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Challenging Assumptions About Behavioral Policy Spotlight Topic A publication of the Behavioral Science & Policy Association volume 1 issue 1 2015 spotlight Challenging assumptions topic about behavioral policy A publication of the Behavioral Science & Policy Association volume 1 issue 1 2015 Craig R. Fox Sim B. Sitkin Editors a publication of the behavioral science & policy association i Copyright © 2015 Behavioral Science & Policy Association Brookings Institution ISSN 2379-4607 (print) ISSN 2379-4615 (online) ISBN 978-0-8157-2508-4 (pbk) ISBN 978-0-8157-2259-5 (epub) Behavioral Science & Policy is a publication of the Behavioral Science & Policy Association, P.O. Box 51336, Durham, NC 27717-1336, and is published twice yearly with the Brookings Institution, 1775 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20036, and through the Brookings Institution Press. For information on electronic and print subscriptions, contact the Behavioral Science & Policy Association, [email protected] The journal may be accessed through OCLC (www.oclc.org) and Project Muse (http://muse/jhu. edu). Archived issues are also available through JSTOR (www.jstor.org). Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use or the internal or personal use of specific clients is granted by the Brookings Institution for libraries and other users registered with the Copyright Clearance Center Transactional Reporting Service, provided that the basic fee is paid to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923. For more information, please contact CCC at 978-750-8400 and online at www.copyright.com. This authorization does not extend to other kinds of copying, such as copying for general distribution, or for creating new collective works, or for sale. Specific written permission for other copying must be obtained from the Permissions Department, Brookings Institution Press, 1775 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20036; e-mail: [email protected] Cover photo © 2006 by JoAnne Avnet. All rights reserved. ii behavioral science & policy | spring 2015 table of contents volume 1 issue 1 2015 Editors’ note v Bridging the divide between behavioral science and policy 1 Craig R. Fox & Sim B. Sitkin Spotlight: Challenging assumptions about behavioral policy Intuition is not evidence: Prescriptions for behavioral interventions 13 from social psychology Timothy D. Wilson & Lindsay P. Juarez Small behavioral science-informed changes can produce large 21 policy-relevant effects Robert B. Cialdini, Steve J. Martin, & Noah J. Goldstein Active choosing or default rules? The policymaker’s dilemma 29 Cass R. Sunstein Warning: You are about to be nudged 35 George Loewenstein, Cindy Bryce, David Hagmann, & Sachin Rajpal Workplace stressors & health outcomes: Health policy for the workplace 43 Joel Goh, Jeffrey Pfeffer, & Stefanos A. Zenios Time to retire: Why Americans claim benefits early & how 53 to encourage delay Melissa A. Z. Knoll, Kirstin C. Appelt, Eric J. Johnson, & Jonathan E. Westfall Designing better energy metrics for consumers 63 Richard P. Larrick, Jack B. Soll, & Ralph L. Keeney Payer mix & financial health drive hospital quality: 77 Implications for value-based reimbursement policies Matthew Manary, Richard Staelin, William Boulding, & Seth W. Glickman Editorial policy 85 a publication of the behavioral science & policy association iii iv behavioral science & policy | spring 2015 editors’ note elcome to the inaugural issue of Behavioral Science & Policy. We Wcreated BSP to help bridge a significant divide. The success of nearly all public and private sector policies hinges on the behavior of individuals, groups, and organizations. Today, such behaviors are better understood than ever thanks to a growing body of practical behavioral science research. However, policymakers often are unaware of behavioral science findings that may help them craft and execute more effective and efficient policies. In response, we want the pages of this journal to be a meeting ground of sorts: a place where scientists and non-scientists can encounter clearly described behavioral research that can be put into action. Mission of BSP By design, the scope of BSP is quite broad, with topics spanning health care, financial decisionmaking, energy and the environment, education and culture, justice and ethics, and work place practices. We will draw on a broad range of the social sciences, as is evident in this inaugural issue. These pages feature contributions from researchers with expertise in psychology, sociology, law, behavioral economics, organization science, decision science, and marketing. BSP is broad in its coverage because the problems to be addressed are diverse, and solutions can be found in a variety of behavioral disciplines. This goal requires an approach