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Politics & government

IT'S ON YOU

Nick Chater George Loewenstein

How Corporations and Behavioral Scientists Have Convinced Us that We're to Blame for Society's Deepest Problems

Two leading behavioral scientists argue we should reject "nudge" policies and stop blaming personal failure for society's failures

Two decades ago, behavioral economics burst from academia to the halls of power, on both sides of the Atlantic, with the promise that correcting individual biases could help transform society. The hope was that governments could deploy a new approach to addressing society's deepest challenges, from inadequate retirement planning to climate changegently, but cleverly, nudging people to make choices for their own good and the good of the planet.

It was all very convenient, and false. As behavioral scientists Nick Chater and George Loewenstein show in It's on You, nudges rarely work, and divert us from policies that do. For example, being nudged to switch to green energy doesn't cut carbon, and it distracts from the real challenge of building a low-carbon economy.

It's on You shows how the rich and powerful have repeatedly used a clever sleight of hand: blaming individuals for social problems, with behavioral economics an unwitting accomplice, while lobbying against the systemic changes that could actually help. Rather than trying to "fix" the victims of bad policies, real progress requires rewriting the social and economic rulebook for the common good.

Nick Chater is a professor of behavioral science at the Warwick Business School. George Loewenstein is the Herbert A. Simon University Professor of Economics and Psychology at Carnegie Mellon University. Both have written and edited a number of books in their respective fields. Chater resides in Oxford, UK, and Loewenstein resides in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

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Book Published 2026-01-27 by Basic Venture

Comments

Two of the leading scientists of human decision-making, on which the 'nudge' movement in behavioral economics is based, write that nudges have vastly over promised and under-delivered. Instead of trying to solve big, systematic problems by marginally changing how individuals respond to perverse incentives, they persuasively advise us to systematically change those incentives with the tools of government and democracy.

A wise and deeply-researched book and a stirring call to action. It is rare to see such expert thinkers reflect so profoundly on the risks of their own field.

This is an excellent bookengaging and well written. The authors convincingly show that in a system with complex interactions, nudge-style interventions at the individual level fail when the problem lies in the structure. They also reveal how large corporations play a key role in obscuring this fact.

This excellent book powerfully argues that focusing on individual psychology and incentives (and nudges) for tackling some of the most vexing problems of todayfrom obesity to climate change, health care and inequalityis a losing proposition. Not only is it insufficient, but it shifts the blame onto the victims of systemic failures, often undergirded by political economy factors and excessive corporate power. From two experts in behavioral economics and social psychology, we have a master class on how to blend individual psychology with institutions, so that people are encouraged to get involved and develop solutions to our urgent problems via the democratic process.

If you believe corporate America, preventing a climate crisis is up to you. So is putting a halt to the obesity epidemic, stopping mass shootings, and fixing America's dysfunctional healthcare system, which delivers the poorest care in the affluent world at the highest cost. Chater and Loewenstein make a convincing case that this is little more than a self-serving lie. Indeed, the proposition that our greatest societal problems must be solved through individual action is leading America astray.