Judging Nudging: Answering the Manipulation Objection

Abstract

Is it ever justified to ‘nudge’ people towards their own health? In this article, we argue that it is. We do so by arguing (1) that nudges are not necessarily – as is commonly thought – manipulative; (2) that even those nudges that are manipulative can be justified, for instance, when they preserve rather than violate people’s autonomy; and (3) that even if nudges can be said to violate some people’s autonomy, they can still be the legitimate outcome of genuinely democratic procedures. While we do not regard nudging as the solution to all or even most public health problems, we argue for a piecemeal approach that carefully considers its benefits and downsides in light of the various values involved and the alternatives at hand.

The ethics of nudging: An overview

“…First, proponents of nudging could urge us to consider the counterfactual in which the nudge is removed. Removing the nudge often does not make people any more volitionally autonomous (Nys & Engelen, ). If we change the opt‐out back to opt‐in or put the apples back where they were, both the heuristics at play and many irrelevant aspects in people's choice architecture would still influence people's decisions.…”

Nudge FORGOOD

“…Respecting autonomy means that nudges do not treat adults as if they were children whose capacities for making good decisions are not being taken seriously. When nudges make people feel as if they were not treated like an independent human being capable of making sensible decisions, these nudges can come across as insults and as being disrespectful (Bovens, 2009(Bovens, , 2013Hausman & Welch, 2010;Blumenthal-Barby & Burroughs, 2012;Rebonato, 2012;Saghai, 2013;White, 2013;Nys & Engelen, 2017). Nudges that respect autonomy make sure that people's capacities to deliberate and to determine what to choose (their agency) and their sense of self and selfchosen goals (their self-constitution) are not negatively affected (Vugts et al, 2018).…”

Guidelines for Ethical Nudging in Password Authentication

“…What about how nudges actually exercise their influence? Nudges, according to Nys and Engelen [78], exploit predictable cognitive biases and heuristics in order to influence people towards wiser actions. This is also emphasised by Saghai [79], who explains that nudges trigger people's automatic cognitive processes.…”

“…System 1 nudges are processed automatically and they, and their impact, might not be transparent to nudgees. Such nudge transparency is certainly something that concerns many researchers [78,81,82].…”

“…Nys and Engelen [78] also argue for transparency of nudges as a pre-requisite for their ethical deployment. They believe that people should be aware of the presence of the nudge.…”