Category: tory scum

Following the riots, the government have made a decision which is likely to lead to more, rather than less rioting. These decisions are welcomed by a sizeable chunk of the British public, who are suddenly developing a bloodthirsty yearning for water cannons, rubber bullets and live ammunition–again, despite the fact that such tactics are likely to lead to more riots. They are also pursuing a vindictive policy to evict families of those charged and convicted with rioting from their social housing. How this measure is supposed to help is thoroughly unclear.

The collective lack of good judgment is hardly surprising: indeed, it is a natural consequence of decision making under stress. For once, this may not be entirely a consequence of the fact that we have a government who have nothing but contempt for anyone who is not rich and white.

It is important to acknowledge the context in which these decisions have been made: there is a climate of fear, stress and anger, and demands that Something Must Be Done Immediately. In this kind of context, good decisions are rarely made.

On an individual level, decision making is greatly affected by emotion. The ability to feel emotions is necessary for a person to make decisions: those who have been brain damaged and lose the ability to feel emotion suffer severe impairments in their ability to make decisions in their day-to-day life. High, negative emotions are problematic in making decisions, though.

In stressed decision making, the decision maker tends to focus their attention very narrowly and not examine all possible alternative analyses of the situation and courses of action. Instead, a hasty solution is proposed, one which may not be particularly fit for purpose in solving the problem. To make a good decision requires clear thinking on possible solutions to a problem and the consequences of such solutions. In their response to the riots, the government have not thought through possible consequences of their decision.

The type of emotion experienced also impacts decision making. In general, being in a good mood improves decision making and problem solving: thinking is more creative, flexible, thorough and efficient. The decisions made by the government were not made in a good mood: on top of stress, most of the senior members of government had to come back from their holidays, which is likely to add a further dampener on their moods.

The type of negative mood has also been shown to affect decision making differentially. In a state of anxiety, decision makers are biased towards making “safe” decisions: ones which are low-risk and low-reward. In contrast, when sad, a high-risk, high-reward option is more likely to be chosen. The findings of this study may not be particularly pertinent to the situation at hand, though, as it used a “gambling” methodology where participants were aware of the risks and rewards available from each course of action. In a more nuanced setting such as responses to the riots, such information was unlikely to be available, and, more importantly, unlikely to be fully surveyed by the decision makers.

When a group makes a decision under stress, they are no more likely to make a good decision than an individual. In fact, group processes may make the decision even worse. This is due to a phenomenon called groupthink, which I touched upon in my discussion of consensus decision making.

The word “groupthink” is loaded, melodramatic, reminiscent of an Orwellian dystopia, but this does not mean it does not happen. Through analysis of historical decision-making, and observations of group decision-making, a well-documented effect emerges: cohesive groups, particularly those under pressure, often make poor decisions. Crucially, this tends to happen when the group is attempting to reach a consensus.

The theory behind groupthink proposes eight “symptoms”:

1. Illusions of invulnerability creating excessive optimism and encouraging risk taking.
2. Rationalizing warnings that might challenge the group’s assumptions.
3. Unquestioned belief in the morality of the group, causing members to ignore the consequences of their actions.
4. Stereotyping those who are opposed to the group as weak, evil, biased, spiteful, impotent, or stupid.
5. Direct pressure to conform placed on any member who questions the group, couched in terms of “disloyalty”.
6. Self-censorship of ideas that deviate from the apparent group consensus.
7. Illusions of unanimity among group members, silence is viewed as agreement.
8. Mind guards — self-appointed members who shield the group from dissenting information.

The type of leader is an important factor in times of stress, and it is an area where followers themselves make poor decisions. This is because in times of crisis, people are drawn to a charismatic leader over any other type of leader. In one lab study, it was found that people primed with thoughts of death were most likely to vote for an imagined charismatic political candidate than one who was task-oriented, or one who focused on compassion and appreciation of followers. Preference for charisma has also been identified in real-world observational studies, such as in the aftermath of 9/11.

David Cameron is somewhat of a style-over-substance leader, and a crisis like this can be beneficial to him in this respect, as he is nothing if not charismatic. Indeed, his approval rating in the last week has improved (although it is still currently negative), and 45% of surveyed people believe he responded well by coming back from holiday and making some thoroughly dangerous decisions. Right now, if Cameron continues to act charismatically, giving perfectly-written speeches and flashing his Oxford grin, consequences for him will not be negative. It could possibly act to improve his standing in a climate of fear and stress.

I wrote this post assuming the best of our current government. A large part of me believes that much of their response is deliberate, an escalation in their war against the poor. The decisions will have long-term implications for public order situations such as demonstrations, they will make people homeless and clog up our prison and justice system with people who need to see a future rather than a barred window.

However, decision making in a crisis is always going to be problematic. We need to be aware of its shortcomings and avoid swift reactions without thinking through implications and consequences. This is a lesson that we must all learn so we can respond better in emergencies and to sudden, horrifying scenarios.

The government reaction frightens me. I cannot see a way that things will get better.

The latest fad among policy-makers is using “nudges” to gently push people in the right direction. Unsurprisingly, David Cameron is a big fan of this approach, while the Telegraph are preposterously terrified of sinister nannies perpetrating mind control. In a battle between the Telegraph and David Cameron, it is difficult to choose a side. In fact, they are both wrong.

