Inside the Nudge Unit

1. A New Approach: Governments Can Use Behavioral Science

This is a book about the application of psychology to the challenges we face in the world today, told through the experiences of a small team in the heart of British Government.

Introducing behavioral insights. The Behavioural Insights Team (BIT), or 'Nudge Unit', was founded in 2010 in the UK government to apply a more realistic understanding of human behavior to policy. Unlike traditional approaches based on economics and law, which assume perfect rationality, behavioral science acknowledges that people use mental shortcuts and are influenced by context.

A bold experiment. The team was given ambitious objectives: transform major departments, inject behavioral understanding across government, and deliver a tenfold return on cost. Failure meant being shut down in two years. This high-stakes environment forced a focus on practical, impactful interventions.

Early successes. Despite initial skepticism, the team quickly demonstrated that small, low-cost changes based on behavioral principles could yield significant results. These early wins, like improving tax collection and encouraging insulation, proved the value of the approach and helped it gain traction within government.

2. Make It Easy: Reduce Friction to Change Behavior

If you want someone to do something – pay their taxes, recycle, or take on an extra employee – a pretty good start is to ‘make it easy’.

Friction matters greatly. Human beings tend to follow the path of least resistance. Even small amounts of hassle or effort (friction costs) can prevent people from doing things they intend to do, like saving for retirement or insulating their homes.

Removing barriers. Policies and services should be designed to minimize friction. Simple changes can have dramatic effects:

• Automatically enrolling workers in pension schemes (opt-out vs. opt-in) led to millions of new savers.
• Simplifying letters and forms significantly increased response rates for tax payments and fine collections.
• Pre-filling college application forms boosted enrollment among low-income families.
• Offering attic clearance services was more effective than subsidies for encouraging insulation.

Adding friction strategically. Conversely, making undesirable behaviors harder can reduce them.

• Requiring motorcycle helmets reduced thefts by making it harder for thieves to ride away.
• Limiting the number of pills per pack reduced suicides by overdose.

3. Make It Attractive: Grab Attention and Appeal to Emotion

If you want to influence behaviour, you will often have to do something similar: to attract attention or some basic form of engagement before you have a chance to persuade or encourage.

Capture attention first. In a world of information overload, getting people to notice your message is the first hurdle. Our brains are wired to notice things that are salient, relevant, or emotionally engaging.

Strategies for attraction:

• Personalization: Using someone's name increases attention (e.g., in texts or letters).
• Visuals: Images are powerful attention grabbers and can convey emotional messages (e.g., car photos on fine notices, faces on posters).
• Contrast and Salience: Making key information stand out (e.g., red "pay now" stamps, colored traffic light labels).

Appeal beyond rationality. Decisions are often driven by emotion and intuition, not just cold calculation.

• Using humor or curiosity can make messages more engaging.
• Framing choices in terms of potential losses or gains can be more persuasive.
• Non-financial incentives like honor, fun, or social recognition can be powerful motivators.

Examples in action:

• Tax letters mentioning doctors specifically were far more effective for doctors.
• Adding a photo of a car to a fine notice increased payment rates.
• Painting footsteps to bins increased littering into bins.
• Using Sesame Street characters made healthy food more appealing to children.

4. Make It Social: Harness the Power of Others' Behavior

The behaviour of those around us is a powerful influence on what we do.

We are deeply social. Humans are constantly influencing each other, often unconsciously. We look to others to understand how to behave, especially in uncertain situations.

Leveraging social norms:

• Telling people what others are doing can be a powerful motivator.
• Highlighting that "most people pay their tax on time" significantly increased payment rates.
• Informing students that "most people use the stairs" increased stair usage.
• Showing that "most people in your local area" or "most people with a debt like yours" comply is even more effective.

Avoiding the "big mistake". Inadvertently highlighting undesirable behavior can backfire by normalizing it (e.g., campaigns emphasizing how many people commit fraud). Instead, emphasize the positive norm.

Reciprocity and personal touch. We feel a strong urge to reciprocate kindness.

• Giving a small gift (like sweets) with a request for donation increased giving.
• A personalized text message from a jobcentre adviser significantly increased attendance at job fairs.
• Asking people to keep an eye on a bag makes them more likely to intervene if it's taken.

5. Make It Timely: Intervene at the Right Moment

When set alongside the other elements of EAST – make it easy, attractive, and social – timely interventions can be highly effective.

Timing is crucial. Interventions are far more effective when delivered at moments when people are most receptive to change or when habits are disrupted.

