Nudge, Nudge, Wink, Wink: Nudging is Giving Reasons

Abstract

Nudges are, roughly, ways of tweaking the context in which agents choose in order to bring them to make choices that are in their own interests. Nudges are controversial: opponents argue that because they bypass our reasoning processes, they threaten our autonomy. Proponents respond that nudging, and therefore this bypassing, is inevitable and pervasive: if we do not nudge ourselves in our own interests, the same bypassing processes will tend to work to our detriment. In this paper, I argue that we should reject the premise common to opponents and proponents: that nudging bypasses our reasoning processes. Rather, well designed nudges present reasons to mechanisms designed to respond to reasons of just that kind. In this light, it is refusing to nudge that threatens our autonomy, by refusing to give us good reasons for action.

Roughly, a nudge is a way of influencing people to act that works by changing aspects of the “choice architecture” (Thaler & Sunstein 2008: 6)—the context in which agents choose—rather than by giving them explicit reasons, changing their incentives, or removing options. Nudges work by taking advantage of predictable dispositions of human beings to make decisions in ways that are influenced by (apparently) irrelevant features of the environment in which they find themselves. As a framework for public policy, nudges usually aim to solve widespread failures of individuals to act in their own best interests. There are many examples of such failures: for instance, very many people fail to save enough money for a comfortable (or even an adequate) retirement. They may do so despite judging that they ought to save more. There is evidence that they may be nudged to save much more. For example, changing the defaults on the superannuation policies they sign up to on taking up employment changes the savings rate, because people tend to accept the default (see Smith, Goldstein, & Johnson 2013 for review). Increase the default rate of savings, and people tend to save more. For those who are already in a job, savings rates can be increased in a different way. People are reluctant to see a drop in their take home salaries, and therefore reluctant to increase the percentage of their current pay sequestered in a retirement savings plan. But they are willing to sign up to a program that will see a higher proportion of future salary sequestered, if it is triggered by a raise in their pay, so that they don’t see a drop in their take home pay (Thaler & Benartzi 2004).

Nudges seem to have the potential to improve health and welfare by improving decision-making and behavior. But many people—philosophers, psychologists, economists, and ordinary people alike—have expressed a great deal of anxiety about nudges. Thaler and Sunstein call their policy framework libertarian paternalism. It is, they concede, paternalistic, because it manipulates people in their own best interests. Paternalism requires justification, when it is aimed at the behavior of competent adults. It is, however, libertarian because it doesn’t close off any options. If you want to reject the default retirement option, you have only to say so (you are provided with an opportunity to do so when you sign up to the plan). It doesn’t even burden any options (they claim): there are no penalties for choosing a different option. These facts have failed to reassure many critics. While they accept that nudges are not coercive, the critics allege that they are nevertheless manipulative. When something bypasses our reasoning, as nudges are supposed to, our autonomy as agents is threatened (see, e.g., Bovens 2009; Wilkinson 2013).

As John Doris (2015; 2018) has recently implied, the worry on which the critics fasten is much more general than they themselves seem to recognise. While there may be special concerns that arise from nudges, our behavior is pervasively and significantly influenced by seemingly irrelevant features of the environment, in ways that apparently bypass our reasoning processes and thereby threaten our autonomy. All that nudging adds to the picture is intentional bypassing. Indeed, that fact is central to Thaler and Sunstein’s reply to the manipulation concern: since such influences are pervasive, and therefore our capacity to reason is bypassed all the time, why worry about one more such influence? Since we are going to be nudged whether anyone nudges us or not, why not put nudges to good use and increase our welfare?

In this paper, I will argue that the concerns about bypassing of reasoning, and therefore about threats to our autonomy, are misplaced. Nudging doesn’t bypass our capacity to reason. When they are effective in changing behavior, manipulations of the context of choice typically (though perhaps not invariably) work by giving us reasons. These reasons may not be consciously recognized or responded to by agents, but they are reasons nevertheless, and it is in virtue of being reasons that they alter behavior. The mechanisms that respond to nudges are reasoning mechanisms, and in most cases, at least, nudges no more bypass reasoning than do philosophical arguments.[1]

