Untested messages can harm our health
Lee de Wit (Nudge theory could heal Brexit Britain’s divide over lockdown, 20 May) is persuasive that telling people to follow common sense is likely to prove a lot less effective than more specific interventions, and also that engaging with the diverse attitudes causing varying responses to communications is key to effective message design.
But nudge “theory” is a slight misnomer – it offers only imprecise ideas about types of message likely to be more effective. Instead, nudge advocates have always endorsed the use of randomised controlled trials to identify effective messages.
By causing undue alarm or complacency, poor communications can have a greater public health impact than the risks that they attempt to describe. Moreover, as intuitions about the effects of messages on behaviour cannot be trusted, there is no substitute for empirical validation that can be done quickly and cheaply. Accordingly, it should be considered no more acceptable to release an untested pandemic communication than an untested drug.
Prof Peter Ayton
Department of psychology, City, University of London
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