Article Text
Statistics from Altmetric.com
Although Saghai primarily focuses on distinguishing nudges from other forms of influence, ‘Salvaging the Concept of Nudge’ offers a definition of nudges that could blunt much of the moral criticism of nudging and clarify debates about specific policies.1 The definition he offers, however, restricts the class of nudges to include only those influences that counter an individual's preferences; thus, contrary to what Thaler and Sunstein say, nudges cannot be instances of libertarian paternalism.1 ,2
According to Saghai, ‘A nudges B when A makes it more likely that B will ϕ, primarily by triggering B's shallow cognitive processes, while A's influence preserves B's choice-set and is substantially non-controlling (i.e., preserves B's freedom of choice)’. Because the second condition—the substantial non-control condition—is supposed to ensure that nudges preserve freedom in a robust sense, this condition warrants careful attention.
According to Saghai, A's influence is substantially non-controlling ‘when B could easily not ϕ if she did not want to ϕ’. To determine whether a particular influence constitutes a nudge, we must ask whether from B's perspective that influence is easily resistible. Saghai seems to offer two tests to determine whether B is able to easily resist A's influence:
-
Test 1: ‘A's influence is easily resistible if B is able to effortlessly oppose the pressure to get her to ϕ if she does not want to ϕ’.
-
Test 2: ‘B is able to easily resist A's influence when:
-
B has the capacity to become aware of A's pressure to get her to ϕ (attention-bringing capacities);
-
B has the capacity to inhibit her triggered propensity to ϕ (inhibitory capacities);
-
B is not subject to, or put in, circumstances that would significantly undermine the relatively effortless exercise of attention-bringing and inhibitory capacities’.
-
If, as it seems, these are distinct tests, then they generate conflicting conclusions.
Saghai distinguishes three types of cases in which A may try to influence B to ϕ; A may ‘attempt to counter, facilitate, or shape [B's] behavior or mental states’. A counters B's behaviour or mental states when B prefers not to ϕ. A facilitates B's behaviour or mental states when B already prefers to ϕ. In such cases, A merely removes internal and/or external obstacles to B's ϕ-ing. In the third type of case, B ‘has no preferences, goals, or beliefs prior to the intervention’, and A attempts to mould B's preferences.
According to Saghai, in cases where B has no initial preferences regarding ϕ-ing, the definition of easy resistibility given in Test 1 is simply not triggered because B does not not want to ϕ. Thus, Saghai tells us, the influence cannot be easily resistible and therefore cannot count as a nudge. This argument is puzzling for two reasons: first, that the counterfactual's antecedent is not satisfied tells us nothing about whether the influence is easily resistible; second, Saghai has given us a second test to determine whether B can easily resist A's influence that would be triggered in this case.
Test 1 for easy resistibility is counterfactual: if B does not want to ϕ, B could effortlessly resist A's pressure to ϕ. Consequently, in cases of shaping influences, the fact that B has no desire with respect to ϕ-ing tells us nothing about whether ϕ-ing is easily resistible. Moreover, if we accept Saghai's conclusion that shaping is not nudging because the antecedent of the conditional is not satisfied (ie, B does not not want to ϕ), then the same is true in cases of facilitating. In such cases, B wants to ϕ, and A merely removes obstacles; on Saghai's view, Test 1 would not be triggered, the influence could not be easily resistible, and consequently it could not be a nudge. If this is the case, then genuine nudging is possible only when B does not want to ϕ. Indeed, Saghai seems to recognise and endorse this in his discussion of facilitation.
However, Tests 1 and 2 are distinct tests, so even if Test 1 is not triggered, as in the case of shaping, Test 2 is; that is to say, in cases in which B is indifferent with respect to ϕ-ing, we surely can ask whether B satisfies conditions 1–3 in Test 2. If so, then B can easily resist A's influence, and the influence might be a nudge. Consequently, Test 2 provides no reason to restrict nudges to only those influences that counter an individual's preferences.
Saghai has offered a definition of nudges that would, if successful, preserve freedom in a robust sense. This definition restricts the class of nudges to those influences aimed at countering an individual's preferences. However, influences that do not run counter to an individual's preferences can be nudges, provided they pass Test 2. Moreover, although clarification of key terms would certainly be useful in moral debates about nudging, Saghai's restriction of nudges to only those influences that counter an individual's preferences threatens to confuse rather than clarify those debates, particularly regarding policies designed to nudge paternalistically. After all, Thaler and Sunstein's defence of what they call nudges, such as the Save More Tomorrow plan, is that nudges merely get us to do what we would choose for ourselves if we were not subject to predictable errors in reasoning. Consequently, contrary to Saghai's claim that ‘libertarian paternalism is a justificatory strategy for a subset of nudges’, his own view entails that nudges are by definition fundamentally incompatible with libertarian paternalism.
Footnotes
-
Competing interests None.
-
Provenance and peer review Commissioned; internally peer reviewed.
Linked Articles
- Feature article
- Commentary
- Commentary
- Commentary
- Commentary
- Commentary
Other content recommended for you
- Salvaging the concept of nudge
- The concept of nudge and its moral significance: a reply to Ashcroft, Bovens, Dworkin, Welch and Wertheimer
- Incentives, equity and the Able Chooser Problem
- Commitment devices: beyond the medical ethics of nudges
- The challenges and opportunities of ‘nudging’
- Lying and nudging
- Why high-risk, non-expected-utility-maximising gambles can be rational and beneficial: the case of HIV cure studies
- Should ‘nudge’ be salvaged?
- To nudge or not to nudge: cancer screening programmes and the limits of libertarian paternalism
- Patient preferences for venous thromboembolism prophylaxis after injury: a discrete choice experiment