I don’t have an account of the nature of reasoning in hand, but it may be useful to say a few words about what I think it takes for a mechanism to constitute a reasoning system. I take the link between ‘reasons’ and ‘reasoning’ seriously: a reasoning mechanism is one that has the proper function of responding appropriately to reasons. A reason, in turn, is a consideration in favour of (or against) a particular response or a particular doxastic state. To respond appropriately to a reason is to be better or worse disposed toward an action, or to raise or lower one’s credence, in a way that reflects the actual force of the reason. Thus, a reasoning mechanism is one that has the proper function of responding to reasons by appropriately changing dispositions or credence (for accounts of “reasons” and “reasoning” in this spirit, see Sturgeon 1994; Hieronymi 2005; and Way 2017). I will argue that the mechanisms addressed by nudges have this function. Moreover, when they are nudged (appropriately), they actually play this role.

1. Nudges and Bypassing

The debate over nudges and the way in which they allegedly bypass our reasoning is familiar (see Saghai 2013 for an overview). Rather than rehearse it here, I will illustrate the threat they represent to our autonomy by reference to John Doris’s recent work. In Talking to Ourselves, Doris (2015) describes a number of different manipulations or features of the (mainly social) environment in which agents find themselves that cause them to act in predictable ways, without them being conscious of the influence. Talking to Ourselves builds on the earlier, and very influential, Lack of Character (Doris 2002). The earlier book argued that variance in behavior owes more to features of situations than to agents’ characters, a fact that appears to threaten the Aristotelian program in ethics. The newer book is concerned not with character, but with what Doris calls ‘agency’. Nevertheless, the newer book develops themes from the older: The same kinds of features of context that better predicted behavior than did agents’ characters serve as what Doris calls defeaters of their agency. Agency, as understood by Doris, is manifested in actions that express people’s values. Doris argues that agency in this sense is defeated when the facts that cause cognition or behavior would not be recognized as reasons by the agent, were she to become aware of them (2015: 64–65). Such defeaters are common, and therefore agency is pervasively at risk.

Doris provides many examples of such defeaters in Talking to Ourselves. Consider, for illustration, ballot order effects (which serve as Doris’s major example in a Brain and Behavioral Sciences target article; Doris 2018). Candidates placed at the top of the ballot in elections enjoy a small but significant advantage over candidates lower down the order. In close elections, this advantage may be decisive. Why does this defeat agency? The order in which candidates are listed is typically alphabetical or (in recognition of the existence of the effect) drawn by lot. In neither case does the order in which candidates are listed tend to correlate with their quality. Since being at the top of the ballot is not a reason in favour of voting for the candidate, and would not be thought to be a reason were the agent to recognize its influence, being influenced by ballot order is being influenced in a way that bypasses agency. In Australia, political pundits take a particular ballot order effect into account in predicting the outcome of an election: the Donkey Vote. Australia has compulsory voting, and preferences must be expressed by numbering every candidate. Someone is a donkey voter when they simply number the candidates from 1 to n, from top to bottom. The donkey vote has been estimated to amount to 0.7% of total votes, which is sufficient to decide some electorates (Richardson 2010).

As the name suggests, we don’t think of donkey voting as especially rational. No doubt, donkey voting satisfies Doris’s test for being a defeater: donkey voters would not accept candidate order as a reason for voting as they do if they were asked. Some of them would probably report, accurately, that ballot order guided their voting without serving as a reason: they voted that way because it was easy, and they simply didn’t care about the outcome (ballot order effects are much stronger for low information voters; Pasek et al. 2014), or as a protest against compulsory voting. Some would probably confabulate a reason for voting as they did (no doubt, in Australian elections some mixture of these different factors play a role, with some people choosing candidates at the top of the ballot because order effects lead to them being evaluated more positively, and those lower down simply being numbered in the order they are listed because the voter doesn’t have a preference between them).

The ballot order effect illustrates how the processes that are engaged by nudges bypass genuine reasoning. When we prefer a candidate at the top of the ballot because she is listed first we are guided by a fact that is not a genuine reason. Since order does not correlate with quality, being guided by that fact is not being guided by reasons. A mechanism that is responsive to candidate order therefore doesn’t seem to be a reasoning mechanism: it is not a mechanism that has the proper function of responding appropriately to genuine considerations in favour of an action or adjusting a credence. Our reasoning is out of the picture.

