Denise de Ridder, Joram Feitsma, Mariëtte van den Hoven, et al., “Simple Nudges That Are Not So Easy.” Behavioural Public Policy, 1-19, 2020.- This article draws upon a Dutch research program (2014-2018) with the acronym WINK: “Welfare Improvement through Nudging Knowledge [p. 3].” WINK "examines nudging from the perspective of three core disciplines: ethics, public administration and psychology [p. 3]."
- The authors posit that there are three common yet false assumptions made concerning nudges: (1) nudges threaten autonomy; (2) nudges are easy to implement; and (3) nudges are simple and effective.
- Autonomy might mean unfettered choice, but it also could refer to agency (capacity to choose) and self-constitution (identity and living the life one desires). Perhaps people who criticize nudges for threatening autonomy (even though by definition nudges do not preclude any choice options) do so because they have adopted a definition of autonomy in which maintenance of freedom of choice does not end the debate.
- Is it enervating to possess too many choices? Should we welcome nudges to reduce the burden of choice?
- The explanation of nudges can alter judgments about the extent to which they threaten autonomy.
- In general, the authors are fairly hostile to claims that nudges threaten autonomy, and tend to believe that nudges are more likely to enhance autonomy, by overcoming common gaps between intentions and actions.
- The rush to set up nudge units is one piece of evidence that shows that many policymakers view nudges as both effective and cheap to implement. "In reality, however, the process of designing, testing and implementing nudge interventions is far more complicated, which questions the supposed ‘efficiency’ of nudges [p. 8]."
- Persuasion via information provision is hard… so it is not surprising that many policymakers view nudging as a promising, quick-acting alternative (p. 10). But in general, the effects of nudges tend to be fairly modest. This limited effectiveness might be considered an advantage, as it defuses the argument that nudges are overly manipulative.
- When folks are unsure of their preferences, nudging works pretty well, and promotes autonomy in both the self-constitution sense and in the agency sense.
Ronald Bosman, Heike Hennig‐Schmidt, and Frans van Winden, “Emotion at Stake: The Role of Stake Size and Emotions in a Power-To-Take Game Experiment in China with a Comparison to Europe.” CESifo Working Paper Series No. 5858, April 19, 2016.
• In the two-player power-to-take game, Player A indicates what percentage of Player B’s monetary endowment Player A will claim.
• Player B learns of A’s claim, and then can choose to destroy some or all of her own endowment. Whatever is left after the destruction, Player A receives the chosen percentage of it, while Player B retains the remainder.
• Power-to-take is sort of a generalized version of the ultimatum game, and in particular, it allows Player B to have intermediate responses, in between accepting Player A’s suggestion or destroying the entire “endowment.”
• Three conditions: China Low (stakes), n=36; China High, n=36; and, EU, n=40. The results for the two China treatments are similar.
• Take rates in China average more than 50%; while most people do not destroy any of their endowment, the average amount of destruction is considerable, more than 20%. Higher take rates lead to more destruction.
• Higher take rates strengthen negative emotions in Players B, and it is possibly worse with higher stakes.
• Destruction decisions seem to be mostly driven by emotions.
• The results, including emotional responses, seem to be similar in China and Europe.
Christopher J. Bryan, Gabrielle S. Adams, and Benoît Monin, “When Cheating Would Make You a Cheater: Implicating the Self Prevents Unethical Behavior.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 142(4): 1001-1005, 2013 [pdf].
• People who engage in unethical behavior like to weaken the connection between their behavior and their identity. They might cheat, but they don’t want to be a cheater. Similar distinctions might surface with litter/litterbug, vote/voter, or drunk driving/drunk driver.
• The authors run an experiment that involves a frame of “cheat” versus a frame of “cheater.” Many more people (apparently) cheated when the frame was about cheating, than when the frame was about cheaters. A follow-up, internet-based experiment had similar results.
• The results do not imply that we should always try to adopt the “identity” (cheater) framework, even if that frame does diminish the number of people cheating. Maybe if you cheat despite being told not to be a cheater, your cheating will be even worse!
