Policy making with behavioral insight

Abstract

Design of governmental interventions in the recent years has been increasingly influenced by insights gained from behavioral sciences. We provide an overview of the recent report on such policy interventions designed by the Social and Behavioral Sciences Team (SBST) of the White House and executed in collaboration with other government agencies in 2016 in eight target policy areas. Among these, we focus on SBST’s project on increasing efficiency in governmental organizations. We first discuss the notions that SBST has drawn on for
generating its executed interventions: successful managerial traits and growth mindset. Then, we introduce the concept of error cultures that has not been used in this project. We argue that adopting a positive error culture adds value to organizations and increases efficiency by reducing defensive decision-making.