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I
How Can Governments and BusinessesAvoid the ‘Big Mistake?’
Image: Adapted from Hugh D’Andrade
[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Capitol-
dome.png# ! le] and WH Allen
[http://www.eburypublishing.co.uk/editions/insightfu l-
thinking/9780753556535 ]
n a 2006 Downing Street seminar, Robert Cialdini had one
message that struck particularly deeply, and led to quite a
bit of nervous laughter around the State Dining Room. He
talked about how often policymakers, in his opinion, not only
missed the power of social norms and in " uence, they often
inadvertently used them in a way that actually back ! red.
December 5, 2015 / / in Books , Business , Politics / by David Halpern
! " # $
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He argued that too often, in their haste to impress upon
colleagues or the public the gravity of a particular issue,
policymakers would inadvertently reinforce the very behavior
they were trying to discourage. For example, a campaign
concerning knife crime would end up communicating the
message that most young people carried knives, or a
campaign to reduce tax evasion or bene ! t fraud would
inadvertently communicate that everyone was at it. Such
campaigns, or speeches, were the policy equivalent of putting
a ‘no ball games’ sign on a high brick wall—well-meaning, but
almost bound to prompt the thought ‘well, now that you
mention it, that is a great surface for a ball game….’
In the years since that seminar I have lost count of the
number of examples of Robert Cialdini’s ‘big mistake’ that I
have seen. In most cases the e # ect has not been evaluated
but we know enough about of the power of descriptive social
norms to be troubled. Examples include: posters telling
immigration o $ cers that some of their colleagues have been
caught and punished for selling work visas (‘Never thought of that—I wonder how much they made’); signs in doctors’
surgeries about the number of people who missed their
appointments in the last month (‘… so I’m not the only one’);
and national campaigns bemoaning the low number of
women on top company boards (‘well, we’ve got a woman on
our board of twelve, so that’s pretty good, then’).
Unfortunately, certain institutions in society also
inadvertently make, or amplify, the ‘big mistake.’ The mediaitself is one of these, albeit echoing our own human interest
in stories about crime, threat or deceit. No wonder that the
majority of the public, in the UK and elsewhere, continue to
feel that crime is rising (at least at a national level), despite
every reliable measure documenting its fall over the last 20
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years. Similarly, welfare and regulatory systems often
inadvertently signal that most people are not to be trusted,
since they are routinely built around the assumption, and
tests, that people are cheating and breaking the law. The
evidence on social norms suggests that such signaling is likely
to increase levels of cheating.
Yet it is often possible to " ip around these campaigns and
e# ects. Take the example of getting more women on
company boards, an issue widely championed by
campaigners and indeed Prime Ministers, but often
embodying a clear example of the ‘big mistake.’ The normal
centerpiece of campaigns to get more women on boards is a
statistic along the lines ‘isn’t it shocking that only 25 per cent
of board members are women?’ (less in some countries). It is
shocking, but it’s also likely to be a message that
inadvertently normalizes the situation. On the other hand, if
such campaigns made the equally valid point that ‘90 percent
of companies have women on their boards,’ then the
signaling is very di # erent. Following discussions with Iris
Bohnet, an expert on gender inequality, and Emily Walsh,
[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0753556537/ref=as_li_tl?
ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0753556537&li
20&linkId=QNVMKC2TFW6D2V62]
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special adviser to the UK’s Business Secretary, parts of the
UK’s campaign to encourage more women on to boards has
indeed been reframed in this way.
Similarly, most industrialized countries are wrestling with the
problem of obesity, so re " ecting these particular social norms
is likely to back ! re. Indeed, there is speci ! c evidence thatobesity is ‘contagious’—when those around you get fat, so do
you, and with it your sense of what is healthy shifts, too. This
can raise di $ cult issues, including occasionally the
temptation to ‘nudge’ the presentation of numbers to prevent
the situation getting worse. The weight curves given to US
parents to plot their child’s development, for some years,
have not been the actual weight curves of US children.