On the view shared by Doris and both the opponents and proponents of nudging, our agency (in Doris’s sense of that word) is constantly being bypassed in this kind of way. Our agency is bypassed because our reflective processes, impressive as they are, have severely limited capacities, and we are largely at the mercy of non-rational—worse “deeply unintelligent” (2005: 50)—processes.[2] Thaler and Sunstein (2008: 37) make much the same claim, saying that nudges take advantage of the fact that we are “somewhat mindless, passive decision makers”. Nudges are addressed to parts of the mind that are non-rational, bypassing genuine reasoning. That’s why they’re threatening: autonomous agents govern themselves in the light of reasons (that’s why it’s not problematic to act paternalistically toward children: they don’t have the capacity to govern themselves appropriately, so we may permissibly substitute competent guidance by an adult). Because autonomy depends on the capacity to respond to reasons, bypassing our reasoning mechanisms entails subverting our autonomy.

2. The Dual Process View

A particular account of the nature of mental processes underlies both the worries about autonomy expressed by opponents of nudges and the optimism of their advocates. On this view (at least as it has traditionally been understood), intelligent information processing is the domain of what are often called type two processes.[3] Such processes are slow, effortful (both in phenomenology and in requiring depletable cognitive resources), at least typically conscious, and flexible. So-called type one processes, on the other hand, are fast, effortless, typically nonconscious, and inflexible. The properties characteristic of each kind of process are thought to entail that the former—which I will from now on refer to as reflective processes—alone are genuinely intelligent.[4]

What makes it the case that unreflective processes and the mechanisms that underlie them are unintelligent? We may point to two different properties. First, they are inflexible. Take, for example, our (alleged) hyperactive agency detection devices (Barrett 2004). Because agency is so important for us—because agents are crucial threats and opportunities for animals like us—we have mechanisms that are hypersensitive to cues indicative of its presence. We are therefore disposed to see agents, and faces, in the world at the (literal) drop of a hat. Even when we know the cue is not really indicative of agency, the mechanism continues to dispose us to respond as if it were. More generally, these unreflective mechanisms are encapsulated (Fodor 1983): that is, they are insensitive to information outside the narrow domain to which they are attuned. Reflective mechanisms, in contrast, are flexible with regard to input type: they may respond to any reason at all. The lack of flexibility of unreflective mechanisms is manifested in their firing in response to considerations that are not genuine reasons (like ballot order, or minimal cues for agency). A genuine reasoning mechanism is one that responds appropriately to the force of genuine reasons; for that, we require the domain-generality that is possessed by reflective processing alone.

The second property of unreflective mechanisms that ensures that they are not intelligent is their lack of fit to contemporary environments. Take the first example of irrational behavior mentioned at the beginning of this paper: undersaving for retirement. Our tendency to value the near term and (hyperbolically) discount future rewards may be explained by a mismatch between the environment to which we are evolutionarily adapted and our current environment. In the (so-called) environment of evolutionary adaptiveness—the Pleistocene environment in which our species emerged—it was typically adaptive to consume resources more or less as soon as they became available. Food couldn’t be preserved long, and access was unreliable; hence resources forgone might be permanently lost. Today, however, many of us live in environments in which food is cheap and abundant, and in which resources may be stored indefinitely. In this environment, our evolved disposition toward immediate consumption ill serves us. Again, contrast this mismatch with the properties of reflective mechanisms. Such mechanisms do not remain fixated on considerations that are no longer reasoning giving. Instead, they are capable of updating, as the genuine force of considerations changes. They alone seem to be genuine reasoning mechanisms, responding appropriately to the reason giving force of considerations in favour of actions or credences.

It is in the light of this dual process psychology that nudging is so controversial. Because nudged agents are brought to act by processes that bypass their reasoning mechanisms, their autonomy is undermined. When we nudge others, we do not manifest the respect that is due to a rational agent. We manipulate them instead (albeit for their own good). Advocates of nudges dissent from these worries only insofar as they claim that we can’t realistically hope for better from ourselves. Because reflective processes are an expensive and limited resource, we have to reconcile ourselves to being nudged. Nudging is inevitable (Thaler & Sunstein 2008). If our agency is not bypassed by nudgers, who ensures that our intuitive processes are triggered in ways that work in our interests, it will be bypassed in any case, and often in ways that harm us. This may occur because we are manipulated by others who do not have our interests at heart (such as those who manipulate us into buying products we don’t need or into eating foods that are unhealthy). If we are not intentionally manipulated, we will be nudged nevertheless, by chance features of our choice context. Unintentional nudges, too, will often produce behavior contrary to our interests. There may be more ways to go wrong than right in many domains, after all, so randomly distributed nudges will tend to be deleterious nudges. We will be nudged in any case; we might as well put nudging to our advantage.[5]

Proponents of nudges agree with their critics that nudges take advantage of “deeply unintelligent” mechanisms. For them, intelligence enters the picture at the only point it can: in the design of the nudges. They argue that given the pervasiveness of the kinds of processes that nudges target, and the limits of reflective processing, the best we can hope for is a kind of indirect autonomy, through intelligent design of the choice architecture.

I aim to show that both sides are wrong, and we can realistically hope for much more. We can intelligently and directly self-govern despite the limitations of conscious deliberation. In fact, that is what we already do, though very imperfectly. The proponents of nudges are right to think that behavior is inevitably governed by intuitive processes, with reflection playing only a limited role. But they, and their opponents, are wrong in thinking that this entails that it is governed by unintelligent processes. Intelligence should not be identified with reflective processes alone. They do not have a monopoly on it. Nor, for that matter, do intuitive processes have a monopoly on unintelligence. Both intelligence and unintelligence are distributed across information processing mechanisms.

3. Unreflective Intelligence

Reflective processing is required for the acquisition, and in many cases for the implementation, of the kinds of cognition we regard as paradigmatically rational. Formal and rule-based thought is the domain of such processes: mathematics, formal logic, statistical reasoning all depend on effortfully acquired and (often, though not always) effortfully implemented conscious use of explicitly representable symbols. These are ‘unnatural’ ways of thinking, in McCauley’s (2011) sense of natural, where to be natural is to be such as to be the expected outcome of cognitive maturation. Such rational thought is indeed the domain of reflective cognition.

Perhaps because we tend to identify reasoning with such ‘unnatural’ activities as science and mathematics, or because we tend to identify reasoning with conscious processes, we are likely to overlook the extent to which automatic, uncontrolled or unconscious processes are rational processes. Ironically, despite his opposition to what he calls reflectivism (which identifies agency with the products of conscious deliberation), and his explicit recognition that “the analytic/automatic distinction crosscuts the intelligent/unintelligent distinction” (2018: 2), Doris provides a neat illustration of how powerful is the intuition that conscious deliberation is the province of true reasoning. As mentioned above, Doris’s test for whether something constitutes a defeater of rational agency explicitly makes our intuitions about reasoning decisive: “when the causes of her cognition or behavior would not be recognized by the actor as reasons for that cognition or behavior, were she aware of these causes at the time of performance, these causes are defeaters” (2015: 64–65). In doing so, he makes the conscious judgments of naïve agents decisive. If the threat to agency consisted in a threat to our self-conception alone, then such a test might be appropriate. We might be incorrigible with regard to whether a particular process is consistent with our self-image. But the threat Doris aims to identify is supposed to have dimensions that escape such subjective judgments: the subjective test is supposed to index whether or not certain attitude-independent facts about human agency prevail.

For Doris, the ballot order effect and related dispositions are supposed to show not only that our conception of ourselves as governed by consciously accessible reasons is false, but also that our behavior is caused by facts that do not constitute reasons. If your vote was determined by the ballot order effect, it had causes “that are not plausibly taken as reasons for that behavior” (2018: 3). Hence (whatever your attitude to it), “your conduct was not appropriately responsive to reasons” (2018: 3). Tapping into the extent to which conduct is guided by agents’ genuine reasons (and not merely into whether they take it to be guided by reasons) is required, in turn, because for Doris agency is expressive of values: “behaviors are exercises of agency when they are expressions of the actor’s values” (2018: 7). At least in principle, an action might express an agent’s values despite her failure to recognize that it does (and vice-versa). Hence, it is only if the subjective test really indexes the facts about agency that it can serve Doris’s purposes. However, there is no particular reason to think that his is test is reliable. I would bet that the test would fail by its own standards: the considerations to which these processes are responsive, in producing the judgment, often wouldn’t be recognized by the agent as reasons, were she aware of them. Rather than rely on a subjective test, I will attempt to assess whether a mechanism manifests intelligence by careful probing of how it operates and the considerations to which it responds, not by consulting our intuitions. Such a direct assessment should be acceptable to Doris, since his subjective test is supposed to tap into the facts about agency.[6]

The argument for the claim that nudges are addressed to reasoning mechanisms will come in two parts. First, I will argue that attention to how nudges work shows that they have the function of making considerations salient to us, and disposing us to respond to them in a way that reflects their actual reason-giving force. That is, nudges work by targeting mechanisms that satisfy the conditions for being reasoning mechanisms. I will then turn to the (alleged) features of unreflective mechanisms that are supposed to entail that they are unintelligent: their inflexibility, and the mismatch between the environment for which they are designed and the contemporary world. These two facts together are taken to entail that intuitive processes are atavisms, which systematically generate dispositions to believe and behave which are at odds with the reasons that genuinely prevail. Inflexibility, I will argue, is not distinctive of, or limited to, unreflective processes, and mismatch, though genuine, is no reason to conclude that such processes are not reasoning mechanisms.

4. Nudge in Peace?

Most actual and proposed nudges function by presenting reasons to agents. They often present higher-order evidence, and higher-order evidence is evidence. It is, of course, rational to guide our decisions and our beliefs in the light of evidence. There is no reason to think, therefore, that most nudges bypasses reasoning. Should we conclude that nudging raises no special worries about autonomy or paternalism?

While well-designed nudges do not threaten autonomy, it is certainly possible to nudge in an autonomy threatening way. Perhaps, first, there are nudges that might promote welfare or pro-social behavior without presenting agents with reasons. Perhaps priming behavior might be an example: whether priming works by presenting evidence or by simply biasing processing mechanisms is difficult to assess. Second, whether or not such non-rational nudges exist, nudges that are addressed to reasoning mechanisms can be used in an autonomy-threatening manner. We can nudge people by designing the choice architecture so that they are presented with bad reasons: bad defaults, or inappropriate frames, for example. Such nudges don’t bypass reasoning, anymore than overt lies bypass reasoning. Rather, they subvert autonomy by giving bad reasons. They aren’t nudges, as classically conceived, insofar as such nudges are thought to bypass reasoning. But they subvert autonomy nevertheless.

In fact, that’s exactly how we should think of the features of choice architecture that proponents of nudges aim to change. Bad defaults or badly designed environments subvert autonomy by feeding bad reasons to us. The opponents of nudges are right to worry about threats to autonomy, but they find them in precisely the wrong places. It is when we fail to change these features that we subvert autonomy, by giving bad reasons to agents. The mechanisms addressed by nudges are reasoning mechanisms. They may be addressed well or badly: with good reasons or bad. When they are addressed with good reasons, they tend to promote autonomy, for exactly the same reasons why giving people good arguments promotes their autonomy. Conversely, when they are addressed with bad reasons, agents’ autonomy tends to be impaired.

5. Conclusion

In this paper, I have argued that the worry that nudges bypass reasoning, and therefore threaten agents’ autonomy or are unacceptably paternalistic, is misplaced. Rather than bypassing reasons, nudges are addressed to reasoning mechanisms. This is true whether the underlying mechanisms are sophisticated implicit learning mechanisms capable of integrating disparate information, or whether they are the kinds of mechanisms that underlie comparatively simple heuristics and biases. Good nudges aim to substitute genuine reasons for the badly designed cues which cause maladaptive behavior, considerations to which the mechanisms have the proper function of responding. The intuitive mechanisms to which nudges are addressed are reasoning mechanisms: they are disposed to respond as they do because they are attuned to features of the context of choice in just the way such mechanisms are supposed to be. Nudges may subvert autonomy, but that fact doesn’t distinguish them from the presentation of explicit reasons. When they subvert autonomy, they do so for the same reasons as bad arguments do.

Rather than there being a special problem with nudging, a reason to worry that nudging threatens autonomy, good nudges promote autonomy. Indeed, when our agency is undermined by badly designed features of the context of choice, we may have an obligation to nudge. We treat one another respectfully when we ensure that the context in which we choose is one that supports rational agency.