that is unusual in academic publishing. All BSP articles go through a unique dual review, by disciplinary specialists for scientific rigor and also by policy specialists for practical implementability. In addition, all articles are edited by a team of professional writing editors to ensure that the language is both clear and engaging for non-expert readers. When needed, we post online Supplemental Material for those who wish to dig deeper into more technical aspects of the work. That material is indicated in the journal with a bracketed arrow. This Issue This first issue is representative of our vision for BSP. We are pleased to publish an outstanding set of contributions from leading scholars who have worked hard to make their work accessible to readers outside their fields. A subset of manuscripts is clustered into a Spotlight Topic section a publication of the behavioral science & policy association v that examines a specific theme in some depth, in this case, “Challenging Assumptions about Behavioral Policy.” Our opening essay discusses the importance of behavioral science for enhanced policy design and implementation, and illustrates various approaches to putting this work into practice. The essay also provides a more detailed account of our objectives for Behavioral Science & Policy. In particular, we discuss the importance of using policy challenges as a starting point and then asking what practical insights can be drawn from relevant behavioral science, rather than the more typical path of producing research findings in search of applications. Our inaugural Spotlight Topic section includes four articles. Wilson and Juarez challenge the assumption that intuitively compelling policy initiatives can be presumed to be effective, and illustrate the importance of evidence- based program evaluation. Cialdini, Martin, and Goldstein challenge the notion that large policy effects require large interventions, and provide evidence that small (even costless) actions grounded in behavioral science research can pay big dividends. Sunstein challenges the point of view that providing individuals with default options is necessarily more paternalistic than requiring them to make an active choice. Instead, Sunstein suggests, people sometimes prefer the option of deferring technical decisions to experts and delegating trivial decisions to others. Thus, forcing individuals to choose may constrain rather than enhance individual free choice. In the final Spotlight paper, Loewenstein, Bryce, Hagmann, and Rajpal challenge the assumption that behavioral “nudges,” such as strategic use of defaults, are only effective when kept secret. In fact, these authors report a study in which they explicitly inform participants that they have been assigned an arbitrary default (for advance medical directives). Surprisingly, disclosure does not greatly diminish the impact of the nudge. This issue also includes four regular articles. Goh, Pfeffer, and Zenios provide evidence that corporate executives concerned with their employees’ health should attend to a number of workplace practices—including high job demands, low job control, and a perceived lack of fairness—that can produce more harm than the well-known threat of exposure to secondhand smoke. Knoll, Appelt, Johnson, and Westfall find that the most obvious approach to getting individuals to delay claiming retirement benefits (present information in a way that highlights benefits of claiming later) does not work. But a process intervention in which individuals are asked to think about the future before considering their current situation better persuades them to delay making retirement claims. Larrick, Soll, and Keeney identify four principles for developing better energy-use metrics to enhance consumer understanding and promote energy conservation. Finally, Manary, Staelin, Boulding, and Glickman provide a new analysis challenging the vi behavioral science & policy | spring 2015 idea that a hospital’s responses to the demographic traits of individual patients, including their race, may explain disparities in quality of health care. Instead, it appears that this observation is driven by differences in insurance coverage among these groups. Hospitals serving larger numbers of patients with no insurance or with government insurance receive less revenue to pay for expenses such as wages, training, and equipment updates. In this case, the potential behavioral explanation does not appear to be correct; it may come down to simple economics. In Summary This publication was created by the Behavioral Science & Policy Association in partnership with the Brookings Institution. The mission of BSPA is to foster dialog between social scientists, policymakers, and other practitioners in order to promote the application of rigorous
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