The way behavioural science and market research operates really shocks me sometimes. I’m all for better understanding ourselves so we can respond sensibly – whatever sensibly means – but categorising and manipulating people into buying stuff is pretty weird. Even weirder when people say it’s perfectly ethical because it is still their choice… how vigilant do individuals have to be for that to be true?
On a good day I’m making choices, because I’ve read all the things and feel like the guy in ‘they live’ (except the aliens driving the distraction and consumerism are the concepts of profit and economic growth, and the sunglasses are behavioural science books). But when I’m tired, I can’t always fight the marketing comms and behavioural science informed websites, displays in shops, or adverts on the socials. I hear myself say ‘I know you’re making me feel like this product is scarce and the deal will end so I shouldn’t wait until tomorrow, I know it – and yet, here I am, knowing I don’t need this thing and I should sleep on it, but because I’m tired and it’s shiny and I want it, you’ve won. Take my money.’
I feel uneasy that people feel justified manipulating others for the sake of profit. And even though the intent behind it is better, I also feel discomfort around government using behavioural science to change people’s behaviour to what a policymaker or civil servant think is correct. Though, comically, interventions rarely work how they’re anticipated to. It’s almost like we should co-produce interventions. Sigh.
Let’s take food as an example to work with – not one of my policy areas, but something I struggle with when my morale is low or I’m just tired (which happens a lot being ND with PTSD and chips on both shoulders trying to function in middle-class NT office environments). We’re brainwashed into thinking sugar is a treat, and it’s literally killing us and making us miserable – type 2 diabetes is rife, and our poor overall health as a nation puts a lot of strain on public health services. On the one hand, government and health services are trying to address this e.g. raising taxes/pricing of these products, and campaigns or interventions to encourage people to exercise more and have a better diet. On the other hand, sweets, and advertising for sweets, are everywhere – relentlessly.
Why do we think we’re ‘choosing’ to eat it? We’re not really, we’re just responding to the messaging we get all time to do so from big corp. So, why is the idea of government taking away so-called choices so bad, especially if it’s for our own good? Choices are often automatic in response to stimuli – we are not in control unless we pour energy into deliberating every little thing, so it’s less about whether we do or don’t take choices away and more about what we push ourselves towards.
Who gets to decide what the correct behaviour is, and what behaviour we push everyone towards? That’s the real question. And how do we decide the extent to which it’s okay, in what circumstances, to manipulate the masses with/out consent? I mean, this big push towards EV doesn’t address our car-centric, individualistic, convenience-driven culture – we’re just patching up the problem with a lesser evil and that direction of travel has been decided for us. Why?
YOU CANNOT MAKE ME NOT DRIVE, HOW DARE YOU TAKE AWAY MY CHOICE!! I WANT ABSOLUTE CONVENIENCE UNTIL THE MOMENT OF SOCIETAL COLLAPSE AND DEVASTATING RESOURCE WARS!!!
👆 actual quote – white male, 43, local pub, registered to vote.
I’m just jumping into my first term of an MSc in Sustainability and Behaviour Change at Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT). I’ll see how I go, but I reckon my thesis will – one way or another – be a public dialogue on the consensual and non-consensual use of behavioural science in public and private sectors, in context with climate change. What I’ve learned in recent dialogues I’ve led on, is that yes, people will ‘choose’ the convenient thing, but they don’t always want the choice to be there because they know it’s not good for them and they don’t really want it. When talking about the use of AI across society and the future of flight technology, publics told me they want fairness, they want profits and services to benefit wider society and they don’t want to use resources frivolously. They just can’t stop taking the easy path if it’s put in-front of them. So, I want to know, with more information and space to reflect and deliberate, would publics be open to not just having policymakers avoid putting more unnecessary conveniences on the table, but manipulating them to do what’s good for them and the planet? In what context, and with what parameters? What are the red lines, and how do we feel about the trade-offs? Why? What even are the trade-offs – a downside isn’t loss of choice if we don’t really choose. This all needs unpicking.
The trouble is, some of these ‘conveniences’ are arguably ‘necessities’ in a lifestyle with ever-increasing pressure to cram more into your day and produce more and more outputs for lower and lower reward as the cost of living crisis continues. More efficiency just drives higher expectations, and if we allow it, it won’t end until society collapses in on itself. AI won’t enable us to slow down, get more rest and do deeper thinking – it will just set an even higher level of expected output. We can’t wait for a bus or a new type of building material to set, because we’ll lose time and therefore profits and we can’t afford it. And it seems we’ll head in this direction until the changing climate becomes so severe that culture will be forced to change, because we can’t get online or get to work or it’s too hot to work or we haven’t eaten today or, eventually, we’ve been robbed for resource.
I know a lot of researchers and engagement practitioners who actively want to improve society, but are on an endless cycle of pushing themselves and their staff to be more and more productive, when we’re already flat out. I need more room to think about how to engage people in deliberation when they’re not middle class and well educated – within working hours, not 8pm on a Saturday night when I should be living a life outside of work. Traditional delib does okay at making things digestible, but in my heart of hearts I know not everyone is keeping up in those processes, and I know that communicating in a way that reflects UK office culture doesn’t suit everyone. When I shifted from gigging and tech-ing gigs, to working in research, I had to work very hard to communicate in ways that suited those around me – I used to be allowed to shout, and people accepted it as passion, not aggression. I have learned to toe the line and express big emotions in palatable ways, and to be gentle(r) when it comes to challenging the status quo on design of processes with publics and the management of staff time. Ultimately, I’ve put a lot of extra hours in to give participants better research and engagement experiences and avoid over-working my team, while also meeting the demands of the system I’m operating in. Something’s got to give, and in order for it not to be corner-cutting on quality, missing deadlines or reducing profitability, it has often been my own wellbeing.
I’ve known a lot of people over the years that feel no matter how much overtime they do or efficiencies they find, it’s never enough. And we’ll always be pushed harder – either because realistic resource planning isn’t happening (public and charity sectors), or because it is but overtime in the name of profit is the norm (private sector). I am just not up for forcing myself or manipulating colleagues into ways of being that damage our wellbeing in the name of productivity. It’ll all end one way or another anyway, because endless growth is not possible with finite resource. So I’m just gonna stop now.
In a world of amazon deliveries and incredible immediate entertainment, we’ve come to expect perfection. I’ve fallen in love with CAT as an environment for further education – things feel bodged and imperfect, with examples of failed projects scattered about the site as well as more successful, and a few utterly brilliant, ones. At the open day, I wasn’t being sold to with their best foot forward. They like mistakes here, we point at them, we learn from them – and it felt good, like a relief from all this false perfection and avoidance of owning and exploring blunders, and just accepting our own humanity.
I wonder if we can we learn to love imperfection and each-other more than all this stuff, and stop demanding so much from life because an ad-man sold us a silly dream. I wonder what I’ll think about all of this in a weeks’ time, a years’ time, and how I’ll end up doing my thesis study. For now, I’m glad to be in a place of learning and reflection and to have made friends with the campus cat.