Rather, they are generally distributions of ‘healthy weight,’driven by the concern that if parents used the actual weight
curves of US children it would exacerbate the problem of
obesity even further.
Cialdini’s ‘big mistake’ provides a clear example of why
governments and businesses can bene ! t from learning even
ust a little about behavioral insights. Even if you have no
interest in actively using nudge approaches you should at
least want to know where you have inadvertently stumbledinto deploying them against yourself.
Excerpted from Inside the Nudge Unit: How Small Changes
Can Make a Big Di # erence
[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0753556537/ref=as_li_tl?
ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0753556537&li
20&linkId=QNVMKC2TFW6D2V62] , WH Allen. Copyright ©
2015 David Halpern. Reprinted with permission. Available in
the United States December 15, 2015.
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David Halpern
[http://www.behaviouralinsights.co.uk/people/dr-david-
halpern/] is the Chief Executive of the Behavioral Insights
Team and Board Director. He has led the team since itsinception in 2010. Prior to that, David was the founding
Director of the Institute for Government and between 2001
and 2007 was the Chief Analyst at the Prime Minister’s
Strategy Unit. Before entering government, David held tenure
at Cambridge and posts at Oxford and Harvard. He has
written several books and papers on areas relating to
behavioral insights and well-being, including Social Capital
(2005), the Hidden Wealth of Nations (2010), and mostrecently Inside the Nudge Unit (2015).
More on The Psych Report
The Behavioral Insights Team 5 Years On: A Conversation
with Owain Service
[http://thepsychreport.com/politics/the-behavioral-
insights-team-5-years-on-a-conversation-with-owain-
service/]
[http://thepsychreport.com/politics/the-behavioral-insights-
team-5-years-on-a-conversation-with-owain-service/]
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A Lawyer, an Economist, a Marketer, and a Behavioral
Scientist Go into a Bar…
[http://thepsychreport.com/books/last-mile-lawyer-
economist-a-marketer-behavioral-scientist-go-into-a-bar/]
[http://thepsychreport.com/books/last-mile-lawyer-
economist-a-marketer-behavioral-scientist-go-into-a-bar/]
Executive Order Formally Establishes US ‘Nudge Unit’
[http://thepsychreport.com/politics/executive-order-
[http://thepsychreport.com/politics/executive-order-formally-
establishes-us-nudge-unit/]
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Further Reading and ResourcesHalpern, D. (2015). Inside the Nudge Unit: How Small
Changes Can Make a Big Di # erence . London, UK: WH
Allen.
[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0753556537/ref=as_li_tl?
ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=075355653
20&linkId=DJQKJTUIMJK7ZH3Z]
Behavioral Insights Team. (2015). Update Report 2013-
2015.
[http://www.behaviouralinsights.co.uk/publications/the-
behavioural-insights-team-update-report-2013-2015/]
Behavioral Insights Team. (2010). MINDSPACE: In " uencing
Behavior through Public Policy
[http://38r8om2xjhhl25mw24492dir.wpengine.netdna-
cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/MINDSPACE.pdf] .
Nesterak, M. (2014). Nudging the UK: A Conversation with
David Halpern. The Psych Report.
[http://thepsychreport.com/conversations/nudging-the-
uk-a-conversation-with-david-halpern/]Schwartz, B. (2014). Why Not Nudge? A Review of Cass
Sunstein’s Why Nudge. The Psych Report.
[http://thepsychreport.com/essays-discussion/nudge-
review-cass-sunsteins-why-nudge/]
Nesterak, E. (2015). How Do We Solve the Last Mile? The
Psych Report . [http://thepsychreport.com/business-
org/how-do-we-solve-the-last-mile/]
Tags: behavioral insights team , business , gender ,
government , halpern , nudge , obesity , policy , social norm , UK
formally-establishes-us-nudge-unit/]
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