Still Think You Are Thinking For Yourself?!

The Nudge Unit; causing people to change their behaviours.

The Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) – also known unofficially as the “Nudge Unit” – is a social purpose organisation that generates and applies behavioural insights, officially to inform policy and improve public services.

Following nudge theory, using social engineering and techniques in psychology and marketing, the purpose of the organisation is to influence public thinking and decision making. This is to improve compliance with government policy to thereby decrease social and government costs related to inaction and poor compliance with policy and regulation. B.I.T. has expanded into other countries.

Psychologists have been running the world for years. If you think it’s about money then think again. One influential psychologist, Edward Louis Bernays, was an Austrian-American pioneer in the field of public relations and propaganda in the 1950s, and is referred to in his obituary as “the father of public relations”.