Christoph Engel and Michael Kurschilgen, “The Jurisdiction of the Man Within – Introspection, Identity, and Cooperation in a Public Good Experiment.” Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, 2015/1, December 2014 [pdf].
• This paper features a lab experiment involving a repeated public good game, where groups of four players individually decide each round how much of their endowment they will invest in a public good. The choices of every player in every previous round are known to everyone. In such games, contributions tend to fall over time, and a significant minority of people never contribute. The modal behavior is “conditional cooperator,” where people contribute something as long as others do.
• Each round features a second stage as well, where the players are asked about their expectations or beliefs. The various “treatments” in the game differ based on the question that is posed.
• “Introspection” for the authors involves a comparison of your own behavior with a normative goal. The authors contend that introspection can be induced in the players via the right sort of belief question.
• One question aims at making salient the “normative ideal,” asking players what they think everyone should contribute. A second treatment attempts to direct focus to the “normative minimum,” where players are asked what is the least amount that players should be expected to contribute.
• The authors suggest that players will have an element of their utility connected to their “identity.” This term lowers a player's utility to the extent that the player's actual behavior falls short of her ideal. But the extent of such potential lowering depends on how clear it is that the player has not lived up to her professed ideal.
• Any sort of introspection might increase the mental clarity concerning how a player's behavior falls short of her own ideal. But the Normative Minimum question will, the authors hypothesize, go the furthest in reducing her “moral wiggle room.” Any contribution that does not at least match what she think is minimally required will be a stark piece of hypocrisy.
• Sure enough, the “normative minimum” question leads to substantially more cooperation, and furthermore, greatly slows down the erosion of cooperation over time.
Janet Schwartz, Daniel Mochon, Lauren Wyper, Josiase Maroba, Deepak Patel, and Dan Ariely, “Healthier by Precommitment.” Psychological Science 25(2) 538–546, 2014.
• People find it hard to generate the persistent willpower needed to keep actions consistent with intentions. Features such as diffuse, future rewards from resisting temptation might contribute to this difficulty.
• Financial incentives have been shown to help with weight loss, quitting smoking, and complying with a medical regimen. They might (but only might) even spur the formation of habits, giving temporary financial incentives a lasting impact.
• Sophisticated folks are aware of their self-control shortfalls, and might welcome commitment devices.
• The field experiment involved an existing healthy eating program in South Africa that gives 25% cash back at the end of the month for healthy food purchases. Some participants were given the option of forfeiting their cash back if they did not increase their healthy grocery component by five percentage points. The shoppers had no direct positive incentive to take part, they could only lose money relative to not participating (as in this earlier field experiment). A control group was informed about the possibility of such a commitment contract, but was not offered the option to make the commitment.
• More than one-third of the households offered the commitment contract chose to join the commitment scheme. They were allowed to drop out after one month, however, and about one in six did drop out.
• The committed shoppers did increase their consumption of healthier items relative to the non-committed shoppers. The commitment seems crucial for converting intentions into future action. But shoppers nonetheless failed to live up to their commitments on average: “…in any given month only one-third of the committed households met their goal.”
• The standard ethical query applies: Is it ethical to offer (relatively poor?)
people a commitment device when it is more than conceivable
that many of them will suffer a loss of funds because they will not fulfill their commitment?
Xavier Giné, Dean Karlan, and Jonathan Zinman, “Put Your Money Where Your Butt Is: A Commitment Savings Account for Smoking Cessation.” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 2(4): 213-235, January 2010.
• Likely heavy smokers were randomly chosen to be offered a “Committed Action to Reduce and End Smoking” (CARES) savings account. After six months, a urine test was given to indicate whether the saver had given up smoking. A failed test meant that the money in the account was forfeited. A second treatment involved giving smokers aversive cue cards as opposed to the opportunity to open a CARES account.
• CARES accounts were accompanied by weekly visits from a bank employee to collect additional deposits. Participants were urged to save the money they otherwise would have spent on cigarettes. The deposit collection seemed to be important for getting people to take up CARES.
