What Motivates Paternalism? An Experimental Study

Abstract

We study experimentally when, why, and how people intervene in others’ choices. Choice Architects (CAs) construct opportunity sets containing bundles of time-indexed payments for Choosers. CAs frequently prevent impatient choices despite opportunities to provide advice, believing Choosers benefit. They violate common behavioral welfare criteria by removing impatient options even when all payoffs are delayed. CAs intervene not by removing options they wish they could resist when choosing for themselves (mistakes-projective paternalism), but rather as if they seek to align others’ choices with their own aspirations (ideals-projective paternalism). Laboratory choices predict subjects’ support for actual paternalistic policies. (JEL C92, D12, D15)

Nudging Enforcers: How Norm Perceptions and Motives for Lying Shape Sanctions

“…From an applied perspective -and in line with the libertarian paternalism approach (Thaler and Sunstein, 2021) -, the nudge interventions evaluated in our paper could be implemented by those who intervene (e.g., government bodies) by strategically targeting those with norm enforcement power with the relevant social information. Given the observed responsiveness of norm enforcers to such interventions, our study adds an additional layer to what choice architects can do to achieve behavior change (Ambuehl et al, 2021). This refers to, for example, environments in which norm enforcers are feed information about factually true descriptive or injunctive norms.…”

Affective Paternalism

“…Though sparse, the current literature on paternalism aligns well with this cognitive track of the EIC-P Model. For instance, studies have found that characteristics of options (B1) such as the degree of certainty or availability of information (Daniels & Zlatev, 2019;Lusk et al, 2013;Martin et al, 2016) influence paternalistic decisions, and so do characteristics of agents (B2) such as confirmation (Banuri et al, 2019) or self-projection bias (Ambuehl et al, 2021;Foerster et al, 2017;Gangadharan et al, 2015;Ifcher & Zarghamee, 2020;Jacobsson et al, 2007;Jacobsson et al, 2007;Lupoli et al, 2018Lupoli et al, , 2020. Likewise, characteristics of targets (B3) such as self-control or cognitive ability have been shown to significantly influence a paternalistic agent's decision-making (Bushong & Gagnon-Bartsch, 2021;Krawczyk & Wozny, 2017;Sheffer et al, 2017;Uhl, 2011).…”

“…Only a sparse literature examines paternalistic decision-making (see Ambuehl et al (2021) for a review), though most of it focuses on the context of the paternalistic decision (like availability of information) or on stable attributes (like personality traits) of the decisionmaker. The role of affect, however, has been ignored so far.…”

“…Damasio, 1994;Lerner & Keltner, 2001;Lerner et al, 2007;Loewenstein et al, 2001;Slovic et al, 2007) and that on paternalistic decision-making (e.g. Ambuehl et al, 2021;Bushong & Gagnon-Bartsch, 2021;Daniels & Zlatev, 2019), to obtain a more complete picture of how paternalistic decisions come about.…”

Rejecting Non-Paternalist Motivation: An Experimental Test

“…3 We first ask what spectators perceive to be a fair way to distribute income in the following scenario: A pair of workers are assigned the task of identifying which letter is next a number on a list. Each worker is assigned a separate independently 1 This article contributes to the experimental literature on paternalism (Ambuehl, Bernheim, and Ockenfels, 2021;Buser, Putterman, and van der Weele, 2016;Durante, Putterman, and Van der Weele, 2014) by considering how the motivation for imposing fairness views upon groups relates to the preferences of the affected. It introduces paternalist and non-paternalist motivation, which differs from the classic notion of paternalism as acting to avoid others from falling in harm's way against their own will (Coons and Weber, 2013;Thaler and Sunstein, 2003).…”