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Category: Project

Description: Public groups’ attitudes toward behavioral interventions (or nudges) can be important both for policy makers who design and deploy nudges, and for researchers who try to understand when and why some nudges are supported while others are not. Until now, research on public attitudes towards nudges focused either on state or country level comparisons, or on correlations with individual-level traits, and has neglected to study how different social groups (such as minorities) might view nudges. As minorities are almost always less represented in such surveys, one must measure their attitudes directly. Minorities might hold attitudes toward nudges that are different from the majority’s because they subscribe less to goals of the greater good, or because they trust the government less, or because they might feel they are being targeted by the nudge and thus show reactance to it. Using a large and representative sample, we tested the attitudes of two distinct minority groups in Israel (Israeli Arabs and Ultra-Orthodox Jews) to discover that nudges that were against a group’s held social norm, or that promoted a more general, pro-social, goal, were less supported by minorities. Contrary to expectations, these differences could not be explained by differences in trust in government. We discuss implications for public policy and for the research and applications of behavioral interventions.