Abstract
One of the most pervasive criticisms of nudges has been the claim that they violate, undermine or decrease people’s (personal) autonomy. This claim, however, is seldom backed up by an explicit and detailed conception of autonomy. In this paper, we aim to do three things. First, we want to clear up some conceptual confusion by distinguishing the different conceptions used by Cass Sunstein and his critics in order to get clear on how they conceive of autonomy. Second, we want to add to the existing discussion by distinguishing between ‘autonomy’ as the ability to set your own ends and ‘autocracy’ as the ability to actually realize those ends (which is what most of the current discussion is actually focusing on). This will allow for a more careful ethical evaluation of specific nudge interventions. Third, we will introduce the idea of ‘perimeters of autonomy’ in an attempt to provide a realistic account of personal autonomy and we will argue that it can alleviate most of the worries about nudging being autonomy-undermining.
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Notes
Note that we label the cognitive heuristics involved in nudging ‘a-rational’, and not ‘rational’ or ‘irrational’, because we believe that rationality requirements do not apply to them. Take the distinction between calling something ‘a-moral’ or ‘immoral’: only agents capable of making moral choices can be called ‘moral’ or ‘immoral’ (when they succeed or fail to live up to morality’s requirements). Other things, like a piece of rock or a fish (to which morality’s requirements do not apply) can only be ‘a-moral’ and not ‘immoral’. In that respect, we call heuristics – such as loss aversion or the status quo bias – ‘a-rational’, since rationality requirements do not apply to them (but only to the agent and her beliefs, preferences and actions).
Like autonomy, rationality is a complex and heavily debated term. Conventionally, beliefs, preferences or actions are ‘rational’ if they involve some kind of uptake of information or reasons. On a minimalist understanding, only consistency is required. An ecological understanding of rationality asks whether decision-making processes are in some sense successful or not. Here, heuristics are typically taken to be ‘fast and frugal’, producing ‘good’ decisions in most circumstances. Only in some circumstances do heuristics lead to ‘reasoning failures’ or ‘errors’, in which case there is a trade-off between speed and accuracy. For more on this, see Andreas Schmidt (2019), who stresses that “decision-making procedures are not rational or irrational per se but only relative to particular environments and agents” (Schmidt 2019: 527). Schmidt uses an ecological understanding of rationality to argue that nudges are compatible with and may even support rationality, understood in this sense. As we want to focus on autonomy here, not rationality, we do not go into this discussion any further, which is the topic of Engelen (2019). We thank an anonymous reviewer for clarifying this point.
Sunstein often employs a broader definition of nudges, which includes purely rational processes such as information provision (Sunstein 2015a: 512). We take the narrower approach, which is in line with most of the literature on nudging and with the spirit of Sunstein’s work, which starts from the observation that ordinary people (Humans) are not always as rational as they can or want to be (Econs) because a-rational heuristics and biases influence their decisions.
In their literature review, Vugts and co-authors (2018) analyzed 33 articles and identified no less than 280 autonomy considerations. While they employ a quite broad approach to autonomy, allowing for conceptions that stress freedom of choice, agency and self-constitution, this suffices to show how widespread autonomy worries are in the literature.
For more detailed analyses about the interplay between nudging, autonomy and manipulation, see: Barton (2013), Blumenthal-Barby & Naik (2015), Mills (2015), Nagatsu (2015), Schubert (2017), Wilkinson (2013) and Nys & Engelen (2017). While all these authors introduce and explain the worries about nudges being manipulative and/or undermining autonomy, they argue that nudges do not necessarily undermine autonomy.
Some of the criticism is based on the long-term effects of living in a world in which most of our choices would be influenced by nudges. We put this criticism aside for the purposes of this paper.
Perhaps they often do not have any real (positive or negative) impact on people’s autonomy as there may not have been much autonomy in the first place (before the nudge was implemented). People often make uninformed or insufficiently informed choices. In such cases, a lot of nudges will not promote or diminish their autonomy but leave them as autonomous or heteronomous as they were before (see also: Nys & Engelen 2017).
Note that some ‘trivial’ choices, such as what meal to have, can have big consequences over time, for example when they are made over and over again.
Our discussion below will argue that such weak-willed people are autonomous (they know what they want), but are lacking in autocracy.
Schubert (2017: 338) asks whether nudges compromise ‘self-legislation’, which in his view goes beyond ‘autonomy’, as it relates to “people’s ability to form (or learn) preferences” and the ability to cope with the “existential task to ‘make something of themselves’”, which nudges may compromise over the long haul by discouraging active choice. This is actually close to what we call ‘autonomy’ here: the ability to determine and set one’s own ends.
On Frankfurt’s own analysis (1988), the unwilling addict would be heteronomous, a passive bystander to her own motivating desire. For Frankfurt, a person who is deeply ambivalent is also non-autonomous (because not wholehearted). Our distinction allows us to distinguish these two failures of autonomy.
If you think their goals are illegitimate and need to be changed, as ends paternalism would have it, then you need less resistible and more coercive interventions.
Barton (2013) argues that, while salient health warnings on tobacco products decrease (the independence component of) people’s autonomy by invoking a-rational heuristics, they also protect against (possibly misleading) messages from tobacco producers. In addition, they lead unhappy smokers to make more authentic choices and thus enable their capacity to rule themselves, increasing (the self-ruling component of) their autonomy. Overall, Barton argues, such nudges can foster smokers’ overall autonomy. While we largely agree with Barton, we would like to reformulate his latter argument in terms of autocracy (as the nudge helps unhappy addicts achieve their goals).
We thank an anonymous reviewer for this journal for being one of these critics, pushing us on this and pointing out the role that cognitive dissonance reduction mechanisms can play.
According to Schubert (2017: 337), we live in a “behavioral world” in which “individuals lack consistent and stable preferences”. While Schubert overgeneralizes (people often have quite stable preferences), we do agree that nudging works best when people lack such clear preferences.
While the alternative that critics have in mind is not this non-nudged scenario (in which the same ‘blind processes’ are at work) but rational persuasion, proponents argue that such persuasion is often ineffective.
One could argue that by intentionally and repeatedly steering a person in one direction, one could gradually erode this ability. But, as indicated, we want to put the long-term effects of nudging aside for the purposes of this paper.
To really act upon that basis would amount to autocracy.
Some of these theories do exclude manipulation, like Dworkin’s (1988). However, to argue for the violation of autonomy one would then have to argue that nudges are manipulative, which is not evident at all (Wilkinson 2013).
It also avoids Sugden’s criticism to Sunstein as it does not require finding out what people’s ‘inner rational agents’ hypothetically prefer but only what actual people’s broadly conceived values and cares are.
This relates to the problem of infinite regress and the so-called ab initio problem that haunts many theories of autonomy. For a discussion and solution, see Noggle (2005).
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Acknowledgements
This paper was previously presented on different occasions and we thank the respective audiences for their helpful comments and feedback. In particular, we thank the organizers of the OZSW Conference at Utrecht University (November 2017), the ‘Nudging and Moral Responsibility’ workshop at VU Amsterdam (April 2018), the ‘Applied Ethics of Nudging’ workshop at the University of Stirling (September 2018) and the workshop ‘Nudging in Public Health – And Beyond’ at Aarhus University (November 2018). In addition, we thank three anonymous reviewers of this journal for their extensive and constructive comments. As always, responsibility for any remaining errors is ours.
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Engelen, B., Nys, T. Nudging and Autonomy: Analyzing and Alleviating the Worries. Rev.Phil.Psych. 11, 137–156 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-019-00450-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-019-00450-z