Month: January 2021

The Spotlight Effect

The Spotlight Effect

Posted on by jabittan
We are social creatures that crave connections with and acceptance from other people. We want to have many allies as we move through life and want to be seen as a valuable ally to others. In our minds, we magnify our actions, words, and behaviors, examining what we do and how we present ourselves to others to make sure we are winning as many allies as possible. However, this constant focus on ourselves and how we might appear to others creates an illusion known as the spotlight effect. We are so focused on how we are presented to others that we begin to feel as though everyone else really is watching us and really is paying attention to how we present ourselves.

 

The reality, for most of us, is that very few people really notice much about us. Our spouse and other members of our household probably notice the little details about us, whether we haven’t shaved for three days, whether we have worn the same shirt two days in a row, and whether something is really bothering us, but most other people probably don’t notice that much. The reality is that most of them are focused on themselves, falling into their own spotlight effect and not actually paying much attention to what we are doing.

 

Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein write about the spotlight effect in their book Nudge. They write, “One reason why people expend so much effort conforming to social norms and fashions is that they think that others are closely paying attention to what they are doing. … here’s a possibly comforting thought: they aren’t really paying as much attention to you as you think.”

 

People follow traditions, like wearing ties, that they dislike because they think everyone expects them to wear a tie and will be disappointed in them if they fail to wear one. This example of conformity bias mixed with the spotlight effect is relatively harmless, but the spotlight effect can have more severe consequences. People may believe their phones and social media posts are being watched by the police, they may worry that their colleagues will think of them as a cheapskate if their Secret Santa gift isn’t expensive and cool enough, and they may worry that other people on social media won’t find them authentic if they don’t angrily denounce the outrage of the day. These examples show how the spotlight effect can play into conspiratorial thinking, spending more money than one can really afford to spend, and engaging in signaling behaviors that might be beyond reasonable.

 

This is why Sunstein and Thaler’s quote can be helpful and possibly comforting. It is useful to recognize that we overanalyze ourselves and focus too highly on everything we do and how we present ourselves. Understanding this can help us see that everyone is so focused on themselves that they don’t have a lot of mental capacity left for scrutinizing everyone else. Once we realize that others are not paying as much attention to us as we thought, we can scale back negative aspects of conformity and self scrutiny. We can dial back the spotlight effect, and hopefully make decisions and choices that better fit the person we are, not the person we try to convince everyone else that we are. There are positive aspects to the spotlight effect, but for many of us, we probably over stress ourselves worrying about what others think, and would benefit from recognizing that others don’t pay so much attention to us.
Pluralistic Ignorance

Pluralistic Ignorance

Posted on by jabittan
TV shows and movies frequently have scenes where one character has been putting up with something they dislike in order to please another character, only to find out that the other character also dislikes the thing. I can think of instances where characters have been drinking particular beverages they dislike, playing games they don’t enjoy, or wearing clothing they hate, just because they think another character enjoys that particular thing and they want to share in that experience with the other person. It is a little corny, but I really enjoy the moment when the character recognizes they have been putting themselves in agony for the benefit of the other person, only to realize they have been in agony as well!

 

This particular comedic device plays on pluralistic ignorance. We don’t ever truly know what is in another person’s head, and even if we live with someone for most of our life, we can’t ever know them with complete certainty. When it comes to really knowing everyone around us and everyone in our community or society, we can only ever know most people at a minimal surface level. We follow cues from others that we want to be like, that we think are popular, and that we want to be accepted by. But when everyone is doing this, how can any of us be sure that we all actually want to be the way we present ourselves? We are all imagining what other people think, and trying to live up to those standards, not realizing that we may all hate the thing that we think everyone else considers cool.

 

The whole situation reminds me of AP US History from my junior year in high school. My friend Phil sat toward the back of the classroom and the year he and I had the class was the very last year for our teacher before he planned to retire. He was on autopilot most of the year, a good teacher, but not exactly worried about whether his students payed attention in class or cheated on tests. For one test, Phil was copying off the girl next to him, only to realize halfway through class that she was cheating off him! When Phil told the story later, we all had to ask where any answers were coming from if they were both cheating off each others test.

