This blog post highlights seven novels that delve into the complex relationship between humans and technology. These works explore themes of happiness, virtual reality, identity, and the impact of technology on society and individuals.
Over the last year, the CCBI has set up an agreement with EU universities wanting to give their MSc students (trained in behavioural sciences) the possibility of a 3-5 months traineeship in our centre. The “visiting studentship” provides top-level students the opportunity to get hands-on experience of our work within the EU policymaking cycle. We hosted the first visiting student in 2023, and are looking forward to welcoming two more after this summer. Currently, 10 EU universities have signed an agreement with us: KU Leuven (BE), University of Cyprus (CY), Lyon (FR), Heidelberg, Nürnberg (DE), UCD Dublin (IE), Siena, Trento (IT), Universidade Catholica Portuguesa (PT) and Radboud (NL). We are looking to expand this list, especially covering EU Countries not yet represented.
Welcome to the 6th edition of the Newsletter of the Competence Centre on Behavioural Insights. As you will see below, the last half-year has again been busy and we are happy to share news on a number of our activities. First, we want to highlight two initiatives in particular.
Effectively mitigating climate change necessitates global behavioural shifts, yet optimal strategies remain uncertain. A global study tested 11 expert-crowdsourced interventions on 59,440 participants from 63 countries, focusing on four outcomes: beliefs, policy support, information sharing, and tree planting. Results showed interventions had small effects, mainly on non-sceptics, and varied by outcome. Beliefs improved by reducing psychological distance (2.3%), policy support by writing to future generations (2.6%), and information sharing by inducing negative emotions (12.1%). However, no intervention boosted the effortful task of tree planting, with some even reducing it. Intervention effectiveness depended on initial climate beliefs, highlighting the need for tailored approaches.
As a follow up to our workshop with fair AI experts (see next item below for more information), we collaborated with colleagues from the Design team within the EU Policy Lab to organize a workshop with policy-makers at the EU Commission to discuss the role of human oversight in AI-supported decision-making. This interactive half-day event included a presentation of our AI discrimination project's general findings, group discussions to unpack the concept of human oversight and its challenges, reflections on the implications for various Commission Directorates-General, and a wrap-up session to consolidate the discussions and outline next steps.
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2024 is another year where crucial decisions will be taken by many of us, both individually and collectively. The European Commission will also adopt initiatives in various fields. The role of the CCBI, within the EU Policy Lab, is to inform such initiatives – where relevant - by providing the appropriate behavioural evidence. This year, our team will keep working on a few important issues, including support for climate change policies, food waste reduction, health promotion, migration, the use of AI, and more. In what follows, we provide an overview of our on-going work and underline relevant scientific advances.
Thanks to the good attendance and positive reception of the 2023 seminars, we are happy to continue the CCBI seminar series in 2024. The CCBI seminar series features monthly presentations by leaders in their respective research fields. The series covers issues concerning both behavioural insights as a policy tool and implications for specific areas of EU policy. The next seminar will be on the 25th of January. Click below for more information.
The new i-bex platform designed to conduct online experiments, also with EC colleagues as participants, is up and running. You can register below, and you will soon be invited to participate in short and, hopefully, interesting studies developed by CCBI and external experts. The goal is to contribute to science but also find ways to work more effectively. Michal Krawczyk is the CCBI colleague responsible for i-bex.
The CCBI keeps maintaining strong ties with academia with two instruments, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for visiting students, and a Collaborative Doctoral Partnership with selected universities. The MoU has already been signed by seven universities, with more signing soon. The MoU offers postgraduate students, trained in behavioural sciences, a top-level work experience of 3-4 months applying behavioural insights to EU policy. The CCBI will also be hosting a second PhD student for 24 months as a full member of our team with a status of grant-holder. They will contribute to our activities, access primary data and complete their PhD thesis.
The Nobel Prize awarded to Professor Claudia Goldin, for advancing our understanding of women's labour market outcomes provides the perfect opportunity to highlight the ongoing gender equality projects within the BI team. In the CCBI, Elisa Orlandi (a doctoral student from the University of Bologna) is mainly conducting work on gender. Check out our blog post!
Our colleague Hendrik Bruns participated in two sessions at the Cop28 EU side events. One was about disinformation - Tackling disinformation on climate change; and the other was about food waste - Reducing consumer food waste, protecting the planet. Click the links below to see the recordings. Disinformation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MKZYABePHs&ab_channel=EUClimateAction Food waste: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbLcfGjXUJQ
At the OECD's 2023 digital education conference, our colleague Vicky Charisi shared preliminary findings from a study with Andrea Blasco on the impact of Generative AI in classrooms. We conducted a randomised control trial at three high schools to explore how interaction with AI affects students' reliance on human-provided information and their performance with "Socratic" AIs, which are not delivering complete solutions. We presented preliminary results and offered insights about how to integrate generative AI tools to enhance learning.
This project aims to investigate how effective certain persuasion techniques are in rendering falsities convincing to people. Through an experimental survey across 5 Member States, the study aims to investigate the role of these techniques in affecting individual’s agreement with correct and incorrect information about climate change. The findings will contribute to a better understanding of misinformation and the persuasion techniques involved, supporting the EU’s strategy against disinformation.
This study explored the use of QR codes for accessing food information. Conducted online with 3,420 participants from Spain, Germany, and Bulgaria, it found that on average, QR codes were scanned 24% of the time, and as many as 37% of the participants never scanned any QR codes. Products with QR codes slowed decision-making and reduced consumers' knowledge about the products. This suggests that delivering food information via QR codes rather than on paper labels has a negative impact on consumers.
Can correcting misperceptions affect attitudes and policy preferences? In a recently finished working paper we make (some) people realise that a large majority of displaced people from Ukraine are women. We hypothesise that this may affect their perceptions, as it is often found that many people are less concerned about female than about male migrants and refugees. Read the paper to see how it worked out.
This study examined the effectiveness of debunking and prebunking misinformation, and the effect of trust in the source of the intervention. 5,228 participants from 4 Member States were exposed to prebunk or debunk interventions, along with a revealed or hidden source manipulation. Both interventions were effective in changing participants' views and revealing the source did not significantly impact effectiveness. The results suggest that the European Commission and others can confidently debunk and prebunk misinformation regardless of the trust level of its recipients.
This Science for Policy Report summarises the findings from social and behavioural sciences research agendas covering the blood donation field, including theoretical models and evidence on motivation that leads to blood donor intentions and behaviour. Additionally, it encompasses studies testing the effects of behavioural interventions to increase blood donations. The report also describes and reports on the current practices used in blood services across the EU 27.
The CCBI is contributing to a project funded by the European Union via the Technical Support Instrument, managed by the European Commission Directorate-General for Structural Reform Support (DG REFORM), to support Austria, