Summary of our second ESRC Workshop on "Increasing the richness and frequency of social science survey data" (23/5/14)

Thanks to all of those who attended our second ESRC workshop on “Increasing the richness and frequency of social science survey data” in Stirling on Friday May 23rd. It was the second of our six workshops funded by the ESRC that take place in 2014/15.

We heard fascinating talks and had illuminating discussions about the present and the future of using new measures in the social sciences. The abstracts of the talks, pictures, and some links for further reading are below. Details of future workshops will be provided via the mailing list, the blog and our twitter account.


09:20-09:40: Dr. Michael Daly (Stirling Behavioural Science Centre):
Introduction and Opening Talk

You'll find the slides that Michael used for his presentation here.

09:40-10:10: Jos van den Puttelaar (Wageningen): 

Measuring choice behaviour in a simulated supermarket; a comparison of survey result s, virtual and actual behaviour.

Consumer research in retail settings was usually constricted to either questionnaires about behaviour, an assignment with one specific shelf or in a rare occasion implemented into a real store. The ideal was to be able to do consumer research in larger areas and still be able to track a consumer from step to step. And while doing that, not spending a lot of man-hours or money. For this reason we developed a computer program that we could use to simulate shopping behaviour wherever we wanted, whatever we wanted to simulate, are total control of and with fully automated tracking.

At this moment the developments are threefold. First of all on the technological side, we have a drag and drop system that can build and simulate supermarket shopping without knowledge of programming. Added to this are the implementation of several techniques like, eye tracking, facial expression analysis and automated ambiance creation. Secondly, we have done and are still busy with several validation studies. Third, the aim of the whole project, was to do research into consumer behaviour. By now, several studies have been finished and published. Next to that many students have used the tool in their BSc or MSc thesis research. Altogether the shop simulator shows to be a research tool that extends very well on survey data with actual behavioural data.

10.10-10.40: Anouar El Haji (University of Amsterdam)
Online Experimental Auctions: Measuring Willingness to Pay in the Field

Product value is often measured through non-incentivized measures, such as survey scales or hypothetical willingness to pay. The second-price auction is a well-established auction mechanism to elicit true maximum willingness to pay. However, due to practical reasons these auctions are usually only conducted among students and on a small scale. We overcome both limitations with an online platform that makes it possible to run second price auctions with a large sample of consumers. We argue that the platform offers researchers access to unique data with a high external validity.

11:00-11.45: Ernesto Schwartz Marin (University of Durham)
Citizen Led Forensics: DNA and data banking as technologies of disruption.

Governmental institutions in Mexico have officially recognised 121,683 violent deaths in the period between 2006- 2013. During the same period around 27,000 disappearances occurred, and approximately 15,000 bodies remain unidentified, as there are no national databases in the country. In Mexico, distrust in governmental authorities is the norm, since the practice of forensic science has been opaque, and has sometimes itself been used to cover the tracks of the perpetrators of grave crimes. In response to this crisis, and thanks to an ESRC transformative research grant (2014-2015), this project aims to create the first citizen led Forensic DNA database as a way of positively intervening in the humanitarian crisis currently lived in Mexico.The project will make DNA swab kits available for 1,500 people (approx 500 Mexican families), accompanied by a clear set of instructions on how to collect DNA from cheek swabbing, as well as from the personal belongings of the missing person. In the same DNA Kit we would ask the participating families to include written accounts of their case, their experience with forensic investigations (if any) and personal narratives of what they have gone through since their relative(s) disappeared The citizen led Forensic database will be designed as a mobile and Participatory Action Research device, articulated through civil society organisations of relatives of the disappeared. The presentation will cover the preliminary design of this database and the challenges and opportunities opened by its creation. The work is based on fieldwork, first hand experience and recurrent analysis of the current situation lived in Mexico.

