Since its advent in 2010, the Behavioural Insight Team (“BIT”) has acted as an ongoing source of expert advice to the government to help enhance the power and effectiveness of its communication campaigns. Utilising a range of behavioural science strategies (‘nudges’) – psychological methods of persuasion that often operate below people’s conscious awareness – these approaches strive to shape the behaviour of their target population. Throughout the covid event, the BIT (together with other prominent behavioural scientists such as Susan Michie, who now occupies a senior position at the World Health Organisation) operated as a source of such guidance to strengthen public health messaging to maximise people’s compliance with “pandemic” restrictions and the vaccine rollout.
Although initially a core component of government, BIT has evolved into a private company, reliant on contractual arrangements for its funding. During the covid era, the BIT was awarded two lucrative contracts with the UK administration: £4 million from the Cabinet Office to provide “frictionless access to behavioural insights to match central priorities” and £1 million from the Department of Health and Social Care for “various work for test, trace, contain and enable agenda.”
The Government’s use of behavioural science strategies on its own citizens has evoked significant ethical concerns, mainly deriving from their often covert-mode of operation and the fact that nudges typically rely on inflating emotional discomfort (inducing fear, shame and scapegoating) to change behaviour. Further criticism of the way that BIT operates relates to its uncritical promotion of technocratic goals, where the assumption is that the government of the day always knows what is best for us all, and that it is therefore legitimate for a “social purpose company” to manipulate people into complying with these decrees.
So, what is BIT focusing on in these post-covid years? ....<<<Read More>>>>...
