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Government and Behaviour: Course Summary (USG4660)

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Universiteit Utrecht (UU)

Ace Your Exam with This Course Summary: Government and Behaviour (USG4660) Looking to ace your exam in Government and Behaviour: The Use of Behavioural Insights in and by Governments (USG4660)? This comprehensive and structured summary is designed to help you master the key concepts quickly and ...

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Knowledge clip 1 – A Behavioural Approach to Solve Societal Problems

 Grimmelikhuijsen et al. article:

 Behavioural public administration  emerged from: subfield of public administration 

 Not new: it’s an old idea: Herbert Simon 20th century (founding founders public
administration): ‘Decision making is the hearth of administration, and that the vocabulary
of administrative theory must be derived from logic and psychology of human choice’.

 Thus: Theories from psychology and other behavioural sciences to better understand
public administration.

 The amount of public administration articles that use psychology has increased.

 What is BPA?  Definition: The interdisciplinary analysis of public administration from
the micro-level perspective of individual behaviour and attitudes by drawing on recent
advances in our understanding of the underlying psychology and behaviour of individuals
and groups.

o 1. Microlevel: individuals and groups of citizens, employers, and managers within
the public sector  unit of analysis.

o 2. Behaviour and attitudes: look at individuals and how they make their decisions.

o 3. Integrating insights from psychology and behavioural sciences into BPA (more
disciplines?)

 The new BPA approach already common in other disciplines:

 Political psychology: pluralistic in terms of theory and methods

 Behavioural economics: mostly cognitive psyche, cognitive bias, mostly quantitative

 Macro-level theory: governments that disclose more information about their discission
making will gain public trust.  How to explain?  BPA: from a micro-level:
individuals read government information and respond to it  Apply generic psychology
research to this context (motivated reasoning).

 Thus: understand the micro level and then translate to macro-level (and back)

 Tummers et al article: used behaviour approach for public policy instruments

 Governments want to influence people to reach policy goals

o Carrot: incentivised: reward certain behaviours (rational assumption)

, o Whip: mandates and bans: make unwanted behaviour illegal (rational assumption)

o Sermon: information campaigns: tell what the desired behaviour is (rational)

o Nudging: choice architecture (surrounding environment): make desired behaviour
easy (bounded rationality assumption)

 Tummers argues we should focus on the effectiveness of interventions but also on their
legitimacy  POPular: If all the things are supported, then a nudge is POPular
(politically, organizationally, personally).

 Nudging should be effective (intended goal reached) and efficient (less relative money
spend).

 Criticism: behavioural approach appropriate? Tummers: look at the support for the
arguments: do politicians/major organizations/individual citizens support nudges?

 People are not always aware of the nudge  transparency doesn’t have to impede the
effectiveness.

Knowledge clip 2 - Motivated Reasoning

 Article Kunda  Fist came up with motivated reasoning

 Motivated Reasoning: 2 ways of reasoning:

o 1. Accuracy-driven motivation (motivation to be accurate) weighing pieces of
evidence (get right/ best? conclusion).  thorough and deep information
processing (more cognitive effort).  However: satisficing behaviour.

o 2. Direction-driven motivated reasoning (motivation to arrive at a certain
conclusion)

 Biased accessing of beliefs about, self, others and events + biased selection
of statistical heuristics + biased research evaluation (conformation bias).

 In essence: scrutinize information against believe and accept supporting
information at face value

 This operates within bounds of appearing rational to others.

 Motivated reasoning origin: cognitive dissonance (source motivated reasoning):
unpleasant feeling of contradictory beliefs and actions (reality?=)  unpleasant feelings
(want to solve).  Solutions: change behaviour (hard) or believe.

,  The types of motivations affect a range of behaviours related to decision making

o 1. Beliefs about others, self, events

o 2. Statistical processing: becoming selective to statical evidence

o 3. Scrutiny of scientific evidence

 Beakgaard et al.  politicians reading about the performance of private schools or public
school. The private school performed best  Question: which is performing best? 
Once politicians have more support for general service (strong public sector) the change
of a correct answer decreases significantly + a strong preference for private schools:
increase likelihood of the correct answer.

 In essence: this generic psychological mechanism is relevant a public administration
setting.

Lecture 1: Policymaking (from a behavioural perspective)

 Why do governments make policy?  Strict or non-strict regulatory guidelines  To
resolve conflict and to solve problems  Organized range of societal policies.

 5 main reasons for government policy
o 1. Market failure compensation (against monopolies for example)
o 2. Regulate external effects
o 3. Collective goods (defence, dykes etc)
o 4. Merit goods (museum)
o 5. Redistribution of social inequalities: redistribute income and wealth (improve
equal opportunities/outcomes

 How can government steer society: reward (discount), discourage (taxes), prohibition,
communicate (campaigns), nudge (towards other/better behaviour).

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