Ep. 8 : Behavioural Economics – Have we reached peak nudge? Dectech Discusses

Welcome to Dectech’s podcast, Predicting People! In this eighth episode, Dectech’s founders, Dr. Henry Stott and Professor Nick Chater, discuss the Nudge Movement. Specifically, they explore how the rise of Nudging in Behavioural Science has led to many policy problems being framed in individual rather than systemic terms. This is known as adopting an i-frame rather than an s-frame. The approach puts the focus on an individual’s behaviour rather than the systems/rules within which they operate. 

Considering an influential paper that Nick himself wrote on the topic¹, they discuss whether individual-level solutions like nudges have overplayed their hand. The episode references interesting case studies, from the paper and Dectech’s own research, in areas like carbon emissions and retirement savings. Nick and Henry also address what this means for not just government policy, but the commercial world around it.

1. Chater, N. and Loewenstein, G. (2023) ‘The i-frame and the s-frame: How focusing on individual-level solutions has led behavioral public policy astray’, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 46. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X22002023.