11.45 -12.30: David Stillwell (University of Cambridge)

Title: myPersonality: Example of successful online social network data collection from 6 million people

Link: The myPersonality project website

Abstract: In June 2007 Facebook released its apps platform, and since then commercial apps like Candy Crush Saga and Farmville have entertained hundreds of millions of users around the world. With a few tweaks, academics can also create interesting experiments, questionnaires and games that attract millions of respondents. The myPersonality application collected psychological questionnaire responses from 6 million users whose sole motivation was to receive feedback on their results. Users also opted-in to sharing their Facebook profile information, including demographics, political/religious views, Facebook Likes, friendship network graph, and status updates. This talk will discuss the data available through Facebook, and give some tips on how to entertain users with academic research studies.

13:30-14:15: Dr Julia Allan (University of Aberdeen)
Capturing the real time determinants of snacking and inactivity in daily life: the SNAPSHOT study
Julia Allan

Link: The SNAPSHOT Study

We live in an environment where snack foods are readily available, and where desk jobs and labour saving devices mean that we are less active than in previous generations.   In this context, eating well and being active requires considerable self-control (i.e. being able to do/not do something effortful now in order to achieve something valuable in future). Most research linking self-control to health behaviour has focused on stable, trait-level differences between people.  However, the ability to exert self-control is known to fluctuate within people over time, as mental resources are depleted and replenished.  This means that people may be particularly likely to succumb to dietary temptation / fail to be active at moments when their regulatory resources are depleted.   In this talk, I give an overview of the Scottish Government funded SNAPSHOT study, that monitors snacking, physical activity, mood, self-control, social context, and location in real time as people go about their everyday lives.  By integrating these different measures, it’s possible to build up a rich and detailed picture of when, where and why people snack and spend time inactive.  The pros and cons of this type of real time data collection will be discussed.

14:15-15:00: Andrew Jones (University of Liverpool)
Response Inhibition in Everyday Life. Administering a Mobile Version of the Stop-Signal Task set up on an Android Smartphone.

Response inhibition (disinhibition) or the inability to inhibit behaviour that is no longer appropriate is a core component of impulsivity and executive functioning. We can measure response inhibition in the laboratory using well validated, computerised assessments such as the Stop-Signal and Go/No go tasks.  Poor performance on these tasks is linked to problem drinking in cross-sectional studies; however it is impossible to infer causality from this. Laboratory research is beginning to demonstrate that inhibition can fluctuate over time in response to internal and environmental cues and these fluctuations may increase the risk of alcohol consumption. We aimed to test this hypothesis by examining inter-individual differences in disinhibition and alcohol consumption over time. I will discuss an ecological momentary assessment study, in which we administered a stop-signal task via a mobile phone application to a sample of heavy drinkers to examine daily fluctuations in inhibition along with alcohol consumption.  The focus will be on our preliminary results, the costs/benefits of the methodology, reliability of the app and future research using these methods.

15:30-16:40: Professor Neil Stewart (Warwick University).
The Psychology of Nations and States

Link: Google Trends
Link: Mechanical Turk


People search the internet for things they are thinking about. We used Google Trends to extract search frequencies for years (e.g., 2011) and adjectives (e.g., "hot"). With the years, we construct a measure of future orientation and a measure of intertemporal span and show that both are correlated across nations with higher per-capita gross domestic product. With the adjective frequencies we construct a measure of the connotation of searches from different US states, and show that these measures are correlated with per capita gross state product and inequality. Overall, we demonstrate that constructing psychological measures from Google Trends data is possible and that these measures correlate with sensible economic measures like GDP and inequality.

16:40-17:30 Panel Discussion

Follow our Twitter account @StirlingEconPsy and the hashtag #StirBSC to follow the day's events.

Wealth in Great Britain Wave 3, 2010-2012

The ONS recently released the third round of their "Wealth in Great Britain" survey. There is a lot of interesting information in this survey including the headline results below. The ONS have also included subjective well-being questions in this survey which will be of interest to researchers. There is still a lot to be learned about how precisely to ask these types of questions to respondents and more experimentation on the sensitivity of wealth estimates to question-wording would be a good development.