Nudge theory was put forward in the book Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth And Happiness in 2009. It is, ostensibly, a book about behaviour change and psychology, and has been heralded as a scientific panacea for developing policy–changing risky behaviour such as smoking and alcohol consumption would lead to fewer deaths, after all.

The book was written by a lawyer and an economist. This is the first alarm bell: neither of these professions are known for their training in human behaviour. To Nudge’s credit, though, at least the authors acknowledge that economic theories have it all wrong about human behaviour: traditional economic models tend to start with the rather flawed assumption that people are completely rational. Nudge instead focuses on the social and environmental context of behaviour and the cognitive shortcuts we use while processing the world around us.

I discussed Nudge’s views on the context of behaviour and how our brains rarely think unless we absolutely have to in more detail in this post on default options, where I opened with the statement that Nudge is the worst book on behaviour change ever written. I stand by this thesis. Here is why.

There are several concepts which are important to nudge theory. The authors propose that decisions take place within a “choice architecture”, that is, the context of the behaviour. They also propose that there are two systems for making decisions: the automatic system and the reflective system. The former is unthinking, unconscious. The latter is rational. There is nothing inherently wrong with these ideas: it is nothing that surprises those in psychology or the field of behaviour change, and it is nothing that has not been extensively researched before. This book, in fact, provides a  overview of these concepts, among others, which influence health behaviour, and synthesises them into a comprehensive theory. It was published several years before Nudge and is not referenced.

In fact, given the depth of understanding of automatic processes, one might suspect that the authors’ research was a quick glance at Wikipedia’s list of cognitive biases.

The framework proposed by the authors to change behaviour is termed “libertarian paternalism”. Both words are enough to set my teeth on edge, and in oxymoronic combination my blood pressure shoots through the roof. In short, libertarian paternalism involves policymakers doing as little as possible–for example, smoking bans are verboten–hoping people will choose to perform the desired behaviour. Policymakers are expected to nudge people in the right direction.

What is a nudge? The authors provide a handy acronym for their proposed methods for changing behaviour. It is rather fudged. Nudges are:

• iNcentives
• Understand mappings
• Defaults
• Give feedback
• Expect error
• Structure complex choices

This translates to various simple, minimal-intervention methods, such as simplifying forms, feedback, providing information in a readable format or modifying default options.

It really is that simple, according to the authors.So simple, that most of the book is dedicated to presenting a series of nudges and things they think could work as a nudge.

To the untrained eye, it appears that Nudge is scientific and evidence-based. There are a lot of references and citations, after all. Surely that must mean it is science?

Not at all. The evidence presented seems cherry-picked. It is likely that this was not undertaken with duplicity, but rather with ignorance. For example, the authors cite a smoking cessation trial in the Philippines which used a method they deemed as nudging. They claimed great success for this intervention–in fact, the trial and analysis were undertaken poorly with a small effect. This happened in a number of places where the authors presented “trial” data; the authors do not seem to understand how best to test that an intervention works.*

In fact, Nudge presents no evidence that nudges would work better than something that was not a nudge. Again, this is likely to be due to the authors’ lack of training in the behavioural sciences. The way to test this would be to conduct a randomised controlled trial. In short, one would randomly allocate a large number of people to be exposed to a nudge, with an equivalent number of people randomly allocated to not receive the nudge. One would then see how many people from each group changed their behaviour. It is quite a simple concept, and seems to have escaped the authors’ knowledge. Instead, they repeatedly trumpet nudges to be effective with no supporting evidence.

Nudge further neglects an important aspect of behaviour change: helping people gain the skills to change their behaviour. It is no good nudging people to buy healthy food by improving labelling if they are not taught how to cook a healthy meal. It is no good providing people with nicotine patches to help them stop smoking if they are not taught how to cope with psychological cravings. Skill-training is important, and there is rather a large evidence base on the importance of training and improving self-regulatory capacity.

There is also a rather large body of evidence to suggest that higher-intensity interventions are much more effective at changing behaviour than those with less contact. So, for example, sitting down with someone and helping them write a plan about how they are going to stop smoking is better than giving them a leaflet and letting them write down how they plan to stop smoking. Nudges are inherently minimal-intervention and thus would be unlikely to be particularly effective.

Useful, perhaps, but not sufficient.

Beyond the distinct lack of evidence to back up the theory, Nudge runs into another enormous problem: even its authors acknowledge that nudges work best for well-educated Western people. This means that in using nudges, whole groups of disadvantaged people miss out on help in changing their behaviour. This seems par for the course with our current government. No wonder David Cameron likes his nudges.

Overall, though, one of the largest problems with Nudge is that after reading the entire bloody book, I was still none the wiser as to what a nudge is. The authors provide numerous examples and a rather fudged acronym, but there is still the sense that a nudge is essentially something that the authors like. As conceptualised, there is no real reason that a smoking ban should not be a nudge–it is, after all, environmental modification to disincentivise smoking. The only reason a smoking ban is not considered a nudge is because the authors say it isn’t.

Despite all of this, and following an evidence inquiry at the House of Lords, an expensive “nudge unit” has been set up and one of Nudge‘s authors called in to advise on policy.

Nudge is not science. Nudge is not a panacea towards behaviour change. It is libertarian, laissez-faire ideology formatted readably.

Nudge is not a road-map. It is a childishly-scrawled drawing of a street scene.