EPISTEMEBEHAVIOUR · Behaviour, knowledge, policy. The philosophy of science perspective on the applications of the behavioural sciences in policymaking.

Behaviour, knowledge, policy. The philosophy of science perspective on the applications of the behavioural sciences in policymaking.

The behavioural sciences have become increasingly important for addressing societal challenges. Proponents of the recent applications of behavioural science to policy believe that important societal problems can be addressed by interventions informed by behavioural research. It is the motivation of the research project to assess the societal value of the so-called behavioural public policy. In order to achieve this I work out a novel philosophy of science approach that allows to apply a well-informed and critical perspective to the applications of the behavioural sciences in policymaking. The research project challenges the epistemic presumption underlying the behavioural approach to policy and shows that it rests on an image of the behavioural sciences which simplifies in consequential ways the understanding of the kind of knowledge the behavioural sciences provide. The analysis of what is actually known on the basis of behavioural research has been lacking in recent debates on behavioural policy and nudging. I pioneer such an analysis.I show that the current practices of relying on the behavioural sciences in policymaking are based on an epistemic presumption which is not substantiated in research on the basis of which behavioural policies are claimed to be designed. Acknowledging that behavioural policy (and the debate on it) rest on a consequentially simplified view of the behavioural sciences, enables a complete change of perspective on the role of behavioural research in policy settings. If behavioural economics and cognitive psychology don’t offer us knowledge which proponents of behavioural policy claim to have, in what sense are they ‘policy relevant’? Conclusions of my research are that the main function of the behavioural research in policymaking is to reframe societal and policy challenges as problems of individual human behaviour. Such framing, if widely accepted, has important consequences: it makes it difficult to bring to policy other research perspectives which could be useful in addressing societal challenges, including other approaches in behavioural research such as the vast public health literature on socio-economic factors influencing health behaviour. Also, it neither allows us to account for the political and redistributive effects of behavioural policies, nor to consider other than behaviour modification uses of behavioural research. Thus, apart from contributing to the academic research by proposing original and novel approach in philosophy of science, my research is policy relevant, and also has the potential to foster the public understanding of science and its use in policy contexts.

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