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Are 'Nudging Technologies' Ethical?
An anonymous reader writes "Researchers are debating the ethics of so-called 'nudging technologies' — ambient technology systems designed to shape or influence human behavior, such as an installation which encourages people to take the stairs rather than the lift by using hanging colored balls to represent stairs vs lift usage. A researcher on the project said: 'Most people, when we asked them, "Do you think this has changed your behavior," they said no. But the data showed that it had actually done that.'"
Isn't this the goal of advertizing? To change people's behavior without them realizing it's being changed? Now we'll have all sorts of subliminal installations guiding us to the desired purchases.
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To be pedantic, Those nudging technologies are being used to help people..but they could also be used for many things. They're tools.
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Nudging technologies have been around for as long as people have traded one good for another. Prices ending in .99, "buy one, get one free", and the ever popular "act now" are all examples of efforts to nudge someone to action.
It can only be a good thing that these subliminal forces are finally being harnessed to encourage positive behavior (e.g., stairs versus elevators or washing hands after using the bathroom)
Well seat belt laws go beyond advice and suggestion to the point of coercion (i.e. Don't do what -we- think is good for -you- and you will be punished), so I don't think that's a good example. But as far as this topic goes, I agree. No ethical issue at all.
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I'm actually an industrial engineering student who studies cognitive ergonomics (pretty much social engineering). I'm actually quite interested in "nudging technologies" and am doing a bit of research in related fields. I took a Psych class that discussed the relevance of subliminal messaging and covered a bit of the controversy surrounding it. The professor mentioned something strange: subliminal messaging doesn't make an individual do anything they otherwise would not do if persuaded. You can only get standard behavior that the individual would be interested in performing on their own. These nudging technologies do affect an individual's autonomy by affecting the choices they make, but, in the end, they still can make their own decision to take the elevator. An important contrast to consider is that the alternative to make people take the stairs more is to coerce them by making rules. Is that any more ethical? At least in a nudge system they have the option to do as they wish. Sure, the individual may not be aware that they are influenced, but it would be a system incredibly hard to abuse. I've had to deal w/ individuals who throw their newly emptied coke bottles into the trash when the trash can is directly next to the trash can. I don't feel that the best approach is to convince them with general aphorisms about the environment but rather to nudge them that way we can all get along to taking care of more important problems.
I like losing arguments, it just means that I can take your point and make it my own.
But the story, if you chose to read it, would tell you that the research was conducted by a British university and the devices they monitored were in fact lifts. And to be pedantic, American is the regional dialect.
A bunch of libertarians will shortly show up to argue that seatbelt laws are unethical.
...And they'll be right, at least about the laws that apply to adults driving their own vehicles.
One of the examples from TFA is a set of colored balls, hanging in an open space by in a stairwell. The bright, cheerful balls represent people taking the stairs, and the grey balls represent people taking the elevators (lifts). There are pressure pads used to count people, and the counts are used to estimate stair usage and elevator usage. The colored balls are just a visual indicator.
According to the article, people say things like "You took the elevator... you are making the grey balls go up, you know" or similar.
And now, my point: the colored balls are not what people care about. People already have an opinion about whether stairs or elevator are "better" in any sense, and the colored balls display is leveraging that. I could use the same technology to track how many people look out the East window, vs how many people look out the West window, and I'm pretty sure nobody would care which color of balls is "winning" at the moment. The colored balls in and of themselves have no power.
I remember in Junior High School a teacher waxed philosophical about wrist watches. "Just think, we strap them on and then obey them. We rush through lunch because of them. A tiny and simple device can drastically shape our behavior!" (Probably a horribly inaccurate quote; this is a memory I haven't thought of in years.) Even at the time I rejected this thesis. It seemed to me (and still seems to me) that the watch itself has no power; it is the whole structure of civilization, at least where it is intersecting with your own life, that makes you care what time it is. If you took the watch off, you would still hurry through lunch, because you need to be done with lunch by some specific time. Indeed, without the watch, you might hurry more, since you might not be sure how much time you have.
The map is not the territory. Neither a watch nor colored balls nor any of the other stuff in TFA can compel behavior. Simple ergonomics can give a mild nudge; tricks that leverage things people care about can give a stronger nudge, but only because the people already care about something.
So the whole "ethics" thing is overblown. And as others have noted, that was one throwaway line from TFA; it's odd that it was chosen for the summary.
steveha
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