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Mark Alfano, audiences at Deakin University and the University of Sydney, and especially two reviewers for Ergo, for very helpful comments. I am also grateful to the Australian Research Council and the Wellcome Trust (grant WT104848/Z/14/Z) for their generous support of this research.

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Notes

1. In what follows, I will not be very careful in my use of words like “mechanism” (and “process”, which I will use more or less synonymously). Introducing greater precision in the terminology would require taking a stance on some controversial issues regarding mechanism individuation. It would also introduce some potentially distracting complications: I would bet that the “mechanisms” to which my loose use of the word refers are sometimes identical to a relatively discrete mental process, and sometimes supervene on a set of such processes. Some “mechanisms” may be cobbled together more or less on the fly. Because I don’t think anything important for the discussion here turns on this issue, I prefer to avoid it.

2. Here Doris is quoting Stanovich (2004). Stanovich qualifies the phrase in a way Doris does not: he says they are “in some sense deeply unintelligent” (2004: 39; emphasis added).

3. Kumar (2016) notes that recent work on implicit learning greatly complicates this picture. Some unreflective processes satisfy plausible criteria for being intelligent. The lessons he thinks follow for the permissibility of nudges are important, and I will return to his view in later sections.

4. The standard terminology divides human psychology into System One and System Two (Kahneman 2011), or Type One and Type Two. I avoid this terminology for two reasons. First, the ‘System’ language suggests that the distinction is exclusive and exhaustive, picking out natural kinds, whereas in fact there are a number of processes with some of the features of each type (see Carruthers 2012 for discussion). Second, and more importantly, it ignores the fact that reflective cognition is not dependent on a set of mechanisms distinct from unreflective. Rather, reflective cognition is realized by unreflective mechanisms interacting in various ways, with this interaction sustained by attention.

5. Kumar (2016) denies that nudging is inevitable, for two reasons. First, he claims that it is not always true that if we are not nudged intentionally, we will be nudged anyway, because nudging may introduce additional structural influences on choice. Second, he notes that the value of autonomy is not consequentialist, and there is therefore a normative difference between intentional and unintended manipulation. I think both claims are mistaken. Even if it is true that a nudge introduces novel structural constraints, it is plausibly true that in the absence of the nudge, the agent would be (just as significantly) guided by features of the choice architecture. These features might be of a different kind, but the inevitability of nudge claim does not depend on sameness of kind of influence. From the fact (if it is a fact) that the value of autonomy is non-consequentialist, it does not follow that threats to autonomy arise only or even more seriously from intentional manipulation. If autonomous agents govern themselves in the light of reasons, then agents whose reasoning is bypassed have their autonomy undermined. Being governed by others is one way to lack autonomy; another is failing to govern oneself.

6. I have expanded this discussion of Doris’s subjective test for agency at the urging of a reviewer for Ergo. As the reviewer points out, nudges will routinely fail Doris’s test, whether or not they are genuinely addressed to reasoning mechanisms. But since Doris’s test is not suitable for the task he sets himself, I don’t take that fact as a mark in their disfavour. Perhaps under pressure, Doris would prefer to identify agency with conscious expression of consciously held values, and retain the subjective test. He would need an account of why such expression is valuable, given that it does not underwrite control by reasons.

7. I am grateful to a reviewer for this journal for raising this issue, as well as bringing the paper by Ansher et al. to my attention.

8. Philosophers acquainted with the debate on the epistemic significance of disagreement will recognize this kind of experiment as parallel to the thought experiments that populate this literature. While some philosophers defend positions according to which the higher-order evidence represented by dissenting peers should not influence our credences (e.g., Kelly 2005), many other defend a conciliatory view, according to which we should give significant weight to such higher-order evidence (see Matheson 2015 for discussion and defence of the equal weight view). At best, then, the claim that it is irrational for the physicians to give weight to the opinions of other experts is controversial. The case presented is not a case of actual disagreement—physicians do not first form a view and then learn of a dissenting position—and it is not apparent whether those philosophers who defend a steadfast view would embrace the suggestion that higher-order evidence should not guide initial decision-making, so it may be that even they would not accept the irrationality claim.

9. It is plausible that this kind of framing works like other kinds: people treat the framing as an implicit recommendation. When we are nudged into thinking that obligatoriness is the normative dimension that is most significant here, we give it greater weight than when impermissibility is the dimension recommended for our attention.