 

Pluralistic ignorance feels like Phil and his AP US History test. However, pluralistic ignorance can be much more important than my little anecdote. Yesterday’s post was about collective conservatism, a form of groupthink where important decision-makers stick to tradition and familiar strategies and answers even as the world changes and demands new and innovative responses. Pluralistic ignorance can limit our responses to change, locking in tradition because we think that is what people want, even though people may be tired of old habits and patterns and ready for something new.

 

In Nudge, Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler write, “An important problem here is pluralistic ignorance – that is, ignorance, on the part of all or most, about what other people think. We may follow a practice or tradition not because we like it, or even think it defensible, but merely because we think that most other people like it.”

 

A real world example I can think of would be driving cars. Many people in the country absolutely love cars and see them as symbols of freedom, innovation, and American ingenuity. Thinking that people would be willing to give up their cars or change anything about them seems delusional, and public policy, advertising campaigns, and car designs reflect the idea that people want more, bigger, and faster cars. But is this actually true for most Americans?

 

Our cars emit toxic fumes, tens of thousands of people die annually in crashes, and the lights and sounds of cars can keep those who live along busy streets or next to car enthused neighbors awake at night. People have to pay for auto insurance, vehicles break down frequently, require constant costly maintenance, and in the US there is a constant pressure to have a newer and nicer car to signal how well off one is. My sense is that people generally dislike cars, especially anything dealing with purchasing or repairing a car, but that they put up with them because they think other people like cars and value and respect their car choice. I believe that if there were enough reliable, fast, and convenient alternative transportation options, people would start to ditch cars. I think lots of people buy fancy, powerful, and loud cars because they think other people like them, not necessarily because they actually like the car themselves. If we could come together in an honest way, I think we could all scale back our cars, opting for smaller, quieter, less polluting vehicles or public transportation. There are certainly a lot of problems with public transportation, but I think our obsession and connections with cars is in part pluralistic ignorance as to how much other people actually like and value cars. We are trapped in a vehicular arms race, when we would really all rather not have to worry about cars in the first place.
Collective Conservatism

Collective Conservatism

Posted on by jabittan
Groupthink is one of the most dangerous phenomenon that our world faces today. Families, companies, and governments can all find themselves stuck in groupthink, unable to adapt to a world that no longer fits the model and expectations that drive traditional thinking. When everyone has the same thought processes and members of the group discount the same information while adopting a uniform perspective, the world of possibilities becomes limited.

 

In Nudge, authors Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler write about a particular element that is common when groupthink takes hold, collective conservatism. While discussing groups that follow tradition the authors write,

 

“We can see here why many groups fall prey to what is known as collective conservatism: the tendency of groups to stick to established patterns even as new needs arise. Once a practice (like wearing ties) has become established, it is likely to be perpetuated, even if there is no particular basis for it.”

 

In a family household, collective conservatism might take the form of a specific way to fold towels. Perhaps towels had to be folded a certain way to fit a space in a previous house, and the tradition has continued even though towels no longer need to be folded just right for the space. Nothing is really lost by folding towels just so, but it might be time consuming to make sure they are folded in order to fit a constraint that no longer exists.

 

Within companies and governments, however, collective conservatism can be more consequential than the time and effort involved in folding towels. A company that cannot adjust supply chains, cannot adjust a business model in response to competition, and that cannot improve workspaces to meet new employee expectations is likely to be overtaken by a start-up that is more in tune with new social, technological, and cultural business trends. For a government, failures to adjust for technological change and employee motivations are also risks, as are changes in international relations, social needs, and more. Being stuck in a mindset that cannot see the changes and cannot be more responsive can be dangerous because peoples actual lives and needed services and supports could be in jeopardy. Collective conservatism feels safe to those who are in decision-making roles and who know what worked in the past. However, collective conservatism is a form of group think that can lead to inept operations and strategies that can be economically costly and have negative impacts in peoples’ real lives.
Confident Nudges & Strong Opinions

Confident Nudges & Strong Opinions

Posted on by jabittan
Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler describe an experiment in their book Nudge where people were placed in a group in a dark room with a small point of light. Due to an illusion with the brain processing visual information, the small point of light appears to move slightly, even though it is stationary. The lead investigator on the study placed a member of his staff in the room who would express strong confidence in the distance that the light supposedly moved, or express doubts about the groups conclusion for how far it moved. What the study showed is that strong confidence or strong doubt from one person can greatly shape the overall beliefs of the entire group.