"In 2010/12, aggregate total wealth of all private households in Great Britain was £9.5 trillion. 

The wealthiest 10% of households owned 44% of total aggregate household wealth. 

Half of all households had total wealth of £218,400 or more."

Links of the Week 16.5.14

1. Can Active Labour Market Policies Combat Youth Unemployment?, Maibom et al (2014), IZA Discussion Paper
Abstract: Active labour market policies (ALMPs) may play an important role in preventing an increase in long-term unemployment following the Great Recession. We consider this issue for Denmark, a country relying extensively on this instrument. We present evidence on the effectiveness of ALMPs as a way of fighting youth unemployment using results from a randomised controlled trial (RCT) that intensified the use of ALMPs. The intervention was conducted after the onset of the financial crisis, and the findings are relatively unfavourable in the sense that further intensification of an already quite intensive effort for youth did not increase employment. In addition, the intensification of ALMPs seems to have increased transitions into sickness benefits.

2. US College Majors 1970-2011 (interactive graph)

3. A 184 page presentation prepared by James Heckman for Gary Becker's 80th birthday.

4. Big Data: New Tricks for Econometrics, Hal Varian (2014)
Abstract: Nowadays computers are in the middle of most economic transactions. These "computer-mediated transactions" generate huge amounts of data, and new tools can be used to manipulate and analyze this data. This essay offers a brief introduction to some of these tools and methods.

Edge.org conversation with Rory Sutherland

The article is wide-ranging and interesting throughout. Rory Sutherland works in advertising and has several Ted talks. Excerpts below:

"No one ever got fired for buying IBM" is a wonderful example of understanding loss aversion or "defensive decision making". The advertising and marketing industry kind of acted as if it knew this stuff—but where we were disgracefully bad is that no one really attempted to sit down and codify it. When I discovered Nudge by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, and the whole other corpus on Behavioral Economics…. when I started discovering there was a whole field of literature about "this thing for which we have no name" …. these powerful forces which no one properly understood—that was incredibly exciting. And the effect of these changes can be an order of magnitude. This is the important thing. Really small interventions can have huge effects....

...In the commercial world it's not in the interests of consumers to be rational. If you imagine a world of rational consumers where they all bought cars based on some formula, which was fuel economy multiplied by acceleration divided by depreciation or whatever it may be, what they would end up with would be really, really terrible cars. Car manufacturers would immediately game their predictable and easily understanding preferences and produce cars, which met all the metrics laid down for a desirable car, but the cars would be ugly, uncomfortable, and generally ghastly, and no pleasure to own. It is our interest, in a sense, as consumers to have a degree of unpredictability to our behavior and to be difficult to model. But homo economicus is really a contrivance in order to pretend that humans can be treated as though they were atoms or planets or something like that, which is a fundamental category error. It's what Hayek would call ".....a mechanical and uncritical application of habits of thought to fields different from those in which they have been formed."

Full article here

Online course in Behavioural Medicine starting September 9th 2014

From edx.org

"Behavioral medicine is the science of changing our behavior, so we as individuals can stay healthy and happy as long as we can. If you choose to join this five-week course on Behavioral Medicine, you will learn about basic behavioral medicine concepts and explore how they can be applied to help people who need to change specific lifestyle behaviors to attain better health. Working with “virtual patient scenarios” will give you a chance to test behavioral medicine interventions. You will also learn self-help tools based on behavioral medicine, for whatever you need to change in your life.

We’ll start the first week by looking at what makes us motivated to change our behavior. We often feel motivated for change when we experience imbalance in life. One example of a key concept that helps us understand how imbalance arises is the effort-reward model, which states that ill-health is more likely to arise when there is a gap between the effort you make and how you are rewarded. To help people who are experiencing imbalance identify what they need to change, we will learn about Motivational Interviewing (MI), a counseling style that stimulates behavior change. You will have an opportunity to test basic techniques in MI with a “virtual bartender” who has sleep problems that he is trying to solve by drinking alcohol. The following four weeks will focus on coping with stress (week 2), improving sleep (week 3), increasing physical activity (week 4), and everyday behaviors (week 5) like hand washing, condom use and minimizing risky alcohol use.

