A Nudge in the Right Direction

 by Honor Mitchell Brock

Behavioural economics incorporates elements from psychology and sociology, transforming them into standard economic theory in order to better understand human behaviour. 

When focusing on a school environment it’s interesting to study how academics are increasingly adopting behavioural economic techniques to increase attainment performance and to improve student decisions when it comes to their educational pathways. In the education sector an aim is to “alter[ing] people’s behaviours in a predictable way without forbidding any options or significantly changing their economic incentives,” (Thaler and Sunstein). 

Social Norms and Biased Beliefs 

Within education there are multiple interventions that nudge people to make decisions. These can involve passive and active decision making as well as nudges that are motivational or add information. Subconsciously social norms can impact your application to educational attainment. If you attend a school where the social norm is to go to university then you are more likely to exert effort in order to not feel you are ‘failing’. Another nudge that affects education choices are biased beliefs; projection bias can mask the fact that a student's needs and preferences change over time. Hence choices, like whether or not to move to a different part of the country for university, may be made based off of their current situation rather than taking into account their future preferences and situation.

Deadlines and Goal Setting

A student with self-control issues may procrastinate often when doing homework tasks, assignments and exam preparation. A device enforced to help with these issues are deadlines, they can be used as a commitment tool for students to study sooner rather than later. Tests and exams are regarded as natural deadlines, by having them more frequently and containing less subject material they’re proven to have positive effects on grades. Another commitment device used to motivate students to avoid psychological loss is goal setting. Asking pupils to set a specific goal for task completion or performance can help to alleviate self-control problems, subconsciously nudging individuals towards behaviour that enables them to meet the goal. 

Policy makers and researchers need to take into consideration the behavioural barriers being targeted and what the theory of change for a given intervention is before imposing a nudge. While it is found that nudging policies do not always have positive education outcomes, they can definitely be effective and better a students educational journey.