Abstract

The study of nudgees’ evaluations of nudges’ fairness is drawing the attention of more and more scholars interested in nudging and its ethics (see, for instance, Michaelsen et al. 2021; Paunov et al. 2020). 

Alike in the process of nudging, cognitive biases play a not negligible role even in the evaluation we make on the fairness and the threat to freedom posed by nudges. With this in mind, the present paper critically analyzes the conclusion drawn by Cornwell and Krantz (2014) for which the “third-person effect” - i.e. the tendency to consider others more easily manipulated than themselves - results in greater support for public policy when their justification refers to the impact on “others” rather than to the impact on “you”. Cornwell and Kranz (2014) claim that such consideration holds for both incentive-based and nudge-type policies.  

I argue against this conclusion in that, looking at the data collected by them, it seems not to be the case: when nudge-type policies are considered, there is not a significant difference between the third and second-person conditions in terms of policy support. I advance an explanation of why it is the case. 

I argue that this result could depend on the combination of the complexity of the term ‘support’ and the hard detectability of many nudges. Other than effectiveness, as considered by Cornwell and Kranz (2014), policy support depends on the ethical permissibility assigned to that policy. 

Arguably, exactly due to the “third-person effect,” when other nudgees are considered, nudges are deemed as policy tools harder to be detected than when they themselves are considered, hence less supported for ethical reasons. It is reasonable to expect that this impact of the third-person effect on the valuation of the ethics of nudges counterbalances its impact on the evaluation of nudges’ effectiveness. This would explain why, in terms of support, there is not a significant difference between the third and second conditions when nudges are on focus, contrary to what happens when incentive-based policies are examined.

References

Cornwell, J. F., & Krantz, D. H. (2014). Public policy for thee, but not for me: Varying the grammatical person of public policy justifications influences their support. Judgment and Decision Making, 5, 433–444.

Michaelsen, P., Nyström, L., Luke, T.J., & Hedesström M. (2021): Downstream consequences of disclosing defaults: influences on perceptions of choice architects and subsequent behavior, Comprehensive Results in Social Psychology. 10.1080/23743603.2021.1983720

Paunov, Y., Wänke, M., & Vogel, T. (2020). Combining defaults and transparency information to increase policy compliance. Social Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1027/1864-9335/a000419

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