Public lecture Sander van der Linden on Socially Situated Nudges

Invited by the Institutions for Open Societies stream Behavior & Institutions and hosted by Denise de Ridder.

On Thursday November 21, Sander van der Linden (University Lecturer in Social Psychology at Cambridge University) gave a public lecture on Socially Situated Nudges. These social nudges (or ‘snudges’) are the social brother of regular nudges. They inform people about other peoples’ behavior and raise normative expectations. As such, they could be transmissible from one person to another, thereby possibly enhancing the impact of the intervention even further. The nature of social nudges could be explicit, implicit, offline or online.

In his talk, van der Linden claimed that the nudge movement has been socially impoverished, as well as ignorant of the largest issues in society. To illustrate he discussed a few of the most prototypical nudges, such as the fly in the urinal or the Save More Tomorrow program, which are not social in nature. Yet, examples abound of effective nudges which are social in nature, such as the well-known Opower energy program or the use of social norms in letters as used by the Behavioural Insights Team.

Van der Linden made a plea for the implementation of social nudges and he highlighted several advantages of those. One possible advantage of social nudges could be that they are not short-lived in their effectiveness. The norms communicated with social nudges can be internalized, and can spread from one person to another. As van der Linden pointed out, many social processes are recursive: the more people adhere to a certain social norm, the stronger the norm becomes, and the more people will join the bandwagon.

Finally, van der Linden shared his ideas about upping the social IQ of nudges. He concluded that while social nudges may still be simple, they can turn a drop into a wave, and transform an individual into a crowd. And, as van der Linden, stated: crowds can change the world.

The lecture was followed by thought provoking reflections from sociology (prof. Vincent Buskens), philosophy (dr. Joel Anderson), political science (prof. Barbara Vis), and psychology (dr. Marieke Adriaanse). The session closed off with reflections from prof. Will Tiemeijer (The Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy) and dr. Thomas Dirkmaat (Behavioral Insights Network NL) about the practical implications of socially situated nudges.