Human beings are greatly influenced by the actual or apparent behavior of others. Consider just a few examples:
1. Federal judges on three-judge panels are much affected by the votes of their colleagues. Democratic appointees, sitting with two Republican appointees, show pretty conservative voting patterns. Republican appointees, sitting with two Democratic appointees, show pretty liberal voting patterns. Clinton appointees turn out to look a lot like Bush appointees on DRR panels. And in some areas of law, the political party of the president who appointed the two other judges on the panel is a better predictor of a judge's vote than the political party of the president who appointed that very judge (!).
2. Teenage girls who see that other teenagers are having children are far more likely to become pregnant themselves.
3. Ethnic identification is contagious. When relevant people start to identify in ethnic terms -- in clothing choices, rituals, attitudes -- "ethnification" can spread rapidly throughout a locality or a society.
4. Broadcasters have been found to mimic each other, producing otherwise inexplicable fads in radio and television.
These social nudges are best explained in two ways. First, the behavior of others conveys information about what is true or right or best. Often people lack entirely reliable information, and they base their choices on what others say or do. Second, the behavior of others imposes reputational pressure. If you want to keep people's good opinion, you might want to do what they do.
The four examples given above reflect both sets of influences. Reputational pressures are probably of special importance for (3). (For more detail, see Nudge.)
Social nudges can easily be enlisted by libertarian paternalists, who seek to alter behavior without imposing mandates of any kind. Having failed in various efforts to reduce littering on its highways, Texas adopted an inventive "Don't Mess With Texas" program, in which influential people, including Willie Nelson and players for the Dallas Cowboys, sent strong signals about appropriate behavior. The program has had large effects in reducing litter.
Or consider an intriguing recent experiment designed decrease energy use. In San Marcos, California, people were simply informed about whether they were above-average or below-average users of energy. In the following weeks, the above-average users significantly reduced their use of energy.
The less good news is that the below-average users actually increased their energy use. But a small tweak eliminated this effect. When they were given a happy emotikon, signalling social approval, the below-average users stayed well below average.
Of course there is reason to worry about government efforts in this vein. We could imagine programs that would violate neutrality requirements; consider efforts to promote certain religious practices or political convictions. And here as elsewhere, hard-line libertarians might just want government to stay out. But when government has a legitimate end, and wants to avoid a mandate, social nudges can serve as an immensely effective tool.
Have you corrected for the fact that the underlying social conditions may be making pregnancy more likely for all those girls?
(Your thesis seems entirely reasonable. It's just that I can easily think of a simpler explanation.)
Why might this not include affirmative action?
The best way to improve the power of the nudge is to manage the relevant information. Propaganda is another term for this.
Comments greatly appreciated...if you will.
This is linked in the Wikipedia article and casts some doubt on that:
http://www.oldkewgardens.com/ss-nytimes-3.html
That's why even Republican appointees to the Supreme Court are often liberal, like Harry Blackmun, John Paul Stevens, and David Souter (and Sandra Day O'Connor in her last years on the Supreme Court). The "social nudge" factor helps reinforce judges' liberalism over time (along with the lopsided advantage liberal causes have in quality of representation and number of amicus briefs, as I have noted in comments to earlier blog posts).
Lawyers are much more liberal than ordinary people. They voted overwhelmingly for Clinton in 1992, when he beat the elder Bush by only 5 or 6 percent among the general public, according to the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy. (Indeed, Clinton apparently bested Bush by a margin of 2-to-1 among lawyers).
And voting patterns understate their judicial liberalism, since a rich liberal may vote Republican to keep his taxes low.
This point is made in Russell G. Pearce, THE LEGAL PROFESSION AS A BLUE STATE: REFLECTIONS ON PUBLIC PHILOSOPHY, JURISPRUDENCE, AND LEGAL ETHICS, 75 Fordham L. Rev. 1339, 1339-1340 &fn. 1-3 (2006) (citing, e.g., Hans Bader, "Why Stop With Non-Judges," Op-Ed, Townhall.com, July 18, 2005, available at http://cei.org/gencon/019,04690.cfm ).
I am what passes for a conservative lawyer, even though I don't attend church, don't have a problem in principle with gay marriage (although in practice, I worry about some slippery slope arguments that might result from it), and don't want to restrict abortion in the first trimester. But even I am not really (socially) conservative.
Truly conservative lawyers and judges are an endangered species.
Prof. Sunstein - Is there any fear that social nudges will encourage (incentivize) individuals to over-rely upon government default positions?
A coalition of environmental activists and the Tallow Candlemakers Union has nominated Dr. Snerd for an Ig Nobel Prize for this groundbreaking research.
Angels and ministers of grace defend us. The heat death of the universe is surely impending.
Umm... /snark
It's blog commentary, not a term paper. I'm guessing most of us are reading (and commenting) from work. It's a little much to assume that we should compose first drafts, edit and re-edit, until our final output looks like something other than "disorganized".
The precise technical term is that we are sheeple.
Do you know why the lead cow has a bell?
If I feel the need to digress mid-sentence--for instance, to call out poseurs prescribing not even accepted usage (as this arises from consensus and is published in numerous style guides) but personal preferences regarding an entire class of punctuation with perfectly acceptable functions--I'll damn well do so.
As writers, so long as we're careful to remember our readers' impressions for the sake of clarity and argumentative rigor, I think we're entitled to whatever license we choose to take in writing.
However, the term 'libertarian paternalism' is both unattractive and somewhat misleading. Can't it be changed to 'non-coercive paternalism?'
Sure, if enough shareholders disagree they can vote me out as President or CEO. But does that mean I'm _obliged_ not to look more than six months into the future?
Listening to Sean Hannity, I heard him refer to Obama's children as "crumbcrunchers." Not knowing what to think of this word, I feared it might be coded racist language. I looked it up.
It's not race-based at all. It's apparently a word for 'little kids' that gets used heavily by pundits and politicos in and around DC. That's an inexplicable fad for yah!
Most of my linguistic fads come from 19th century theology, so I'm a bit behind the times.
Teenagers can be this way about anything adults propose, but you also have to look at group membership among adults. I'm sure there are plenty of smokers who know it's bad and only keep at it because they want to annoy the kind of people who like to lecture smokers. And I know I'll never buy a Prius just because of the kind of people who were the early adopters.
I got nailed once on garbage day for putting my cardboard and plastic in the same red bin. One 'warning ticket' which ordered me to come BUY a second red bin. Screw them, I have never sorted since, it all goes in black plastic bags.
Same thing happened when they mailed me a reminder that we have 'voluntary' odd/even watering days. We live on the great lakes in an area which has lost half its population, there are no water issues. I now water when I care to, more than I care to.
If the government busybodies want you to do one thing, do another.
1) I like your social analysis as to how people make decisions.
2) What you are proposing sounds a lot more like "liberal paternalism" than "libertarian paternalism". At least, the paternal aspect is clear, but the libertarian aspect is eluding me.
Can you write something explaining what is libertarian about any of this?
That aside, the discussion of how people make decisions is a worthwhile one. It's just that it's getting buried by your insistence on trying to invoke libertarianism.
I wish I could say I was shocked at the suggestion that there exist "soft-line libertarians" who are cool with government managing (or nudging) people.
But increasingly the libertarian movement seems to consist of rich liberals who don't want to pay high taxes. Big-government libertarianism has arrived. Given the twists and turns of what the word has meant over the last century, I suppose that's not a total surprise.