To complete this course, you will need to set aside about 5-8 hours a week. You’ll use some of this time to watch course videos, answer questions designed to help you reinforce and retain what you have learned, and understand the homework required. The remaining time will be for course reading, mostly open access scientific articles, and solving homework tasks. You’ll be doing part of the work together with other participants in the course community. After the five course weeks, you can expect to know a lot more about understanding unhealthy behaviors and how to change them for better health!"

How your risk attitudes affect how you vote in the independence referendum

Cross-posted from Future of UK and Scotland Blog 

by David Bell, Liam Delaney & Michael McGoldrick, University of Stirling’s Management School

People's perceptions and attitudes determine electoral outcomes. Both the Yes and No options involve uncertain costs and benefits that will unfold over many decades. Our new report is unique in examining voters’ attitudes to risk and how they plan to vote on September 18th.

We found that people’s risk attitudes are important in determining how they plan to vote in the referendum. Yes voters are substantially more willing to take risks. To assess risk appetite we used a well-validated measure asking people to determine where they thought they were on a simple risk scale of zero to ten. Zero marks an unwillingness to take risks, while 10 is the maximum willingness to take risks. 

For each point increase on the scale support for Yes increase by 3.6 per cent meaning that over the whole scale support for Yes goes from 25 to 65 per cent. Even given the fact that the bulk of people are between 4 and 8 on the risk scale, it is clear that attitude to risk is an important driver of voting intentions. It remains substantial and important once statistical controls for other individual characteristics, such as age, gender and country of birth are introduced. Attitudes to risk are also partly reflected in what Yes and No voters say they prioritise in deciding how to vote with economic risks to pensions and national debt being more important determinants for No voters.

Our findings also confirm many of the key predictors of voting intention with party political affiliation, national identity and trust in institutions all having large predictive effects. Furthermore our report reveals interesting demographic patterns with women being substantially less likely to support independence and older, higher income people also being more likely to support No. Those with Roman Catholic or no religious affiliation are substantially more likely to support a Yes outcome than Church of England and Church of Scotland voters. Policy preferences also play a role with No supporters being less supportive of universal benefits and immigration.

It is clearly the case that many voters are deeply entrenched in their view and will likely not change. However, 30 per cent of our respondents said they would change their view if they believed they would benefit economically. Such voters hold the key to the outcome of this referendum.

Yougov administered the survey designed by us and involving a representative sample of 2037 people in December 2013. We hope our findings contribute to a rational debate on the risks and benefits of both sides and aids the process of understanding people's concerns.  

How people deal with the complex nature of the voting decision is itself an important issue and understanding this is an objective of our ongoing research. It will also examine further the nature of how people are perceiving risk and how this is influencing their voting intentions. This first piece of research on risk and constitutional change shows how important this issue may be for the outcome.

Increasing the richness and frequency of social science survey data (ESRC Workshop 23/5/14)

Workshop 2: Increasing the richness and frequency of social science survey data: Stirling, May 23rd 2014.

This is the second Behavioural Science Workshop in a series of six that will take place in 2014/15. These workshops are funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. The venue is the Pathfoot Building C1/2 at Stirling University. There will be drinks and dinner after the days talks to which all attendees are welcome.

This workshop will showcase frontier approaches that aim to enhance the sophistication and the frequency with which social science data is collected.

Speakers will outline innovative methodological tools and their application to key themes such as the measurement of well-being, behaviour, and attitudes. These include employing innovative measures of affect and behaviour, such as the Day Reconstruction Method (DRM), construction of representative longitudinal panel surveys and Google Trends, Facebook, experience sampling data, real-time tracking of physiological activity and movement as well as psychological variables (e.g. response inhibition, affect), and simulated online shopping environments.

