Fake jobseekers' questionnaire reveals a new kind of nanny state

This bogus test is a blatant attempt to 'shape' people and makes a mockery of Tory indictments of government bossiness

by Richard Seymour

A questionnaire for jobseekers gave the same results regardless of the answers submitted. Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA

 

A questionnaire filled out by jobseekers at the behest of the government has been shown to be "fake". It supposedly tested one's strengths, but the results were the same regardless of the answers submitted. Since jobseekers were told to fill it in on pain of losing benefits, they are quite angry about the dupe. But why were they conned?

The questionnaire was based on the assumptions of behavioural economics, which has been institutionalised in the government's "nudge" unit, now itself due to become a profit-making venture. Behavioural economics emerged as a minority discipline in the 1970s, in response to the manifest failings of neoclassical economics. The mainstream economic paradigm assumed that agents in the market are "rational actors", whose actions are determined strictly by their net gain in any transaction. Behavioural economists noticed that there were too many examples of behaviour – either altruistic or self-destructive – that didn't comply with this notion of self-interested rationality. They thus sought a more realistic model of decision-making.

Borrowing certain concepts from the discipline of psychology, they decided that human actions were based far more on framing (how a set of options is situated relative to other information, stereotypes and so on) and heuristics (rough rules of thumb that people develop from life experience) than on cold market logic.

This is where the government comes in. Behavioural economics has been dubbed "libertarian paternalism" because it involves ostensibly minimal government intervention, but at the same time obliges the government to carefully shape how people "frame" their options. It was under New Labour that this discipline was incorporated into neoliberal governance in the UK, but David Cameron associated himself with this soft paternalism from the beginning.

There are two things wrong with this approach. The first is that behavioural economics might provide various means by which people can be manipulated into certain choices, within limits, but it cannot explain human behaviour.

For example, one of the key theorists of behavioural economics explains that the reason why people "buy things they can't afford on a credit card" is because they have a tendency to "overly discount the future". This explains an aspect of the financial crisis, which is the high indebtedness of households. It also points to a solution. According to behavioural economics, people will take more rational decisions if the information is framed differently. Thus, altering people's perception of the prospects will change how risk-averse or otherwise they are.

Yet to say that people discount the future is circular and explains nothing. It is more straightforward and illuminating to say that people bought on credit during the boom because this was the only way to participate in the consumption that others enjoyed. Governments had embarked on policies designed to suppress labour costs at the same time as they unleashed financial markets. They created housing bubbles and stock market booms to stimulate growth and consumption, all based on debt. And they extolled the "risk-takers" to the heavens, while demonising the poor. The result was that millions of people shifted to a state of high indebtedness. This is how changes in social behaviour are generally achieved: through collective political, economic and cultural shifts; rather than individually, in ones and twos, in response to psychological manipulation.


The second flaw in this approach is that it entails a subtly authoritarian style of government. In the case of the jobseekers' questionnaire the authoritarianism is less subtle, as there was a substantial material threat. The questionnaire, with its improving messages, was too easy for people to detect and decode. The idea is that people should be ignorant of how they are being shaped. Like the layout of a supermarket, which encourages shoppers to fill their baskets, the "framing" should appear just as a neutral feature of the situation. To accept this means accepting that the government has your best interests at heart, and knows what's good for you.

Of course, government has always been in part about "self-government" – techniques of power that seek to shape and discipline individual subjects, in their family life, their morals, their very "soul". Such techniques have been instrumental to the success of neoliberalism. But the implementation of this strategy represents a shift in a paternalist direction, and makes a mockery of those solemn Tory indictments of government bossiness. In this sense, it is surprising to see Cameron openly adopt a genuine philosophy of the "nanny state".

But the nanny state – a sneaky, manipulative and oppressive creature – is perhaps the logical successor to a welfare state supported by citizens and universally accessible to all.

Guardian