El sector privado ha estado utilizando durante años la visión psicológica para promover ciertos resultados.
For years, government policymakers encouraged workers to increase their investments in tax-free retirement savings. But they were baffled by how many workers were leaving “free money” on the table by not signing up to participate in employer-matched 401K pension plans. But when some companies changed their enrollment process from having workers opt in to the program vs. automatically enrolling them (and allowing them to opt out), enrollment rates increased by 50 percent.
Why did that minor change in the enrollment process make such a big difference?
It turns out that a natural human tendency is to rely on the default option. That is, to take what’s given, even if that’s not the best choice. This human tendency is one of a range of human tendencies studied in what is called social behavioral science research.
In the private sector, insights based on behavioral science have been used extensively for years in sales, marketing, and negotiations. But there are intriguing implications for use in the public sector as well. Pioneers in government have tested strategies to entice citizens to recycle, volunteer, vote and give to charity.
Using insights based on behavioral science isn’t new, but it has received increased prominence in the past five years at all levels of government. It is increasingly becoming an important part of policy and process design thinking because it is seen as a powerful way to improve program outcomes.
What Is It?
Behavioral science research explores “how people react to changes in cues or incentives,” according to the Behavioural Insights Team, which originated as a temporary British government agency in 2010 to promote its use by government policymakers and program managers. A key premise underlying the field of behavioral science is that everyone is prone to “cognitive bias.” That is, we can’t assume people will make decisions based on rational behaviors. Therefore, we shouldn’t assume customers or citizens will respond rationally to rationally-designed policies, systems, directives, or processes.
This premise—that people cannot be assumed to be rational and will make decisions that may not necessarily in their own best interest—upended the field of economics in the 1990s. This same upending is in the process of happening in the field of public administration.
Understanding the insights provided through behavioral science research may help answer an age-old public administration dilemma: “Why do well-constructed, rational policy initiatives fail?” As a result, policy makers and program implementers can leverage this greater understanding of human behavior to better design policies and programs to avoid predictable cognitive biases. Or they could use it to leverage cognitive biases as part of a policy initiative to more effectively achieve intended outcomes.
Fuente: https://www.nextgov.com
