Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T16:42:58.822Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

NUDGE VERSUS BOOST: A DISTINCTION WITHOUT A NORMATIVE DIFFERENCE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 August 2018

Andrew Sims  and
Thomas Michael Müller
Andrew Sims
Affiliation:
Institut supérieur de philosophie, Place Cardinal Mercier 14, Ottignies-Louvain-la-Neuve 1348, Belgium. Email: andrew.sims@uclouvain.be. URL: https://uclouvain.academia.edu/AndrewSims.
Thomas Michael Müller
Affiliation:
Laboratoire d’Économie Dionysien (LED), Rue de la Liberté 2, 93526 Saint-Denis, France. Email: thomas.muller@univ-paris8.fr. URL: https://sites.google.com/site/up8led/members/internal-members/hpe/mueller-thomas.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract:

Behavioural public policy (BPP) has come under fire by critics who claim that it is illiberal. Some authors recently suggest that there is a type of BPP – boosting – that is not as vulnerable to this normative critique. Our paper challenges this claim: there's no non-circular way to draw the distinction between nudge and boost that would make the normative difference required to infer the permissibility of a policy intervention from its type-membership. We consider two strategies: paradigmatic examples and causal mechanisms. We conclude by sketching some suggestions about the right way to approach the normative issues.

Keywords

behavioural public policyautonomylibertarian paternalismnudgebounded rationality
Type
Article
Information
Economics & Philosophy , Volume 35 , Issue 2 , July 2019 , pp. 195 - 222
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Barton, A. and Grüne-Yanoff, T.. 2015. From libertarian paternalism to nudging – and beyond. Review of Philosophy and Psychology 6: 341–359.Google Scholar
Buss, S. 2016. Personal autonomy. In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Zalta, E. N.. <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/entries/personal-autonomy/>..>Google Scholar
DeMiguel, V., Garlappi, L. and Uppal, R.. 2007. Optimal versus naïve diversification: how inefficient is the 1/N portfolio strategy? Review of Financial Studies 22: 1915–1953.Google Scholar
Evans, J. S. and Stanovich, K. E.. 2013. Dual-process theories of higher cognition: advancing the debate. Perspectives on Psychological Science 8: 223–241.Google Scholar
Felsen, G. and Reiner, P. B.. 2015. What can neuroscience contribute to the debate over nudging? Review of Philosophy and Psychology 6: 469–479.Google Scholar
Gigerenzer, G., Gaissmaier, W., Kurz-Milcke, E., Schwartz, L. M. and Woloshin, S.. 2008. Helping doctors and patients make sense of health statistics. Psychological Science in the Public Interest 8: 53–96.Google Scholar
Gigerenzer, G. and Hoffrage, U.. 1995. How to improve Bayesian reasoning without instruction: frequency formats. Psychological Review 102: 684–704.Google Scholar
Gigerenzer, G., Todd, P. M. and the ABC Research Group. 1999. Simple Heuristics That Make Us Smart. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Gold, N. 2013. Team reasoning, framing, and self-control: an Aristotelian account. In Addiction and Self-Control: Perspectives from Philosophy, Psychology, and Neuroscience, ed. Levy, N., 48–66. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Grüne-Yanoff, T. 2012. Old wine in new casks: libertarian paternalism still violates liberal principles. Social Choice and Welfare 38: 635–645.Google Scholar
Grüne-Yanoff, T. 2016. Why behavioural policy needs mechanistic evidence. Economics and Philosophy 32: 463–483.Google Scholar
Grüne-Yanoff, T. and Hertwig, R.. 2016. Nudge versus boost: how coherent are policy and theory? Minds and Machines 26: 149–183.Google Scholar
Hershfield, H. E., Goldstein, D. G., Sharpe, W. F., Fox, J., Yeykelis, L., Carstensen, L. L. and Bailenson, J. N.. 2011. Increasing saving behaviours through age-progressed renderings of the future self. Journal of Marketing Research 48: S23–S37.Google Scholar
Hertwig, R. and Grune-Yanoff, T.. 2017. Nudging and boosting: steering or empowering good decisions. Perspectives on Psychological Science 12: 973–986.Google Scholar
Jenny, M. A., Pachur, T., Williams, S. L., Becker, E. and Margraf, J.. 2013. Simple rules for detecting depression. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition 2: 149–157.Google Scholar
Kahneman, D. 2011. Thinking, Fast and Slow. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.Google Scholar
Kahneman, D. and Tversky, A.. 1996. On the reality of cognitive illusions. Psychological Review 103: 582–591.Google Scholar
Pylyshyn, Z. W. 1984. Computation and Cognition: Towards a Foundation for Cognitive Science. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Santelli, J., Ott, M. A., Lyon, M., Rogers, J., Summers, D. and Schleifer, R.. 2006. Abstinence and abstinence-only education: a review of U.S. policies and programs. Journal of Adolescent Health 38: 72–81.Google Scholar
Sedlmeier, P. and Gigerenzer, G.. 2001. Teaching Bayesian reasoning in less than two hours. Journal of Experimental Psychology 130: 380–400.Google Scholar
Simon, H. A. 1956. Rational choice and the structure of the environment. Psychological Review 63: 129–138.Google Scholar
Stoneburner, R. L. and Low-Beer, D.. 2004. Population-level HIV declines and behavioural risk avoidance in Uganda. Science 304: 714–718.Google Scholar
Sunstein, C. R. 2015. Nudges, navigability, and abstraction: a reply to critics. Review of Philosophy and Psychology 6: 511–529.Google Scholar
Thaler, R. H. and Benartzi, S.. 2004. Save More Tomorrow™: using behavioural economics to increase employee saving. Journal of Political Economy 112: S164–S187.Google Scholar
Thaler, R. H. and Sunstein, C. R.. 2008. Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Tversky, A. and Kahneman, D.. 1974. Judgment under uncertainty: heuristics and biases. Science 185: 1124–1131.Google Scholar
Underhill, K., Montgomery, P. and Operario, D.. 2007. Sexual abstinence only programmes to prevent HIV infection in high income countries: systematic review. British Medical Journal 335: 248.Google Scholar
Wilkerson, A. 2013. I want to hold your hand: abstinence curricula, bioethics, and the silencing of desire. Journal of Medical Humanities 34: 101–108.Google Scholar