and steady, cold turkey just doesn't work. Hope you enjoy the nudge!

The hidden cost of poor choice architecture

There is a hidden cost to poor choice architecture that it’s opponents are not willing to see. It is all the jobs not created, the prosperity – unobtained. It is about the safe and secure future that never will be, and in a very real sense it has been stolen from us.

Critics argue that it’s better to leave people “free” to make the choices they want to. Being on the more Libertarian end of Libertarian Paternalism I am inclined to agree; except there is a big, glaring problem with this. The problem is that there is no such thing as “free”.

Now that is a big claim so let me explain. I am not denying free will, and I am not supporting political authoritarianism. I’m articulating a well understood behavioural principle. B.F. Skinner, in his expansive career, defined a system to understand behaviour that has stood the test of time. Essentially his theory – Radical Behaviourism – explains that behaviour is a product of the environment and past reinforcement (see Behaviour in Context).

Detroit - an example of where a Nudge could have made all the difference

We are never “free” from our environment and so our behaviour is never free from what is going on around us. Choice Architecture follows a similar pattern. When we pick an apple from the produce section we may be making a free choice, but the choice is predicated on a number of factors including (but not limited to) our history with apples, the position of the apples, the relative availability of other items etc… all of which affect our choices.

So back to the criticism. It’s not an issue of letting people be free or not, it’s an issue of arranging the environment one way or another to elicit the best choice in any given situation (what constitutes a “best choice” is still a hot topic).

One way or another our environment is being arranged – Libertarian Paternalists argue that it should be arranged to best serve the individual in any given situation. This leads me back to my earlier point. All the things that could have been, the benefits we could have reaped, all of them are invisible – but very, very real. Imagine how low the crime rate could be, or how moral our business transaction, or anything else you can possible conceptualise – imagine what could have been in a world that embraces the nudge as a way of life. 

Is a Nudge a Push? (And why does it matter?)

Working with nudges, and discussing these ideas more broadly always leads to inevitable questions. Questions such as “isn't it just paternalism?”, “Shouldn’t people be allowed to do what they want?”, “Doesn’t this stuff just lead to Statism?”

Unfortunately many on the receiving end of these criticisms are far too quick to pass them off as the rantings of anti-government extremists. This only gives more fuel to the fire and leaves the impression that a Nudge is really a push in disguise. Many critics (for example this reviewer at mises.org) believe that a Nudge is just a more socially acceptable way of forcing people to do what the government wants. Undoubtedly some in the Nudge movement are quite interested in bending others to their will. Believing their preferences for health care, diet, savings plans and so on are the absolute right choice but in my opinion they are a minority. 

The Failure of Prohibition

Before I explain why I think this, lets consider what is at stake here. The greatest expansion of human welfare occurred during the 19th and early-20th century. People went from rural peasants to relatively wealthy urbanites in a few short generations. Public health, wealth and education skyrocketed and arguably the poorest of the poor saw the biggest gains in these times. Concurrent to these developments where the liberalisation of trade, the relative destruction of the landed gentry, the privatisation of land ownership amongst peasants and the abolition of slavery. In other words everything become modernised. From a behavioural perspective the environment shifted and began rewarding capital accumulation. All of sudden it became desirable and necessary to accrue money because there were more places to spend it. Education went from a privilege to a necessity. Literacy became a useful tool - not just an aristocratic fancy, the desire to better oneself (a relatively novel idea to the poor) became a goal. No longer were we satisfied with the status quo.

This was both a blessing, and a curse. There are deep inequalities in our society - and I don’t mean inequalities in outcome which are to be expected in a free society - I mean inequalities of opportunity. There are real, systemic, unavoidable behavioural impediments (call them anti-nudges!) that keep people from achieving what they could. These impediments are more often than not accidental. For example the social housing projects were designed before it was properly understood what effect the environment had on behaviour, and so the utilitarian ideal used as the inspiration for them had the opposite effect intended and destroyed communities, alienating individuals and driving the anti-social behaviour problems we see today. The welfare state serves as another example. B. F. Skinner himself was opposed to the welfare state since he understood that, contrary to intention, the welfare system merely reinforces the behaviour that leads to it. We see this today with systems that, far from helping people, traps them in a cycle of dependency. It raises questions about our society that for many are terribly uncomfortable. It leads people to take positions like hard paternalism, or anarcho-capitalism.

