who is still searching for petrol may have a sense of how it s worked out. since brexit governments around the world have faced a much more urgent challenge and that is a global pandemic. what do you think the lessons of the pandemic have been about the balance between nuanced nudge style policies to get public modification of behaviour and more coercive mandated policies? here s my conclusion, is that the tools have to reflect the problem at hand. so the general principle is, any problem, any societal problem nudges and choice architecture can play a helpful role.
started to make better decisions is through better technology. so our favourite example of good choice architecture is gps and we have terrible senses of direction, and the fact that we have a gps in our pocket and in our cars means we get lost less often. so, yes, we are making must better decision geographically. but are we now better able to choose the best mortgage or figure out how much to save for retirement or exercise enough and eat less? no, no, no. your point about gps is very interesting because it seems to me we need to talk about trust. and when people step
that s not to say that nudges can t help. automatically enrolling people into a green energy source increases enrollments by 50 percentage points. telling people how much energy they re using compared to their neighbours reduces energy useage by two or three percent. that may seem like a small number but, as president obama used to like to say, better is good, meaning every two percent helps. so we are not going to get to where we need to go only with nudging and only with choice architecture, but it can help. but let s start by getting the prices right. so nudging and coercion in certain cases, and certainly
all they re allowed to do is what i would call tweak. they get to change the wording that will be used in some programme. they don t get to design the entire choice architecture. it s when you can do that, when you can build the gps system then you can really help people. we will have people watching the show around the world who will be fascinated what you re saying about behavioural science but are there really any universal characteristics to this? you do get hired as an adviser by different governments right around the world. but cultures and morays varies so widely across the world,
certainly in the uk the behavioural insight team never had any decision making power. and as far as what went on in march 2020, if there s anybody who didn t say something that looked stupid now during that month, let them raise her hand. the real problem with behavioural inside teams that i ve worked with around the world is they are usually given much too small a mandate in the sense that. all they re allowed to do is what i would call tweak. they get to change the wording that will be used in some programme. they don t get to design the entire choice architecture. it s when you can do that, when you can build the gps system then you can really help people.