Nudge(1): Like Fudge, but not as Sweet.

Nudge is fast becoming to behaviour change what Google is to search engines. We have started to use the term as a catch-all shorthand for a patchy understanding of something like 'all those fancy psycho-social tricks that alter how people think and act'. In doing so we are in danger of squeezing out all the other approaches we have to changing behaviour that might be more powerful or appropriate, including Think, Steer, and Mindfulness.

Nudge is fast becoming to behaviour change what Google is to search engines. We have started to use the term as a catch-all shorthand for a patchy understanding of something like 'all those fancy psycho-social tricks that alter how people think and act'. In doing so we are in danger of squeezing out all the other approaches we have to changing behaviour that might be more powerful or appropriate, including Think, Steer, and Mindfulness.

Tim Hartford is one of many who argue that 'nudge' is being overused, and suggests that we should be wary of applying a concept designed for markets to inform the the way Government changes the behaviour of citizens.

'Nudge' was the title of the book by Thaler and Sunstein that created the excitement around behaviour change, but as Richard Thaler indicated while speaking at the RSA, Nudge is really just a catchy term for the much more complex notion of  'Libertarian Paternalism' that is supposed to underpin nudge interventions. The idea is that you don't undermine people's freedom by choosing for them, but merely encourage them to make certain choices by altering the environment in certain ways, changing feedback mechanisms and shifting defaults.

An intelligent use of choice arcitecture makes good sense to me, but the paternalism is not unproblematic. For instance, speaking at the RSA,  Anne Coote referred to “The whole ghastly nudge business which is actually about encouraging conformity”.

Moreover, it is not really transformative, which is perhaps, darkly, why people like it. Nudge changes the environment in such a way that people change their behaviour, but it doesn't change people at any deeper level in terms of attitudes, values, motivations etc. And, as Clive Gross argued on RSA Comment, we risk oversimplifying why we change our behaviour

In any case, you can hardly open a page these days without being 'nudged' and Downing Street's 'Behavioural Insight Team' is called 'the nudge unit'.

I was prompted to share these thoughts after reading quite a detailed piece on the work of this team in The Independent. However, what I really wanted to say, is that if I am absolutely honest, I think one of the main reasons 'nudge' has become so popular is that it sounds like 'fudge'.

I am not being entirely facetious. For instance, social psychology has taught us that we prefer people with names similar to our own, and although I can't prove that we are thinking of fudge when we say nudge, my gut feeling is that this tacit association needs to be part of the story...