Follow our Twitter account @StirlingEconPsy and the hashtag #StirBSC to follow the day's events.

Sign up to attend the workshop here.

DAY SCHEDULE

09:00-09:20: Registration

09:20-09:40: Dr. Michael Daly (Stirling Behavioural Science Centre): Introduction and Opening Talk

09:40-10:10: Jos van den Puttelaar (Wageningen)
Measuring choice behaviour in a simulated supermarket; a comparison of survey results, virtual and actual behaviour.
Consumer research in retail settings was usually constricted to either questionnaires about behaviour, an assignment with one specific shelf or in a rare occasion implemented into a real store. The ideal was to be able to do consumer research in larger areas and still be able to track a consumer from step to step. And while doing that, not spending a lot of man-hours or money. For this reason we developed a computer program that we could use to simulate shopping behaviour wherever we wanted, whatever we wanted to simulate, are total control of and with fully automated tracking.

At this moment the developments are threefold. First of all on the technological side, we have a drag and drop system that can build and simulate supermarket shopping without knowledge of programming. Added to this are the implementation of several techniques like, eye tracking, facial expression analysis and automated ambiance creation. Secondly, we have done and are still busy with several validation studies. Third, the aim of the whole project, was to do research into consumer behaviour. By now, several studies have been finished and published. Next to that many students have used the tool in their BSc or MSc thesis research. Altogether the shop simulator shows to be a research tool that extends very well on survey data with actual behavioural data.

10.10-10.40: Anouar El Haji (University of Amsterdam)
Online Experimental Auctions: Measuring Willingness to Pay in the Field
Product value is often measured through non-incentivized measures, such as survey scales or hypothetical willingness to pay. The second-price auction is a well-established auction mechanism to elicit true maximum willingness to pay. However, due to practical reasons these auctions are usually only conducted among students and on a small scale. We overcome both limitations with an online platform that makes it possible to run second price auctions with a large sample of consumers. We argue that the platform offers researchers access to unique data with a high external validity.

10:40-11:00 COFFEE (provided)

11:00-11.45: Ernesto Schwartz Marin (University of Durham)
Citizen Led Forensics: DNA and data banking as technologies of disruption.
Governmental institutions in Mexico have officially recognised 121,683 violent deaths in the period between 2006- 2013. During the same period around 27,000 disappearances occurred, and approximately 15,000 bodies remain unidentified, as there are no national databases in the country. In Mexico, distrust in governmental authorities is the norm, since the practice of forensic science has been opaque, and has sometimes itself been used to cover the tracks of the perpetrators of grave crimes. In response to this crisis, and thanks to an ESRC transformative research grant (2014-2015), this project aims to create the first citizen led Forensic DNA database as a way of positively intervening in the humanitarian crisis currently lived in Mexico.The project will make DNA swab kits available for 1,500 people (approx 500 Mexican families), accompanied by a clear set of instructions on how to collect DNA from cheek swabbing, as well as from the personal belongings of the missing person. In the same DNA Kit we would ask the participating families to include written accounts of their case, their experience with forensic investigations (if any) and personal narratives of what they have gone through since their relative(s) disappeared The citizen led Forensic database will be designed as a mobile and Participatory Action Research device, articulated through civil society organisations of relatives of the disappeared. The presentation will cover the preliminary design of this database and the challenges and opportunities opened by its creation. The work is based on fieldwork, first hand experience and recurrent analysis of the current situation lived in Mexico.

11.45 -12.30: David Stillwell (University of Cambridge)
Title: myPersonality: Example of successful online social network data collection from 6 million people
Abstract: In June 2007 Facebook released its apps platform, and since then commercial apps like Candy Crush Saga and Farmville have entertained hundreds of millions of users around the world. With a few tweaks, academics can also create interesting experiments, questionnaires and games that attract millions of respondents. The myPersonality application collected psychological questionnaire responses from 6 million users whose sole motivation was to receive feedback on their results. Users also opted-in to sharing their Facebook profile information, including demographics, political/religious views, Facebook Likes, friendship network graph, and status updates. This talk will discuss the data available through Facebook, and give some tips on how to entertain users with academic research studies.