 

Individually, people in the study would not arrive at matching or correlating guesses for the distance that the light moved. But when in groups, individuals begin to converge over a common distance (again, the light never moved – study participants only perceived motion due to an optical illusion). When one person in the group was either very sure that the group had the right estimate, or expressed strong doubt that the groups conclusion was accurate, participants tended to agree and move toward their estimate. A high distance guess stated strongly would pull everyone’s estimates up while a low estimate would shrink them. If the group had someone who was very confident in their answer, the participants became more confident, while if someone expressed strong doubts, the remaining participants level of doubt also rose. As Sunstein and Thaler write, “A little nudge, if it was expressed confidently, could have major consequences for the group’s conclusion.”

 

Most of us probably have to work in groups on a regular basis. This study is important because it shows how much one person can set the expectations and shape the assumptions of everyone in the group. We have all had projects that start out with little coherent information. Everyone has an idea for where the project could go, what shape the final output could take, and what factors will be the most important to include. If one person is has strong opinions in any given area, they can greatly influence the group’s decision-making. The authors continue, “the clear lesson here is that consistent and unwavering people, in the private or public sector, can move groups and practices in their preferred direction.”

 

These people may be right and may have good insights, but they can also be very wrong. A strong personality expressing confident opinions can push an entire group toward conformity. They can downplay the real threats or weaknesses of a plan, and can be overconfident with the prospects of success. For these reasons it is important to build in mechanisms that check groupthink. It is important to have someone play devil’s advocate, to ask how a plan could fail, to get the group to think about the strengths and weaknesses of a plan in honest terms. Without finding a way to check overconfident or strongly expressed opinions, a group can be derailed from the very start, with everyone conforming to the strong opinions of a single individual.
Self-Control & Environmental Effects - Joe Abittan

Self-Control & Environmental Effects

Posted on by jabittan
I discount the idea of the self more than most people. I don’t think that it is useful to think about ourselves as definable individuals the way most people do, and as a result, I don’t think self-control, discipline, and individual responsibility should be as prominent in our economic and political systems as we make them. From my perspective, the systems, structures, and environmental conditions of our lives shape our decisions and behaviors to a much greater extent than I think most people want to admit.

 

Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler provide evidence that supports my position in their book Nudge. Sunstein and Thaler write about the hot-cold empathy gap which describes how much self-control we predict we will have when we imagine a temptation versus how much self control we actually have when faced with a temptation. It is easy to say that we are going to limit how many sweets we eat at a Christmas party when we are still at home, getting ready to leave. But once we have arrived at the party and smell fresh baked cookies and pies, our self-control is effectively thrown out the window.

 

“When in a cold state,” write Sunstein and Thaler, “we do not appreciate how much our desires and our behavior will be altered when we are under the influence of arousal. As a result, our behavior reflects a certain naivete about the effects that context can have on choice.”

 

What is important to take away from this quote is that there is a disconnect between the way we expect to behave and the choices we expect to make and the actual behaviors and decisions of the moment. I believe that systems and structures matter a lot, but if we set up certain systems and structures in our lives without recognizing how hard it will be to actually make the choices and decisions that we expect to make, then we have not actually built any type of system or structure that we can be successful within. We can buy all the swiss chard that we want and write out a weekly menu full of healthy foods, but if we buy a pack of Oreos at the store convinced that we will only eat one a day for dessert, we will be unlikely to actually stick to our plan at 2:30 on Wednesday afternoon when we crave something sweet.

 

Environmental effects are important and often overlooked when we think about our decisions and behaviors. This is because our reflection is done in a cold state when we are not tempted by mindless TV, cookies, or sleeping in for an extra hour. If we want to be successful and develop systems and structures that will actually encourage self-control and good decision-making, then we have to predict how we will feel when we are in hot states, and we have to arrange our environment in a way that completely prevents the choices we want to avoid. We can’t have Oreos in the house at all, we have to install a website blocker to stop us from browsing social media, and we have to place the alarm away from the bed, so we have to actually get up when it goes off. Expecting that our self-control will hold is a good way to fail when temptation is all around.
Framing and Nudges

Framing and Nudges

Posted on by jabittan
“Framing works because people tend to be somewhat mindless, passive decision makers,” write Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler in their book Nudge. “Their Reflective System does not do the work that would be required to check and see whether reframing the question would produce a different answer.”

