When we present our work or appear on panels, we’re often asked the same question: “But doesn’t government itself suffer from cognitive biases?”
It’s an issue close to our hearts, given our origins in government. We first highlighted it in the MINDSPACE report in 2010 but, in the eight years since, the issue has received only a small amount of attention from academics, think tanks, and practitioners.
We hope to change that. Working with the Institute for Government to examine how cognitive biases affect government policy making – with a particular focus on how these biases make it more likely that policies do not get wide enough input or challenge – we published the Behavioural Government report in 2018, alongside a series of blog posts.
Blog series
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Behavioural Government: A major new initiative from BIT
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In the frame: how policy choices are shaped by the way ideas are presented
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How confirmation bias stops us solving problems
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Are you well-calibrated? Results from a survey of 1,154 BIT readers
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What should government pay attention to?
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Policy tribes: How allegiances can harm policy making
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The illusion of similarity
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The problem with groups