Key moments for intervention:

• Before habits are established: Intervening early (e.g., with first-time mothers, new businesses) is more effective than trying to change entrenched behaviors.
• During life transitions: Events like moving house, starting a new job, or having a baby disrupt routines and make people more open to new behaviors. Retailers exploit this, and governments can too.
• At the point of decision: Providing information or prompts just before someone makes a choice (e.g., energy costs on appliance labels at the point of purchase, asking about charitable bequests when writing a will).

Addressing time inconsistency. People often prioritize immediate gratification over future well-being. Timely interventions can help bridge this gap.

• Releasing conditional cash transfers as a lump sum when school enrollment is due increased matriculation rates.
• Asking people to plan when and how they will do something (implementation intention) increases follow-through (e.g., getting flu jabs, job searching).

Examples of timely nudges:

• Texting parents before a child's test boosted performance.
• Texting students at high-risk times reduced course drop-out rates.
• Asking people to sign an honesty declaration before filling out a form increased honesty.

6. Data and Transparency: Empower Citizens and Reshape Markets

To get the benefits of a data-rich world, we have to build it around people’s mental capacities and around behavioural insights.

Markets aren't perfectly rational. Traditional economic models assume consumers have perfect information and make rational choices, but in reality, complexity and friction prevent this, allowing companies to profit from consumer inertia.

Empowering consumers with data. Giving consumers access to their own data in usable formats (like machine-readable 'midata') allows them to make better choices and increases market competition.

• QR codes on energy bills allow easy comparison and switching.
• Making personal consumption data accessible enables third-party tools to find better deals or advise on healthier choices.

Harnessing social data. Information about others' experiences is highly influential.

• Online reviews (like on Yelp or TripAdvisor) significantly impact consumer choices and can drive growth for smaller businesses.
• Publishing patient satisfaction data for hospitals and GP practices allows people to make informed choices and incentivizes providers to improve.

Nudging the nudgers. Transparency about consumer behavior can also nudge producers and regulators.

• Publishing car theft rates by model incentivized manufacturers to improve security.
• Publishing mobile phone theft rates by brand is pushing manufacturers to make phones harder to steal.

Information design matters. The way information is presented is critical for its impact. Simple, intuitive formats (like star ratings or traffic lights) are more effective than complex data or warnings.

7. Applying Behavioral Insights to Big Policy Challenges

If the work of the Behavioural Insights Team, and sister units like it across the world, was to have an impact it needed to have something to say and to add to this flurry of notes and decisions.

Beyond small tweaks. Behavioral insights can inform and reshape responses to major policy challenges, not just refine existing processes.

Case Study: E-cigarettes. Despite initial public health skepticism rooted in past battles with tobacco, behavioral analysis suggested e-cigs could be a less harmful substitute to help smokers quit.

• The argument was made that making e-cigs widely available, with light-touch regulation for safety and efficacy, could significantly boost quit rates.
• Evidence showed a dramatic rise in quitting attempts using e-cigs, leading to hundreds of thousands of extra quitters annually in the UK.
• This approach, based on understanding habit substitution and timely intervention, is estimated to be saving thousands of years of life annually.

Case Study: Unemployment. Applying behavioral principles to jobseeker support significantly increased the rate at which people found work.

• Shifting the focus from reviewing past job search activity to planning future activity (implementation intention) was key.
• Simplifying processes and providing a sense of progress also helped.
• This approach, tested rigorously, got people back to work faster, saving millions in benefits and improving lives.

Case Study: Economic Growth. Behavioral insights helped identify ways to stimulate a stalled economy.

• Encouraging new channels of finance (like peer-to-peer lending) by understanding the distrust of traditional banks among small businesses.
• Using existing government communication channels (like tax letters) to inform businesses about growth schemes dramatically increased uptake.
• Recognizing that business confidence ("animal spirits") is behavioral, and that visible government action can influence it.

8. Well-being: A Deeper Goal for Government and Individuals

Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.

Beyond GDP. Traditional measures of national progress like GDP are insufficient indicators of societal well-being. Subjective well-being (happiness, life satisfaction, sense of worth) can and should be measured and considered in policy.

Measuring well-being. Despite theoretical challenges, large-scale surveys show that subjective well-being can be reliably measured. The UK's Office for National Statistics now asks citizens about their life satisfaction, happiness, anxiety, and sense of worth.

Drivers of well-being. Research reveals key factors influencing well-being:

• Individual disposition: Some genetic and cognitive factors contribute to a baseline level of well-being.
• Material factors: Income matters, especially at lower levels, but so does control over one's life and access to nature.
• Social factors: Relationships, community connection, and trust are profoundly important, often more so than income.

