The evolution of behavioral science in public policy

Behavioral science and nudging haven’t always been among the most popular policy- and management tools. How did we get there? What are the challenges? What is the natural next step?

Paper with Michael Muthukrishna now published in Behavioural Public Policy Journal
Link 👉 https://lnkd.in/eyJ7ce-5

We start the paper by giving an overview of the evolution of behavioral science in public policy, including research from Neoclassical theory, Behavioral economics, and Behavioral Science.

But applied behavioural science faces problems as a consequence of the practices, assumptions, and challenges that have been culturally inherited from other fields:
–      The generalizability problem
–      The diversity problem
–      The theory problem
–      The measurement problem

We propose that integrating applied behavioral science with cultural evolutionary theory offers a pathway for applied behavioural science to theoretically, empirically, and practically incorporate not just cognitive biases, social norms, and preferences, but the origins, variation, and dynamics of these.

The field of cultural evolution is diverse. We illustrate some cases of what we consider as cultural evolutionary behavioral science in areas such as:
👩‍⚕️ #publichealth,
🌿 #sustainabledevelopment
🤑 #corruption
📱 #online interaction
🏛 democratic institutions

However, research applying cultural evolutionary insight is in its infancy. Empirical work is rare and applied theoretical work is rarer still. Our paper thus provides an outlook into a field that may continue to form in the future. As we write in the paper:

“The ultimate test of our theories is the real world. If our theories do not work in the real world, they do not work at all.».
The same applies to cultural evolutionary theory.

The paper is open access in Behavioural Public Policy

(Source: Linded Robin Schimmelpfennig )