Policies designed to encourage people to speak up – from whistleblower protections to conflict-of-interest disclosures – often fail because they address informational barriers, not social ones. Effective policy must reduce the social cost of dissent, not just permit it. … More Why Policy Design Must Account for the Psychology of Compliance
Littering is one of those persistent public problems that often feels unsolvable. Campaigns urging people to “do the right thing” rarely lead to lasting behaviour change, and enforcement is costly. A behaviourally-informed digital intervention is tested and shown to shift public habits more effectively. … More Can a digital nudge clean up the streets? How Behavioural Science helped reduce littering in the UK
What if the secret to boosting productivity isn’t stricter rules or higher pay, but something as simple as giving workers a voice? Sherry Jueyu Wu shares a field experiment from the production floors of a Chinese factory, which asked whether participatory meetings – in which workers spoke and supervisors listened – could increase productivity. The … More Giving Workers a Voice Boosts Productivity
System change and individual behavior change are often conceptualized as mutually exclusive strategies for climate change mitigation – but what if this duality is misguided? Denise de Ridder and Sander Thomaes map four pathways illustrating that system change is effective when it promotes behavior change and vice versa. … More When and how behavior change can accelerate system change (and vice versa): Mapping reciprocal processes for climate change mitigation
Ivo Vlaev, Professor of Behavioural Science, University of Warwick New Year’s resolutions represent more than just a fleeting tradition; they offer a powerful opportunity for self-reflection and intentional growth. Rooted in six fundamental psychological needs shared by all humans, resolutions serve as a catalyst for meaningful change. Here’s why they matter and how they can … More Why New Year’s resolutions matter: The psychology behind the tradition
Excessive meat consumption is increasingly scrutinised for its impacts on the environment, animal welfare, and public health. Men’s consumption of meat is higher than women’s, driven not just by taste preferences and higher caloric needs, but also social expectations surrounding men’s diets. Public messaging to reduce a behaviour as deeply ingrained as meat eating—a food that humans have consumed for at least 2.5 million years—can expect to face significant resistance. Behavioural public policy may offer unique tools to address this, but has to be careful not to trigger psychological defences. … More Meat and manhood: Unpacking resistance to reduced meat consumption
In this blog Ros Taylor, author of “The Future of Trust” highlights the complex causes of distrust. Causes that can be invisible to those who interactions with the state may be occasionally frustrating rather than existential. Modern society requires large amounts of institutional trust in order to function. Policymakers need to understand and engage with the causes of distrust. … More The Future of Trust
Without deliberate investigation of the methods required to systematically improve the take-up of evidence in real-world settings, at scale, grounded in an understanding of scalability, the impact of behavioural public policy to shift behaviours where it truly matters is severely curtailed.
An implementation science for behavioural public policy is crucial if, as researchers, we want to effect real change. … More A Science for Implementing Behavioural Science
In the blog Sanchayan Banerjee & Peter John overcome nostalgia for “nudge plus” and herald the new dawn of Nudge+. Is this a more distinctive depiction of the research agenda encouraging people to reflect on the choices they face? Does it more successfully stress the link to the “nudge” yet transform it with its subliminal radicalism? The authors deliberate and decide. … More To Nudge Plus or Nudge+ A dilemma
Economics is often described as insular from other social sciences. Alexandre Truc shares the results of research mapping thee content of more than 5000 articles and their references. The research reveals fascinating trends and differences between the various clusters of behavioural economic research. This includes a shift towards greater diversity of disciplines involved in behavioural economics, and thus a relative decline in the role for psychology. Nevertheless, the research shows that the rise of behavioural economics has served more generally as a bridge for the psychology into economics. … More Has Behavioural Economics made Economics less insular?