Records Show Obama Hired Behavioral Experts to Expand Use of Govt. Programs

Records Show Obama Hired Behavioral Experts to Expand Use of Govt. Programs - Judicial Watch

http://www.judicialwatch.org/the-blog/records-show-obama-hired-behavioral-experts-expand-use-govt-programs/

The Obama administration quietly hired 20 social and behavioral research experts to help expand the use of government programs at dozens of agencies by, among other things, simplifying federal forms, according to records obtained by Judicial Watch. The controversial group of experts is collectively known as the Social and Behavioral Sciences Team (SBST) and it functions under the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP).

In 2015 Obama signed an executive order directing federal agencies to use behavioral science to sell their programs to the public, the records obtained by Judicial Watch reveal. By then the government had contracted “20 leading social and behavioral research experts” that at that point had already been involved in “more than 75 agency collaborations,” the records state. A memo sent from SBST chair Maya Shankar, a neuroscientist, to OSTP Director John Holdren offers agencies guidance and information about available government support for using behavioral insights to improve federal forms. Sent electronically, the memo is titled “Behavioral Science Insights and Federal Forms.”

The records, obtained from the OSTP under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), also include a delivery by Holdren in which he insists that the social and behavioral sciences “are real science, with immensely valuable practical applications—the views of a few members of Congress to the contrary notwithstanding—and that these sciences abundantly warrant continuing support in the Federal science and technology budget.” Holdren, a Stanford and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate is a peculiar character who worked as an environmental professor at Harvard and the University of California Berkeley before becoming Obama’s science advisor. In the late 70s he co-authored a book with doomsayer Paul Ehrlich advocating for mandatory sterilization of the American people and forced abortions in order to depopulate the country. A head of the OSTP Holdren technically oversees the SBST.

Information about this absurd behavioral team remains sketchy because the administration, which claims to be the most transparent in history, withheld nearly 100 pages of records that could have shed light on the taxpayer-funded group’s secret operations. The Obama administration cited an exemption—officially known as B5—that applies to deliberative process, which allows government officials to discuss policy without the discussions being made public, or attorney client privilege. In this case it appears that the administration used the deliberative process exemption to withhold the records since it’s unlikely that attorney client privilege applies. B5 is the most abused of the FOIA exemptions and is regularly used to hide material that may embarrass the government.

That appears to be the case in this instance, though we’ll never know for certain because it’s unlikely the SBST records will ever be released since it’s very difficult to challenge B5 exemptions. Americans should be concerned that the government is employing behavioral experts to use psychological techniques in order to manipulate the behavior of its citizens. This makes it all the more imperative that the discussions between these government officials be exposed to the public and not shielded through a specious claim of “deliberative process.”

In its first annual report to the president last year, the SBST writes that it works to identify how behavioral insights can be integrated into federal agency programs in order to help agencies achieve their missions and objectives. This, it claims, will better serve the nation. The new group’s projects “are designed to address only the behavioral barriers that affect how people engage with programs,” the report says. It includes a list of federal agencies that have worked with SBST to coordinate the application of social and behavioral research to “advance policy and program goals.” They include the departments of Agriculture, Defense, Education, Treasury, Justice and Labor as well as the Social Security Administration and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). “When behavioral insights—research findings from behavioral economics and psychology about how people make decisions and act on them—are brought into policy, the returns are significant,” according to the SBST report.

Excellent additional info, Spokeshave.

Here’s more, right from Harvard promoting gov’t Behavioral Science as a way to change collective thinking on many matters, including climate change...

https://hbr.org/2015/09/why-the-u-s-government-is-embracing-behavioral-science

Behavioral economics
Why the U.S. Government Is Embracing Behavioral Science

Francesca Gino

September 18, 2015

8.95

SEPT15_18_467000632

For anyone interested in human behavior and decision making, September 15 will likely be a day to remember. On that day, President Obama ordered government agencies to use behavioral science insights to “better serve the American people.” In his executive order, Obama instructed federal agencies to identify policies and operations where applying findings from behavioral science could improve “public welfare, program outcomes, and program cost effectiveness,” design strategies for using behavioral science insights, and recruit behavioral experts whenever considered necessary or helpful. (Here is the full report by the White House Social and Behavioral Science Team, which discusses some of the work that has been already conducted using behavioral insights.)

This order reflects the evidence that scholars across a variety of fields — from behavioral economics to psychology to behavioral decision research — have accumulated in recent years that people often fail to make rational choices. Across a wide range of contexts, we often make foolish decisions that go against our self-interest. We exercise too little and eat too much. We spend too much, don’t save enough, and wind up heavily in debt.