12:30-13:30 LUNCH (provided)

13:30-14:15: Dr Julia Allan (University of Aberdeen)
Capturing the real time determinants of snacking and inactivity in daily life: the SNAPSHOT study
Julia Allan
We live in an environment where snack foods are readily available, and where desk jobs and labour saving devices mean that we are less active than in previous generations.   In this context, eating well and being active requires considerable self-control (i.e. being able to do/not do something effortful now in order to achieve something valuable in future). Most research linking self-control to health behaviour has focused on stable, trait-level differences between people.  However, the ability to exert self-control is known to fluctuate within people over time, as mental resources are depleted and replenished.  This means that people may be particularly likely to succumb to dietary temptation / fail to be active at moments when their regulatory resources are depleted.   In this talk, I give an overview of the Scottish Government funded SNAPSHOT study, that monitors snacking, physical activity, mood, self-control, social context, and location in real time as people go about their everyday lives.  By integrating these different measures, it’s possible to build up a rich and detailed picture of when, where and why people snack and spend time inactive.  The pros and cons of this type of real time data collection will be discussed.

14:15-15:00: Andrew Jones (University of Liverpool)
Response Inhibition in Everyday Life. Administering a Mobile Version of the Stop-Signal Task set up on an Android Smartphone.
Response inhibition (disinhibition) or the inability to inhibit behaviour that is no longer appropriate is a core component of impulsivity and executive functioning. We can measure response inhibition in the laboratory using well validated, computerised assessments such as the Stop-Signal and Go/No go tasks.  Poor performance on these tasks is linked to problem drinking in cross-sectional studies; however it is impossible to infer causality from this. Laboratory research is beginning to demonstrate that inhibition can fluctuate over time in response to internal and environmental cues and these fluctuations may increase the risk of alcohol consumption. We aimed to test this hypothesis by examining inter-individual differences in disinhibition and alcohol consumption over time. I will discuss an ecological momentary assessment study, in which we administered a stop-signal task via a mobile phone application to a sample of heavy drinkers to examine daily fluctuations in inhibition along with alcohol consumption.  The focus will be on our preliminary results, the costs/benefits of the methodology, reliability of the app and future research using these methods.

15:00-15:30: COFFEE (provided)

15:30-16:40: Professor Neil Stewart (Warwick University).
The Psychology of Nations and States
People search the internet for things they are thinking about. We used Google Trends to extract search frequencies for years (e.g., 2011) and adjectives (e.g., "hot"). With the years, we construct a measure of future orientation and a measure of intertemporal span and show that both are correlated across nations with higher per-capita gross domestic product. With the adjective frequencies we construct a measure of the connotation of searches from different US states, and show that these measures are correlated with per capita gross state product and inequality. Overall, we demonstrate that constructing psychological measures from Google Trends data is possible and that these measures correlate with sensible economic measures like GDP and inequality.

16:40-17:30 Panel Discussion

17:30-22:00: Drinks and dinner (all attendees welcome)

Paul Craven on "The Mind, Markets and Magic"

From TEDxLondon

Why Nudge? by Cass Sunstein

He has been called the “the most dangerous man in America”. His scientific articles, newspaper contributions, and books predictably arouse emotional responses and his most recent book “Why Nudge?” is no exception.

Cass Sunstein wrote Why Nudge? as a response to various attacks on nudging and behaviourally informed regulation. Based on earlier books, such as Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow and Thaler and Sunstein’s Nudge, Why Nudge? presents several new and important contributions, some of which are summarised below.
 

