Behavioral Insights Team

The Behavioral Insights Team (BIT) (a.k.a. The Nudge Unit) is a United Kingdom-based analytics group that began as a government intelligence unit in 2010, but branched out around the world, calling itself a “global social purpose company” that tests and implements “simple yet powerful changes.”¹⁾ BIT works with dozens of banks and governments as well as many media and education groups all over the world.

• BIT Blog
• BIT Podcasts
• BIT Publications
• BIT Tools

Among BITs affialates are

• Cass Sunstein - Harvard University law professor and co-author of the book Nudge.
• Daniel Goldstein - principle research at Microsoft Research.
• Elizabeth Linos - Assistant professor of public policy at UC Berkeley
• Gus O'Donnell - Member of the House of Lords and former head of the UK's Civil Service
• Richard Thaler - Professor of behavioral science and economics at the Chicago Booth School of Business and co-author of the book Nudge.
• An assortment of professors from the world's best known universities.

One of the longstanding projects of the BIT is the Gender & Behavioral Insights (GABI) research program working to improve gender equality.

• Using social norms to increase tax payments.
• Increasing fine payments through text messages.

• Jan 18, 2022 - Ethical concerns arising from the Government’s use of covert psychological ‘nudges’²⁾

PANDA - July 12, 2022 by Gary Sidley, first published on Coronababble

Who is responsible for inflicting unethical behavioural-science ‘nudges’ on the British people?

The state’s strategic deployment of fear, shame and peer pressure – or ‘affect, ‘ego’ and ‘norms’ in the language of behavioural science – throughout the covid-19 pandemic, as a means of ‘nudging’ people’s compliance with restrictions and the vaccine rollout has been widely criticised. Ethical concerns about the Government’s use of these psychological techniques in their messaging campaign arise from several aspects of this form of influence: the wilful infliction of emotional distress on the general population as a means of increasing conformity; the failure to seek informed consent from those targeted; the contentious and non-evidenced public health policies which these strategies helped to implement; and the fact that ‘nudges’ commonly exert their influence below a person’s level of consciousness, thereby fueling the accusation that they are manipulative. But who is primarily responsible for inflicting these morally dubious, and often damaging, behavioural-science ‘nudges’ on British citizens?

There are four groups of stakeholders who could feasibly be responsible for these egregious actions:

  British Psychological Society (BPS)
  Behavioural Insights Team (BIT)
  Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (SPI-B)
  Elected politicians and their civil servants

To date, all four seem to be shirking any responsibility. Indeed, when probed, the responses of these collectives resemble a duplicitous hybrid of a police officer’s, ‘Move along, nothing to see here’, and the reggae musician Shaggy denying his misdemeanours with the mantra, ‘It wasn’t me’.

Let’s consider, in turn, each group of actors who might be responsible. ³⁾