Such deviations from rationality, well documented in the decision-making literature, are consistent across time and populations. For example, the typical person would dislike losing $50 more than he would enjoy gaining $50, which would not be the case if he were fully rational. And when making decisions, people tend to give disproportionate weight to information that readily comes to mind (a recent discussion, for example) and overlook more pertinent information that is harder to retrieve from memory. Again, this shouldn’t happen to so-called “rational agents.”

Public policy has often relied on assumptions of rationality when accounting for human behavior, which has led to suboptimal policies in the past. For example, citizens are sometimes bombarded by mass-media campaigns (designed to decrease smoking, increase seat-belt use, etc.) that assume they will be able to process an onslaught of messages to their best advantage. But such campaigns often have not worked, and may even have backfired at times.

Over the last decade or so, insights from behavioral science have been applied to public policy issues such as tax payments, medical decisions, consumer health and wellness, and climate-change mitigation. Consider work conducted by the Behavioural Insights Team (BIT), an organization set up in the United Kingdom to apply “nudges” to improve government policy and services. (A nudge, a term introduced by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein in their 2008 book Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness, is any aspect of a process that changes how people behave in predictable ways “without forbidding any options or significantly changing their economic incentives.”)

For example, in one study, the BIT partnered with the U.K. Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency to change the wording of the letter sent to people who were delinquent in paying their vehicle taxes. Departing from the complex legal language of the existing letter, the new letter in effect told people to “pay your tax or lose your car.” To make the demand more personal, some of the letters also included a photo of the car in question. The rewritten letter increased the number of people paying the tax; the rewrite with the photo changed behavior even more dramatically.

Another successful nudge (not involving BIT) involved sending letters to residential users of high amounts of energy in San Marcos, Calif. To influence them to consume less energy, the letters told them how their consumption compared with that of their neighbors. Finding out that they were consuming more than others like them triggered strong negative emotions that in turn led to behavioral changes and a 10% reduction in energy consumption.

Nudges like these speak to the power of developing interventions and policies that consider people for what they are: creatures whose information-processing capacity and emotions limit them from being rational agents. Well-designed behavioral studies can offer policymakers useful insights into human behavior that can improve policies. Such studies are applicable to a wide range of policy areas, wherever human behavior plays a role.

Similarly, as I wrote in the past, organizations can identify more effective management practices through a better understanding of human behavior. The implications could be wide ranging, from helping employees adopt healthier habits to increasing their happiness and productivity at work.

In its cafeterias, Google has experimented with this idea to encourage employees to adopt healthier eating habits. When “Googlers” reach for a plate, they encounter a sign informing them that people with bigger plates are inclined to eat more than those with smaller plates. Thanks to this simple change, the proportion of people using small plates has increased by 50%.

Or consider how simple interventions can increase employee happiness and productivity. Lalin Anik, Lara Aknin, Michael Norton, Elizabeth Dunn, and Jordi Quoidbach conducted a series of field experiments in which they found that when employees share their bonuses with coworkers and charities, they are more satisfied and perform at a higher level than those who don’t. Giving employees opportunities to spend money on others increases happiness, job satisfaction, and team performance, their research discovered.

As another example, a few years ago, my colleagues and I conducted a study in collaboration with a major U.S. car insurance company. We sent 13,488 of the company’s customers a form that asked them to report the number of miles they had driven the prior year, as indicated on their cars’ odometers. Cheating by under-reporting mileage would come with the financial benefit of lower insurance premiums. On about half of the forms sent out, customers were supposed to sign to indicate their truthfulness at the bottom of the page. The other half of the forms asked the customers to sign at the top of the page. The average mileage reported by customers who signed the form at the top was more than 2,400 miles higher than that reported by those who signed at the bottom. The simple change put customers in a more honest mindset.

Behavioral science can help managers design new practices, suggest improvements to existing ones, or provide ex-post explanations of why people reacted in a particular way. In short, using insights from behavioral science can have profound benefits across government and business, and more are being implemented every day. So, are you ready for a nudge?

Francesca Gino is a professor at Harvard Business School, a faculty affiliate of the Behavioral Insights Group at Harvard Kennedy School, and the author of Sidetracked: Why Our Decisions Get Derailed, and How We Can Stick to the Plan (Harvard Business Review Press, 2013). She cochairs an HBS executive education program on applying behavioral economics to organizational problems. Twitter: @francescagino.
This article is about BEHAVIORAL ECONOMICS
Follow this topic
Up Next in Behavioral economics
From “Economic Man” to Behavioral Economics

Justin Fox

default image
Up Next in Recession
The End of Rational Economics

Dan Ariely

default image
Up Next in Psychology
Want to Perfect Your Company’s Service? Use Behavioral Science

Richard B. Chase; Sriram Dasu

Comments
6 COMMENTS

Vinvolv App 11 months ago

Governments (and businesses) can also use behavioral science when tackling climate change and promoting sustainability, where a shift in collective behavior is required.
Reply

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.