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- Blog
- 26th Apr 2018
BBC One Documentary “The Truth About Obesity”, 8pm tonight: tune in
One windy day last September, I found myself standing in a barn near Milton Keynes, watching people eat pork pies. The reason? The BBC had asked us to run an experiment based on our research that people greatly under-report what they eat, and that the problem is getting worse over…
- 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
- 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…
- Blog
- 5th Nov 2018
Behavioural science and policy: where are we now and where are we going?
The use of behavioural science in policy has exploded since the publication of Nudge in 2008 and the creation of BIT in 2010. We were asked to reflect on the team’s work for a new issue of Behavioural Public Policy, and we decided to be open about some of the…