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It's On You - Nick Chater and George Loewenstein *****

Going on the cover you might think this was a political polemic - and admittedly there's an element of that - but the reason it's so good is quite different. It shows how behavioural economics and social psychology have led us astray by putting the focus way too much on individuals. A particular target is the concept of nudges which (as described in Brainjacking) have been hugely over-rated. But overall the key problem ties to another psychological concept: framing.

Huge kudos to both Nick Chater and George Loewenstein - a behavioural scientist and an economics and psychology professor - for having the guts to take on the flaws in their own earlier work and that of colleagues, because they make clear just how limited and potentially dangerous is the belief that individuals changing their behaviour can solve large-scale problems.

The main thesis of the book is that there are two ways to approach the major problems we face - an 'i-frame' where we focus on the individual and an 's-frame' where we concentrate on the system. As the authors put it, the first is about helping people to get better at playing the game, while the second involves changing the rules.

As Chater and Loewenstein point out, particularly since around 1980 in the US, but also to a lesser degree in the UK, the focus has been particularly on the i-frame, arguing that government rules, often at the heart of the s-frame, get in the way of business and progress. This i-frame focus has been bolstered by nudges and other social psychology measures which have failed to make much difference. Meanwhile a lack of s-frame activity is driven by intense lobbying from corporate and special interest groups.

The book covers a wide range of issues where this is the case: our response to climate change, obesity, pension planning, US health care, inequality, plastic waste, privacy, addiction to prescription drugs, gun violence and road deaths. Time after time, we see successful attempts to deflect the public from the need for system change by suggesting it's down to individuals to sort things out, where in reality individuals can either only scratch the surface or are totally unequipped to do so, leaving vested interests reaping the benefits and the problems only getting worse.

In a sense, Chater and Loewenstein get a top rating from me despite themselves as the book is not brilliantly written. It's highly repetitive and the structure isn't great: each of the first five issues gets an over-long chapter of its own, while the remainder are handled just as well in a single chapter. But the point the authors make is so important that it totally overwhelms any issue with the presentation.

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