 

Framing is an important rhetorical tool. We can frame things as gains or losses, reference numbers as percentages or as whole numbers, and compare phenomena to small classes or to larger populations. Framing can include elements of good or evil, morality or sin, responsibility toward ones family or individual greed. Depending on what we want people to do or how we want them to behave, we can adjust the way we frame a situation or decision to influence people in certain ways. Framing is not a 100% effective way to make people do what we want, but it can be a helpful way to nudge people toward certain decisions.

 

Sunstein and Thaler present an example of using framing to nudge people to conserve energy. They write,

 

“Energy conservation is now receiving a lot of attention, so consider the following information campaigns: (a) If you use energy conservation methods, you will save $350 per year; (b) If you do not use energy conservation methods, you will lose $350 per year. It turns out that information campaign (b), framed in terms of losses, is far more effective than information campaign (a). If the government wants to encourage energy conservation, option (b) is a stronger nudge.”

 

It is not the case that everyone who sees a message touting the money saved by conserving energy will do nothing while everyone who sees a message about the money they lose will take action. Some people will be motivated to take action by the message to save $350 per year, and some people won’t be motivated by the $350 loss aversion. However, on average, more people with the loss averse message will decide to take action. People tend to feel losses to a greater extent then they seek gains, so framing energy conservation methods as preventing a loss will motivate more people than framing energy conservation methods as leading to a gain.

 

This small shift in framing alters the perspective of buying energy efficient light bulbs or resealing windows from costly investments to practical strategies for avoiding further losses. Framing in this example is a simple nudge that isn’t a form of mind control, but plays into existing human biases and encourages people to make decisions that are better for them individually and for society collectively. I would argue that framing is a necessary and unavoidable choice. Messages are necessarily context dependent, and trying not to include any particular framing can make a message useless – at that point you might as well not have a message at all. Given that framing is necessary and that there are preferable outcomes, choice architects should think about framing and employ frames in a way to encourage the best possible decisions for the most people possible.
The Value of Objects - Joe Abittan

The Value of Objects

Posted on by jabittan
My dad collected Hot Wheels toy cars. He had thousands of cars, all in their packaging, with limited editions and rare valuable cars all collected and organized together. It was a hobby, and an example of how much value an individual can attach to objects that don’t mean anything to other people.

 

On my wife’s side of the family, near-hoarding behavior is not uncommon. With my dad’s collection and my wife’s family’s saving everything just in case, we have both seen the excesses of placing too much value in objects. We try hard to think critically about the things we have in our lives, and try to avoid having too many things and giving them too much value. But still, it is hard to part with things, even when they are gifts that we never really wanted and even when we know that we don’t need it or could replace it easily.

 

In the book Nudge, Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler write the following about the value of objects. “People do not assign specific values to objects. When they have to give something up, they are hurt more than they are pleased if they acquire the very same thing.”

 

People are not actually that good at thinking about value. We will go out of our way for free stuff, we will hoard things to avoid feelings of loss, and we will collect items that don’t have the same economic value as the emotional value we attach to them once they are in our possession. This impulse helps drive our economy, but it can also drive us as individuals into madness.

 

I think that it is important to understand the quote from Sunstein and Thaler. When we recognize that we are not very good at thinking about value objectively, we can recognize irrational ways that we become attached to mere objects. We can start to shift the way we think about the material things in our lives and to really consider if they provide us value. We might find that our Hot Wheels collection really does provide us value, but at the same time, we may recognize that the decorative thing that someone gave us years ago doesn’t provide value. We can look at items that sit around taking up space, requiring cleaning, and cluttering our lives and feel more freedom with parting from those items. Understanding our irrational tendency towards objects and value can help us rethink what we keep, what we fill our lives with, and can help us get beyond the loss aversion we feel when we think about selling something or tossing it out.
Nudges for Unrealistic Optimism

Nudges for Unrealistic Optimism

Posted on by jabittan
Our society makes fun of the unrealistic optimist all the time, but the reality is that most of us are unreasonably optimistic in many aspects of our life. We might not all believe that we are going to receive a financial windfall this month, that our favorite sports team will go from losing almost all their games last year to the championship this year, or that everyone in our family will suddenly be happy, but we still manage to be more optimistic about most things than is reasonable.

 

Most people believe they are better than average drivers, even though by definition half the people in a population must be above and half the people below average. Most of us probably think we will get a promotion or raise sometime sooner rather than later, and most of us probably think we will live to be 100 and won’t get cancer, go bald, or be in a serious car crash (after all, we are all above average drivers right?).

