8/17/2019 How Can Governments and Businesses Avoid the ‘Big Mistake?’ - The Psych Report

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/how-can-governments-and-businesses-avoid-the-big-mistake-the-psych 1/9

08/05/16 09:ow Can Governments and Businesses Avoid the ‘Big Mistake?’ - The Psych Report

Página 1 tp://thepsychreport.com/business-org/how-can-governments-and-businesses-avoid-the-big-mistake/

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

! " # $

8/17/2019 How Can Governments and Businesses Avoid the ‘Big Mistake?’ - The Psych Report

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/how-can-governments-and-businesses-avoid-the-big-mistake-the-psych 2/9

08/05/16 09:ow Can Governments and Businesses Avoid the ‘Big Mistake?’ - The Psych Report

Página 2 tp://thepsychreport.com/business-org/how-can-governments-and-businesses-avoid-the-big-mistake/

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

8/17/2019 How Can Governments and Businesses Avoid the ‘Big Mistake?’ - The Psych Report

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/how-can-governments-and-businesses-avoid-the-big-mistake-the-psych 3/9

08/05/16 09:ow Can Governments and Businesses Avoid the ‘Big Mistake?’ - The Psych Report

Página 3 tp://thepsychreport.com/business-org/how-can-governments-and-businesses-avoid-the-big-mistake/

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]

8/17/2019 How Can Governments and Businesses Avoid the ‘Big Mistake?’ - The Psych Report

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/how-can-governments-and-businesses-avoid-the-big-mistake-the-psych 4/9

08/05/16 09:ow Can Governments and Businesses Avoid the ‘Big Mistake?’ - The Psych Report

Página 4 tp://thepsychreport.com/business-org/how-can-governments-and-businesses-avoid-the-big-mistake/

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.

8/17/2019 How Can Governments and Businesses Avoid the ‘Big Mistake?’ - The Psych Report

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/how-can-governments-and-businesses-avoid-the-big-mistake-the-psych 5/9

08/05/16 09:ow Can Governments and Businesses Avoid the ‘Big Mistake?’ - The Psych Report

Página 5 tp://thepsychreport.com/business-org/how-can-governments-and-businesses-avoid-the-big-mistake/

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/]

8/17/2019 How Can Governments and Businesses Avoid the ‘Big Mistake?’ - The Psych Report

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/how-can-governments-and-businesses-avoid-the-big-mistake-the-psych 6/9

08/05/16 09:ow Can Governments and Businesses Avoid the ‘Big Mistake?’ - The Psych Report

Página 6 tp://thepsychreport.com/business-org/how-can-governments-and-businesses-avoid-the-big-mistake/

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/]

8/17/2019 How Can Governments and Businesses Avoid the ‘Big Mistake?’ - The Psych Report

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/how-can-governments-and-businesses-avoid-the-big-mistake-the-psych 7/9

08/05/16 09:ow Can Governments and Businesses Avoid the ‘Big Mistake?’ - The Psych Report

Página 7 tp://thepsychreport.com/business-org/how-can-governments-and-businesses-avoid-the-big-mistake/

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/]

8/17/2019 How Can Governments and Businesses Avoid the ‘Big Mistake?’ - The Psych Report

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/how-can-governments-and-businesses-avoid-the-big-mistake-the-psych 8/9

08/05/16 09:ow Can Governments and Businesses Avoid the ‘Big Mistake?’ - The Psych Report

Página 8 tp://thepsychreport.com/business-org/how-can-governments-and-businesses-avoid-the-big-mistake/

Google

re:Wor

Shapin

the

Future

of HR

Haven't

Finishe

Your

Taxes?

Plannin

PromptHelp

Turn

Intenti

into

Action

Too

Busy

To

Know

We’re

NotThat

Busy,

Austral

New

Nudge

Unit,

plus

moreweekly

links

Head

of

White

House

“Nudge

Unit”Maya

Shanka

Speaks

about

Newly

Forme

Social

andBehavi

Science

Team

To be

or not

to be?

Should

Obesity

be adisease

A

Lawyer

an

Econo

a

Marketand a

Behavi

Scientis

Go

into a

Bar...

Nudgin

for

Good,

Neuro

plus

moreweekly

links

Sacri ! ci

Ethics

to

Achieve

Money

andStatus,

a

Gender

Di# ere

You might also like

REPLIES

0

© Copyright - The Psych Report - Enfold Child Theme by Kriesi

8/17/2019 How Can Governments and Businesses Avoid the ‘Big Mistake?’ - The Psych Report

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/how-can-governments-and-businesses-avoid-the-big-mistake-the-psych 9/9

08/05/16 09:ow Can Governments and Businesses Avoid the ‘Big Mistake?’ - The Psych Report

Página 9 tp://thepsychreport.com/business-org/how-can-governments-and-businesses-avoid-the-big-mistake/