The book classifies paternalism along 2 dimensions; soft versus hard and means versus ends. The distinction between soft and hard paternalism describes how costly a paternalistic intervention is for the individual. For example, while tobacco packaging warning messages are soft paternalism, a large fine if you are caught smoking in an illegal zone is a hard intervention. The distinction between means paternalism and ends paternalism refers to whether interventions should tell people what to do or prioritize helping them to achieve what they want themselves. An example is discouraging obesity by posting calorie labels (means) or banning large sized sugary drinks (ends). 'Nudges', of which there are many examples in the Nudge Database on this website, are (i) soft, in that they are relatively low-cost, and (ii) means-oriented, in that they do not override individuals' goals.

One problem with these two distinctions is that the lines between them can become blurred. The distinction between soft and hard paternalism might be defined by the absence and the presence of material costs, respectively. However, a nudge might have very low material costs, but exorbitantly high psychological costs. An example would be publicly posting a list of names of tax evaders as a shaming mechanism. A nudge like that doesn't seem so soft. Maybe soft paternalism means that all costs (material and psychological) are relatively low.

Fig. 1. Means or ends?

Distinguishing between means and ends paternalism is also not so straightforward. The level of detail at which 'ends' can be defined can vary. If ends are defined very narrowly, every nudge counts as ends paternalism. If ends are defined very broadly, every nudge counts as means paternalism. For example, if my end goal is to eat a delicious Sticky Toffee Pudding (Fig. 1), nudges that discourage delicious but unhealthy desserts are ends paternalism. However, if my end is to live a healthy life, the same nudge might be considered means paternalism.

Fig. 2. The Intervention Quadrant

Still the two distinctions are useful. Many interventions can be classified into one of the four boxes (Fig. 2). In particular, many nudges are clearly soft and means paternalism. Having introduced these distinctions rather early in the book, Sunstein is able to steal many critics’ thunder by emphasising that nudges are soft (not hard) and means (not ends) paternalism, and therefore much less intrusive than other forms of paternalism, such as bans, mandates, and taxes.

Another argument Sunstein advances in favour of nudging is that choice architecture is inevitable. Since some design has to be in place it does not make sense to close one’s eyes and ignore the influence of choice architecture. To the contrary, behavioural scientists may be particularly well-placed to discuss more constructively how choice architecture should be built (one suggestion made by Martin Binder and myself can be found here).
 

Finally, perhaps Sunstein's strongest argument in favour of nudges deals with epistemic privilege. The epistemic privilege suggests that the individual knows best. Given that the individual indeed knows best, there is no reason for the government to interfere with individuals’ decisions if their actions do not harm other individuals (which is J.S. Mill’s harm principle). However, behavioural economics has shown that people's choices do not always promote their welfare. There are behavioural market failures. Cognitive biases such as affective forecasting and the focusing illusion and hyperbolic discounting suggest that the individual does not always know best, at least in certain situations. 

Whether policy interventions are warranted, Sunstein argues, should be determined by cost benefit analyses (see his recent paper with Ed Glaeser). The insight that choice architecture is inevitable seems to suggest that the costs of choice architecture are essentially zero (no more choice architecture is introduced; only the existing choice architecture is modified). The insight that behavioural market failures do occur suggests that large welfare gains are possible with relatively minor tweaks to existing policies. Nudges are therefore often very effective when evaluated in terms of costs and benefits.

Sunstein has built up a strong defence strategy against the many objections to 'nudge'. To rebut many types of criticism he tends to use one or more of the following arguments:

• Your argument is valid. Therefore we should prefer soft paternalism over hard paternalism.
• You argument is not valid because it addresses ends paternalism. Nudges try to help people to get what they want; they are means paternalism.
• Some kind of choice architecture is inevitable. Hence there are no costs of the intervention.
• As a result of behavioural market failures large welfare gains are possible. In light of these welfare gains, small costs are acceptable. 

And indeed, many objections raised against behaviourally informed regulation are weakened by these arguments. Here is a (not complete) list of objections that Sunstein aims to deal with using his defence strategy:  

• Individuals know best. 
  
