The MIT Press Essential Knowledge series / Behavioral Insights

The behavioral insights approach is perhaps best understood as a lens through which we see policies, programs, and services and that enables us to introduce new options, enhance existing ones, and reassess current activity.
The new options offered by behavioral insights have tended to attract the most attention. As the case of food consumption shows, the evidence may have surprising implications that cut against our assumptions and open up new ideas. As discussed later, many of these ideas may deal with the way that choices are structured what has been called choice architecture. For example, many people display a compromise effect, whereby they use a mental shortcut of go for the middle option. Awareness of this compromise effect may reveal new approaches. Studies have shown that soft-drink consumption can be reduced by removing the largest cup size on offer and adding a smaller one at the bottom of the scale, since people often choose the middle option, regardless of its size. And thinking more carefully about the order in which options are presented offers another new opportunity. For example, sales of a sugared soft drink declined when it was moved from first to third in the list of options in electronic touchscreen kiosks in 622 McDonald s restaurants.
However, the behavioral insights approach does not just offer new tools. Using it as a lens can also, for example, reveal how existing actions may be creating unintended and undesirable behaviors; it could highlight the biases that affect policymakers themselves; it could show the flawed assumptions about behavior in a proposed rule and show how it can be changed; or it could show that the best solution may not be attempting to change behavior at all, but rather redesigning services around what is already occurring.
This point is worth stressing because it counters some misperceptions about the true scope and value of behavioral insights. One is that the behavioral insights approach is just an alternative

Series Foreword vii
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xiii
1 Introducing Behavioral Insights 1
2 The History and Thought behind Behavioral
Insights 25
3 Examples of Behavioral Insights in Practice 71
4 Applying Behavioral Insights 81
5 Criticisms, Considerations, and Limitations 123
6 The Future of Behavioral Insights 167
Glossary 197
Notes 203
Further Reading 219
Index 221

Michael Hallsworth, PhD, is Managing Director of the Behavioral Insights Team (BIT) North America. He has held positions at Columbia University and Imperial College London.

Elspeth Kirkman founded BIT's North American office before returning to the UK to run the organization's social policy portfolio out of London. She has taught behavioral insights courses at Harvard and Warwick Universities and is a Visiting Senior Research Fellow at King's College London.

"A brilliant book, packed with wisdom and insights, and a ton of fun to boot. The best one-stop shop, if you're interested in behavioral science, and in how to improve the world."
 
Cass R. Sunstein, Robert Walmsley University Professor, and coauthor of Nudge

"A pragmatic and engaging overview." LSE Review of Books