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  • Blog
  • 14th Jun 2017

Lifting the lid on a live project: Bringing behavioural insights into NHS procurement

In his February 2016 independent report, Lord Carter announced the creation of a ‘model hospital’. The purpose of this imaginary hospital is to show ‘what good looks like’ by providing a set of metrics, best practice checklists and benchmarks for other hospitals to build into their procurement processes. This is…

  • Blog
  • 2nd May 2018

Behavioural Government: A major new initiative from BIT

Confident about your own decision-making? Take the test. 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…

  • Blog
  • 11th May 2018

In the frame: how policy choices are shaped by the way ideas are presented

This is the second blog in our Behavioural Government series, which explores how behavioural insights can be used to improve how government itself works. ‘Framing effects’ are when people’s views about something change depending on how it is described. Adopting different frames can greatly affect how people perceive a problem…

  • 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
  • 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
  • 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…

  • Blog
  • 22nd Jun 2018

Policy tribes: How allegiances can harm policy making

This is the seventh blog in our Behavioural Government series, which explores how behavioural insights can be used to improve how government itself works. Why might members of one group involved in making policy reject the arguments coming from another group, even if they are good ones? This kind of “inter-group…