• Officials lack the information to nudge and enhance individuals' welfare.
• Errors are more likely to come from officials than from individuals.
• Paternalism may freeze competition.
• Mistakes are often productive and induce private learning.
• Nudges infantilize citizens.
• One size does not fit all.
• Interests of lobby groups will affect nudgers.
• Public officials are people, too (see here).
• This will lead us to the Brave New World.
• Who monitors public officials? Who nudges nudgers?
• Mandates and bans are transparent and visible and can trigger political safeguards; nudges work best in the dark (see here and here). 

Some objections are more difficult to deal with. For example, the fact that preferences change over time and contexts induces huge problems for a cost benefit analysis. How can the government identify true preferences and thus understand what promotes aggregate welfare over time?

Sunstein devotes one chapter to autonomy, in which he distinguishes a 'thin' and 'thick' version of autonomy. In the thin version, autonomy (defined as freedom of choice) is seen as an ingredient of welfare. People dislike having their choices overridden and hence a reduction of freedom of choice reduces their welfare. Based on this criterion, hard paternalism (bans and taxes) should reduce welfare, but soft paternalism (nudges) should not. However, it might also be the case that people like choosing, which is more than just having the right to choose. If people like choosing, defaults – which do not take away the right to choose – might reduce peoples’ welfare. In any case, Nudges are compatible with the thin version of the autonomy argument, especially when granting that a cost benefit analysis is warranted when evaluating behavioural interventions.

In the thick version, freedom of choice is not just a part of the utility function. Here, freedom of choice is seen as an end in itself. Proponents of this thick version argue that people should have a right to choose even if choices cause them harm; be entitled to buy unhealthy stuff; not be regarded as children; be treated with respect; be ends, not means; be sovereign; and be free to make mistakes. Hence, in this view even soft paternalism threatens individual dignity and endangers liberty.

Sunstein’s response to the thick version of the autonomy objection is interesting. He seems to suggest that the above arguments tend to originate in people’s System 1 (where biases and errors also tend to originate). At this April 2014 panel discussion at Harvard Law School the panel talks a bit more about the role of System 1 in the thick version of the objections based on autonomy. In the book, Sunstein says that some argue that the thick version of autonomy is rhetorical flourish and therefore unhelpful.

There is one part of the book where I disagree with him (see here *new version*). This is when he writes about the way nudges work: either by promoting conscious deliberation (in System 2) or by operating behind the back of the chooser (via System 1).

Sunstein proposes that it is hard to see why nudges should be seen objectionable if they do not promote deliberation in System 2, but work only or largely because of the operations in System 1. His main argument is that nudges are inevitable: Any cafeteria has to have a design, any list of items has to have an order, and we cannot avoid influencing System 1. His argument goes: Since we cannot avoid this influence, nudges should not be ruled off limits merely because they work as a result of the operations of System 1, as long as they are made public and defended on their merits.

What is missing here is an analysis of the dynamic effects of nudges. He might be totally correct in a static framework. However, when considering that nudges can change the strength of decision-making anomalies over time, and influence the degree to which people make decisions in System 1 or System 2, one can see some additional costs of nudging. People might learn to trust the choice architecture and to rely on their System 1 when making decisions. Center member Thomas de Haan is involved in an experimental representation of this issue. There might be a backlash against too good nudges. And – to call in the slippery slope argument – the door would open up for any kind of manipulation when most people rely on their System 1 most of the time. I favour nudges that improve, rather than reduce, individuals’ ability to make critically reflected decisions in their System 2. In one aspect I sincerely agree with Sunstein: On these questions, more empirical research would be highly desirable.

The last paragraph I leave to Barry Schwarz because he summarises his review of Why Nudge? better than I could:

"To conclude, Why Nudge is a fine book. It treats critics of the “soft paternalism” of nudges with great respect, it is non-dogmatic, and it is nuanced and sophisticated in its arguments. I don’t recommend this book as a substitute for Thinking Fast and Slow or Nudge. But it is an excellent next book to read. And in a pinch, for those of us too busy making decisions that the world will not make for us to read so many books, it provides a faithful snapshot of the earlier books so that its main arguments are self-contained."