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Blog 18th May 2018

A changing lens: fixed-odds betting machines, civil society and UKRI

We often say that behavioural science can be used for good or bad, just like any form of knowledge. One of the troubling applications – though brilliant in its own way – can be to nudge people to gamble too much. This week saw the decision to dramatically curtain the…

Blog 21st May 2018

Are you well-calibrated? Results from a survey of 1,154 BIT readers

We recently invited blog readers to test whether their decision-making was affected by cognitive bias - and more than 1,000 of you took us up on the offer. Our survey showed people ten statements, then asked: whether they thought each statement was true or false, and how confident they were that…

Blog 25th May 2018

How confirmation bias stops us solving problems

Even when people do get exposed to challenging information, confirmation bias can cause them to reject it and, perversely, become even more certain that their own beliefs are correct

Blog 30th May 2018

80% of success in life? Showing up

As the saying goes, 80% of success is showing up*. And the same is true in public services. Every day, millions of people across the globe don’t show up for hospital appointments, school, job fairs, and so on. It might be as little as a few minutes or hours out…

Blog 1st Jun 2018

What should government pay attention to?

This is the fourth blog in our Behavioural Government series, which explores how behavioural insights can be used to improve how government itself works. You might say - whatever the public cares about. The fact that people care about an issue is of course important in a democracy - no…

Blog 8th Jun 2018

The problem with groups

This is the fifth blog in our Behavioural Government series, which explores how behavioural insights can be used to improve how government itself works. Thomas Hobbes, in one of the first modern treatises on government, recognised that, in groups, advisers are ‘not moved by their own sense, but by the…

Blog 11th Jun 2018

BX2018: Helping people save on their energy

This blog post is the third in a series that we are writing in the lead up to the 2018 Behavioural Exchange in Sydney. It outlines our recent work in energy markets, which is the focus of one of the breakout sessions. As energy has been an area that we’ve…

Blog 14th Jun 2018

The illusion of similarity

This is the sixth blog in our Behavioural Government series, which explores how behavioural insights can be used to improve how government itself works. The “illusion of similarity” is where policy makers have inaccurate assumptions about what people think or know, and inaccurate predictions about how people will act. This can…

Blog 18th Jun 2018

Keeping your eye on the ball: a defense of self-control

We’re all excited to watch England kick off their World Cup campaign this evening against Tunisia. Like workplaces around the country, we will be getting together with a few drinks to celebrate England’s resurgence (...or perhaps distract us from something more underwhelming). Either way, we should all spare a thought…

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