Thoughts on BC Politics and More

Canada’s Privy Council Office (PCO) has a behavioural science unit established under former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that quietly shapes public policy and influences citizen compliance through psychological experiments and data modelling. The Impact and Innovation Unit (IIU), which bases its framework on a UK government initiative and tools issued by the World Health Organization (WHO), has quietly pioneered its approach to behaviour change using psychology, economics and social sciences for years  — but its role became most visible in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.  The IIU conducts behaviour-modifying trials and public “challenges” that test government communication strategies and incentives to encourage compliance with government objectives ... CLICK HERE for the full story

  ... Governments have always intervened in economic and social life. Regulation, financial incentives, information, and awareness-raising, as well as training and education, are the measures traditionally used in the deployment of public policies. Since the Second World War, and up until recently, psychological techniques were not usually part of the government toolkit, or were only anecdotally so. But the advent of behavioural science and neuroscience has offered leaders a new way to intervene. This Economic Note explains the way in which politics can mobilize psychology and proposes a number of recommendations designed to protect fundamental rights and democracy ... CLICK HERE for the full report