Dear Behavioural Science - What went wrong?!

Dear Behavioural Science,

We met when I was just twenty-one. Do you remember? Me, fresh out of university and starry-eyed, and you, a fledging field of applied research. I still have my signed copy of Nudge (‘Patrick - Nudge for good’). We were convincing people to buy cat food together. The Cabinet Office had barely even heard of you.

Now look where you are. You have your own units in governments around the world. The UN, the WHO and the WEF all adore you. Big businesses are setting up their own behavioural science departments. It seems everyone loves you.

I’m happy for you, really.

But me, well, I'm just not sure if I feel the same anymore. I’m sorry. It’s not me, it’s you. You’ve changed, my friend, you’ve changed.

I remember when we used to puncture the orthodox together. You were an iconoclast. ‘Decision making is not all Homo Economicus’ we’d say, to gasps. ‘Customers don’t care about brand positioning, differentiation, or loyalty, they just buy whatever’s easiest.’ Applause.

Now you are the orthodox. Woe betides anyone who says, ‘Hang on a minute, maybe people can be rational.’ You cry about ‘misinformation’ and you censor and ostracise dissenting voices. You even have a ‘global association’ to decide who’s allowed to be an applied behavioural scientist or not. What happened? You used to be cool.

You used to be so humble too. ‘We’re all irrational,’ you used to say. Now you say, ‘Everyone is irrational but me.’ You think you know what’s best for everyone, and dissenters are just ‘science-denying conspiracy theorists’. You attack ‘misinformation’ without a shred of humility, or self-reflection - even though your most esteemed acolytes seem to get busted for data fraud every other week.

What happened to your ethics? I remember whole lectures warning us about John Money and Little Albert and Harry Harlow, about the dangers of ‘following the science’ without moral principle. Now you have no compunction about terrorising the world into compliance, or shutting people out of society if they don’t have the right pass.

Behavioural Science, there’s more to people than behaviour and science. Viewing us that way is dehumanising. You’re being used to make people eat insects, for god’s sake! I’m worried for you, for where you’re heading. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that governments were using you to encourage uptake of euthanasia ('MAiD', they call it in Canada, using your principle of visual metaphor) or ‘boil-in-the-bag’ funerals. There is a dark, inhuman ethos metastasising in society and you’re totally aligned with it.

When we first met, you believed in game theory, and the wisdom crowds. You thought that people are nuanced and form complex networks, and if you leave them to get on with it, things will generally turn out alright. Now you think that people are stupid and irrational and can’t live with your nudging.

I still enjoy your company, Behavioural Science. We do a lot of cool stuff together; we’ve helped a lot of businesses and political campaigns, and we still will. I’m only writing you this letter because I’m so fond of you. But until you get your humility back, please – let’s just be friends.

I co-wrote a book about all this, called Free Your Mind: The new world of manipulation and how to resist it. You ought to read it.

Yours,

Patrick