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Some ideas about how to fix human behaviour rest on pretty shaky science
The field of behavioural economics has shaped policies we encounter every day, but the science behind it is crumbling.
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Behavioural economics is at the centre of the so-called replication crisis.
PHOTO: EPA-EFE
Leif Weatherby
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It is hard to walk a block or finish a morning coffee without encountering some system that attempts to tell you what to read, what to buy, how to lose weight or prevent dementia or tweak your decisions in other specific ways. My watch constantly buzzes with “relax reminders”. The number of calories appears next to every menu item at fast-food restaurants.
These experiences are the result of a concerted scientific effort to understand and adjust human behaviour – “nudges”, as the legal scholar Cass Sunstein and the economist Richard Thaler call them, that push us gently to make preferred choices.