This leads me to my point; what is at stake is our political - and by extension, economic and personal - future. It is clear, I believe, that changes will have to be made. But the direction of those changes is far from decided and currently we lurch from right to left, politically, with each election. Many argue that more freedom is needed, whilst many can't see why a bit more intervention (or maybe absolute intervention) is such a bad thing. Some, however, argue that there is an untapped middle ground that gathers the best of both worlds.

Those who argue that we can have the best of both worlds are finding a home in Libertarian Paternalism. The idea is that any policy made by the government to elicit behaviour change (or any systemic change made by a private business) should maximise the long term, rational happiness of the individual (that’s the Libertarian part) but equally recognise that the government can’t NOT influence behaviour (even in a free-market the government is doing SOMETHING), so they should make efforts to pick defaults or arranges contingencies in such a way as to make people better off (that’s the paternalism part).

Nudgers - or Libertarian Paternalists - believe that there can be no “opt-out” of the behaviour change process since our behaviour is consistently being changed whenever we come in contact with an environment. However they also recognise that the future does not lie in greater state control or top-down influence, and instead the future of behaviour change lies in the equipping the individual to make the right choices when they need to. A “push” - or a move to hard paternalism - is anathema to the goals of a Nudger. Consider the example of alcohol prohibition. Rightfully seen as an example of out-and-out hard paternalism it had the exact opposite effect it intended. Rather than change peoples behaviour they merely found a way to circumvent the restriction. It led to crime, unsafe alcohol, and social upheaval. It was relatively swiftly repealed and the whole thing levelled out. Nowadays alcohol consumption is on the decrease, despite mass-availability and enormous variation. How can we explain this? The hard paternalists can’t (or won’t), but Nudgers can, and quite readily. A shift in cultural attitudes - engineered through changes in advertising laws and public health campaigns linking drinking with bad outcomes - has done far more to curb individuals drinking behaviour than outright banning ever did. The reason for this is that a ban does not remove the motivation, it just increases frustration. Cultural changes, however, alter motivations for behaviours; if you don’t want to do something, unless you’re under considerable pressure of penalty, you won’t, but when you increase motivation to change, the change comes much easier.

From a purely pragmatic point of view hard paternalism is ineffective. It’s a knee-jerk response to problems that are far more subtle. Nudgers can - and hopefully, will - affect the sort of change that preserves the autonomy of the individual and allows them to live a dignified, respectful life - whilst also making the necessary changes to make sure our society becomes stronger and more stable and it’s not just those with the greatest economic means who achieve the sort of happiness we all should be able to pursue.

Image from http://november.org/Prohibition/ originally. I do not own or anyway have a stake in the site or affiliated messages or images. 

Nudge:\\Hacks_

You may or may not have heard of Life Hacks. They are little things you can do to make your life easier by playing with the environment in novel ways. A NudgeHack is similar. Consider layout of the fridge. If you live in a family of three or more you can guarentee there is going to be something in that fridge that you don’t want to be eating - be it some cream-based-dessert, or deep-fried leftover of something.

A NudgeHack might be to move the unhealthy stuff to the top, and out of sight, or to the back, or in an opaque drawer to hide it from view. The idea is to do small, low cost interventions that elicit immediate change in a given area. They differ from the larger Nudges that are published because they often deal with broader social problems - like obesity, and signing up to pension plans - whereas the focus of a NudgeHack is on your immediate situation and they will only ever have an effect on one or two people. The idea is that incrementally we can all make changes that improve our lives immeasurably, the kicker is they don’t have to be high cost or difficult to set up.

So today, I'll give you NudgeHack #1;

If you're looking to cut down on snacking, place the snacks in a cupboard that is uncomfortably out of reach or place the stuff in a place that requires a lot of messing about to get to.