In this eighth and final installment of the Expert Commentary series from the BIAS project, Marianne Bertrand talks about the potential for a “broader behavioral agenda” that would include larger contributions from psychology and could transform public policy.

The BIAS project offers overwhelming evidence that insights from the behavioral sciences can be successfully leveraged to improve access to human services among the poorest and most vulnerable families in the United States. While the levels of the effects of the nudge-type interventions studied in the project are quantitatively modest overall, because they correspond to “nano-sized” investments, the returns are impressive.

The private sector has been a long-time, avid user of behavioral “tricks” such as those embedded in the BIAS project, but it is refreshing to finally see those same insights leveraged systematically by the social sector to improve the implementation of public policy.

Put in other words, the focus on small changes that has been made popular by Sunstein and Thaler’s book Nudge may counterproductively restrain how we are currently conceiving of importing behavioral sciences insights into the formulation of public policy.

Read the full article about the impact of behavioral science by Marianne Bertrand at MDRC.