• Only eleven percent (a total of 83) smokers offered CARES signed up. Smokers randomly offered CARES were a bit more likely to pass a second, surprise urine test after one year. (That is, most did not quit smoking, but quit rates were about 1/3 higher than for smokers not offered CARES.) The cue cards didn’t help induce smoking cessation, though almost everyone who was offered the cards took them.
• About 2/3 of CARES clients lost their deposits by failing the urine test. They tended to have lower deposits, though, and may have cut down on their smoking (and spending on smoking), even if they didn’t quit. Is it ethical to offer relatively poor people a commitment savings account in the fore-knowledge that many of them will end up unable to collect their savings?
Nava Ashraf, Dean Karlan, and Wesley Yin, “Tying Odysseus to the Mast: Evidence From a Commitment Savings Product in the Philippines.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 121(2): 635-672, 2006.
• The authors conduct a natural field experiment to see if people will open a savings account that has no advantages except for barriers to withdrawal. The offered SEED accounts (“Save, Earn, Enjoy Deposits”) prevent depositors from accessing funds unless a target deposit amount or date is met. Most of the participants who opened accounts chose the date-based method.
• Individuals were randomly chosen to be offered a SEED account, and about 28% of those who received the offer accepted it. Others were offered nothing or were given encouragement to save more. All the people involved were bank clients who already had a regular savings account.
• All participants were given a survey aimed at identifying customers who had time inconsistent preferences. The survey indicated that 27.5% of respondents were hyperbolic, while a surprising 19.8% were reverse hyperbolic, more patient today than for future choices. Hyperbolic women (but not men) are more likely to take up the SEED offer.
• The Intent to Treat (ITT) effect reveals the impact of being offered (not necessarily accepting) the SEED account. The ITT effect involved a significant increase in savings. (The encouragement-to-save option did not increase savings.) The Treatment on the Treated effect reveals the increase in savings for those who opened a SEED account relative to controls who would have opened one if offered; here, it is about four times higher than the ITT effect.
• Is it ethical to offer relatively poor people a type of savings account whereby it is more than conceivable that they will never be able to recover their funds because they did not reach their savings goal? After one year, only 6 of the 62 participants who opened an amount-based account achieved their goal and hence could access their funds (page 657).
Steffen Andersen, Seda Ertaç, Uri Gneezy, Moshe Hoffman, and John A.
List, “Stakes Matter in Ultimatum Games.” American Economic Review
101: 3427–3439, December 2011.
• A standard result is that varying the stakes does not lead to much of a change in the outcomes of ultimatum game (and related game) experiments. The ultimatum game is of interest in itself, but also because it seems to hold lessons for any “take-it-or-leave-it” bargaining situation.
• Andersen et al. (2011) challenge this standard result. In particular, they hope to see if “proposers” offer more “unfair” splits when the stakes are high, and if responders turn down unfair splits, even when the stakes are significant.
• In the reported experiments, conducted in villages in India, the stakes are altered by a factor of 1000. The highest-stake version is on the order of one-year’s income.
• The ultimatum game that the authors employ is structured in such a way as to nudge proposers into making “unfair” offers. Otherwise, the experimenters suspect that there will not be enough unfair offers to test reliably the willingness of responders to turn down unfair offers at high stakes. (The ultimatum game as it is typically implemented has its own share of nudge issues.)
• In the experiments, raising the stakes monotonically decreases the average percentage of the pie “offered,” though the absolute monetary amount offered increases. At the highest stakes, there is but one rejection in 24 trials. Nevertheless, at the second-highest level of stakes (about one-month's income), more than one-quarter of the proposals are rejected.
• Is it ethical to go to relatively poor villages and offer some people the potential for one year's or one month's income -- along with the (likely) prospect that some of those selected people will proceed to "lose" that stake, after being nudged towards an "unfair" offer that raises the probability of their receiving nothing? Behavioral economics experiments sometimes challenge the Kantian precept that people are to be treated as ends in themselves, not means to the ends of others.