Policy implications. Understanding well-being drivers suggests new policy priorities:

• Mental health: Addressing mental illness, which is often undertreated, is crucial for well-being.
• Character building: Fostering resilience and positive mindsets in children can have long-term impacts.
• Community: Supporting social connections, volunteering, and designing environments that encourage positive interaction boosts well-being.
• Work quality: The nature of work and relationships within the workplace significantly impact life satisfaction.

9. The Rise of Experimental Government: Finding What Works

The dirty secret of much government policy, and professional practice, is that we don’t really know if it is effective at all.

The God Complex. Policymakers and professionals often assume their interventions work without rigorous evidence, leading to wasted resources and sometimes harmful outcomes (like "scared straight" programs).

Learning from medicine. The medical field, spurred by figures like Archie Cochrane, transformed by systematically testing treatments using randomized controlled trials (RCTs). This approach, however, has been slow to spread to other policy areas.

Experiments don't have to be big. BIT demonstrated that rapid, low-cost RCTs could be conducted in government settings, particularly by testing variations in communications and digital services.

• Testing different messages on tax letters or organ donor registration websites quickly identified the most effective wording.
• This showed that experimentation could be a routine part of policy development, not just large, expensive pilots.

Industrializing experimentation. The UK established a network of "What Works" centers dedicated to collating evidence and conducting trials across various sectors (education, crime, early intervention, etc.).

• These centers produce user-friendly toolkits summarizing evidence for practitioners.
• They actively commission new trials to fill evidence gaps.
• This fosters "radical incrementalism" – achieving dramatic improvements through systematic testing of small changes.

Spreading the approach. The What Works movement is gaining international traction, promoting evidence-based policy and practice globally. This is crucial for ensuring effective use of resources and improving governance.

10. Risks and Limitations: Transparency, Efficacy, and Accountability

If behavioural insights are powerful, they can be misused, too – not just by business, but also by unscrupulous governments and bureaucrats.

Transparency concerns. Behavioral approaches can operate below conscious awareness, raising fears of manipulation or "mind control."

• Critics worry about governments or businesses using insights to steer people towards choices not in their best interest.
• While nudges can be transparent and choice-preserving (like opt-out defaults), the potential for subtle influence remains.
• There is no truly neutral choice architecture; decisions must be made about how options are presented.

Efficacy concerns. Some argue that nudges are too weak and serve as an excuse for avoiding more decisive action (like regulation or taxation), particularly on issues like public health or poverty.

• While nudges are not a panacea for all problems, they can be highly effective and cost-efficient, especially when combined with other policy tools.
• Behavioral insights can also improve the design of traditional policy levers.

Accountability concerns. Who decides what constitutes a "better" choice, and who oversees the "nudgers"?

• Given human biases, nudgers need checks and balances to ensure they act in the public interest.
• Ethical clearance processes for trials and transparency about methods are important safeguards.
• Public consultation and deliberation can provide democratic legitimacy for behavioral interventions, especially on lifestyle choices.

Behavioral predators. Businesses and individuals can exploit behavioral biases for harmful purposes, necessitating government and regulatory intervention. Governments must engage with behavioral science to protect citizens from such practices.

11. The Future: Applying Behavioral Insights to New Frontiers

It’s time for us to move beyond getting taxes paid on time and get people to the gym, important though these are. It is time to challenge the behavioural science community to take on some of the biggest, and seemingly intractable, challenges of our time.

Beyond current applications. Behavioral insights have the potential to address complex, long-standing global challenges.

Social mobility and disadvantage. Behavioral science is revealing subtle, pervasive factors contributing to entrenched disadvantage, suggesting new intervention points.

• Research on "growth mindsets" shows how feedback can dramatically impact children's resilience and attainment.
• Studies on the cognitive load of poverty highlight how welfare systems could be redesigned.
• Interventions improving job search or boosting minority recruitment show surprisingly large effects.

Conflict. Behavioral scientists are beginning to explore the psychological roots of intergroup conflict and prejudice, seeking insights that might inform peace-building efforts.

Evidence on evidence. Understanding why effective practices fail to spread is crucial for improving governance globally.

• Research is needed on how to overcome "fixation" on ineffective methods and accelerate the diffusion of "what works."
• Applying behavioral science to organizations and governments themselves could improve their effectiveness and probity.

Knowing yourself. Ultimately, behavioral insights empower individuals to understand their own minds, biases, and motivations. This knowledge can be used to make better personal choices and reshape habits. The curiosity about how our minds work is a fundamental human trait that drives this exploration.

Last updated: May 3, 2025