 

Our overconfidence is often necessary for daily life. If you are in sales, you need to be unrealistically optimistic that you are going to get a big sale, or you won’t continue to pick up the phone for cold calls. We would all prefer the surgeon who is more on the overconfident side than the surgeon who doubts their ability and asks us if we finalized our will before going into the operating room. And even just for going to the store, doing a favor for a neighbor, or paying for sports tickets, overconfidence is a feature, not a bug, of our thinking. But still, there are times where overconfidence can be a problem.

 

2020 is an excellent example. If we all think I’m not going to catch COVID, then we are less likely to take precautions and are more likely to actually catch the disease. This is where helpful nudges can come into play.

 

In Nudge, Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler write, “If people are running risks because of unrealistic optimism, they might be able to benefit from a nudge. In fact, we have already mentioned one possibility: if people are reminded of a bad event, they may not continue to be so optimistic.”

 

Reminding people of others who have caught COVID might help encourage people to take appropriate safety precautions. Reminding a person trying to trade stocks of previous poor decisions might encourage them to make better investment choices then trying their hand at day trading. A quick pop-up from a website blocker might encourage someone not to risk checking social media while they are supposed to be working, saving them from the one time their supervisor walks by while they are scrolling through someone’s profile. Overconfidence may be necessary for us, but it can lead to risky behavior and can have serious downfalls. If slight nudges can help push people away from catastrophic consequences from unrealistic optimism, then they should be employed.
Post Hoc Conclusions

Post Hoc Conclusions

Posted on by jabittan
Our minds see a lot of patterns that don’t exist. We make observations of randomness and find patterns that we assume to be based on a causal link when in reality no causal structure exists between our observations. This can happen in 3 point shooting in basketball, in observations of bomb locations in WWII London, and in music streaming services. We are primed to see patterns and causes, and we can construct them even when we shouldn’t. One contributing factor for incorrect pattern observation is that we tend to make post hoc conclusions, making observations after the fact without predicting what we might expect to see before hand.

 

Using the WWII example, Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler in the book Nudge show how people developed misconstructions of German bombing patterns in London during the war. The German bombing wasn’t precise, and there was no real pattern to the bombing raids and where bombs actually exploded across the city. Nevertheless, people mistakenly viewed a pattern in the random distribution of bombs. The authors describe the mistaken pattern identification by writing, “We often see patterns because we construct our informational tests only after looking at the evidence.”

 

People could map where bombs fell, and then create explanations for what targets the Germans were aiming at, for why the Germans would target a certain part of the city, and what strategic purpose the bombing was trying to accomplish. But these reasons are all post hoc constructions meant to satisfy a non-existent pattern that someone expected to find. We also see this in basketball, when a shooter makes a few baskets and is believed to have the hot hand or be on fire. In music streaming services, algorithms are actually tweaked to be less random, because listeners who hear two consecutive songs or more by the same band will assume the streaming isn’t randomizing the music, even though random chance will sometimes pick a string of songs from the same band or even from the same album.

 

The examples I mentioned in the previous paragraph are harmless cognitive errors stemming from poorly constructed post hoc explanations of phenomena.  However, post hoc conclusions based on non-existent patterns are important to consider because they can have real consequences in our lives and societies. If we are in a position to make important decisions for our families, our companies, or our communities, we should recognize that we possess the ability to be wildly wrong about observed patterns. It is important that we use better statistical techniques or listen to the experts who can honestly employ them to help us make decisions. We should not panic about meaningless stock market fluctuations and we should not incarcerate people based on poor crime statistic understandings. We should instead remember that our brains will look for patterns and find them even if they don’t actually exist. We should state assumptions before we make observations, rather than making post hoc conclusions on poor justifications for the patterns we want to see.
Nudges Versus Regulation

Nudges Versus Regulation

Posted on by jabittan
“Libertarian paternalism, we think, is a promising foundation for bipartisanship.” Write Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler in their book Nudge. The authors are in favor of a governance structure that does not eliminate choice and possibility for people in the world. They are in favor of a system that allows flexibility for the people who have the time and capacity to consider all of their options before making a choice, and they prefer subtle and almost invisible forces to shape public opinion and behaviors. Throughout the book they argue that heavy handed regulation can be harmful to the long-term success and progress in some areas because people may push back against laws and regulations that limit freedom.  Nudges, in their view, can be an avenue toward real bipartisanship and cooperation because they can make real world changes without heavy handed government action.

 

The authors present the standard view of American politics where the Republican Party is presented as the party of small government while Democrats are the party of big government action. Republicans are all about freedom of choice and individual responsibility while Democrats are the party of government planning and the use of public institutions to improve people’s lives. I think this view is wrong. I think people are primarily self-interested, and gravitate toward the party that better reflects their identity, personality, and self-interests, and through motivated reasoning find high-minded excuses for supporting the party that generally aligns with the overarching political preferences that the standard view of American politics presents. But does this mean that Sunstein and Thaler are wrong about the ability of nudges to bring together Republicans and Democrats for action on public policy?

 

They write, “In many domains, including environmental protection, family law, and school choice, we will be arguing that better governance requires less in the way of government coercion and constraint, and more in the way of freedom to choose.”

 

When we consider whether Sunstein and Thaler are correct, we have to ask what is meant by better governance. Better governance might be reaching actual goals and actually improving people’s lives. It might mean creating a system that people are happier to interact with. Better governance may also mean a system that is more equitable, creates more social cohesion and trust, or that operates quicker. Each of these concepts is different, yet related, and we demonstrate that how we chose to measure better governance can shape the approaches we take. A focus on greater equity might come at the cost of quicker hiring and firing processes. Creating a system that leaves individuals who interact with governance happier may mean a system that is bigger and more expensive, but might not mean that it actually solves people’s problems. What we mean by better governance can conflict with what someone else means by better governance, so it is important to be clear about goals and expectations.

 

And that gets to the question – do nudges actually do any of these things? In terms of addressing environmental protection, I don’t think nudges are adequate. I think we are at a point where catastrophic environmental damage and climate change are unavoidable unless we have massive societal and technological changes. Simple nudges that tax oil and gas while offering rebates or incentives for purchasing electric cars won’t change the landscape quick enough to help mitigate climate change and create a sustainable world moving forward. I think we are at a point where we need real action to produce meaningful changes that lead to better governance in environmental policy. It might be time for outright bans on sales of gasoline and diesel engines, billion dollar prizes for green technology, and other heavy handed government interferences in markets and people’s daily lives.

 

However, within family policy, nudges do seem like they can be meaningful. Tyler Cowen recently shared research correlating child car safety laws with the number of children a family has. The argument being that car seats and seat-belt requirements may make it more difficult to have multiple young children who take a long time to get situated in a car before driving, reducing incentives for parents to have more kids. Family decisions, it seems, can be highly influenced by seemingly inconsequential factors. If this is accurate, then nudges, such as child care rebates, really might reduce the costs of childbearing, and might encourage larger families, shaping the actual outcome of people’s lives and securing a young tax base to support social service programs. Nudges might be an effective approach to encouraging more family formation.

 

To continue analyzing policy in areas where Sunstein and Thaler’s quote suggests nudges would be helpful, my argument on school choice would be that it is effectively 100% signaling and self-interest. Religious parents probably don’t care too much about what their children actually learn in school or where they go. They do care about how much their school choice argument and energy demonstrate their religious devotion. Wealthy parents care about the signaling power of elite schools and universities, and similarly care about how much their children will be able to signal and benefit from a private school education that is out of reach for the majority of families who send their children to public schools. Race, socio-economic status, and other identity markers seem to be core to the self-interest of most school choice freedom advocates in my opinion. From my point of view, better governance would enhance social cohesion, encourage more opportunities for those individuals who otherwise would be left out, and help us manage diversity collectively. If school choice is overwhelmingly dominated by signaling and self-interest, then I see little reason why nudges would be the best approach to shaping policy. Nudges that increase costs of signaling end up creating stronger signals for those who can afford to still send their children to private institutions, therefore increasing their value and creating more division and contention within the debate.

 

Nudges seem to have real power in shaping public policy and can likely bring together Republicans and Democrats in some instances, but if governance is not about public policy, but is instead about identity, self-interest, and signaling, then I don’t think nudges can truly do much to improve governance or bring together Democrats and Republicans. Similarly, for massively consequential policy areas, I don’t think we can leave our future and success up to nudges. They may take too long and not be forceful enough to really shape public behavior and attitude, especially if they face entrenched opposition.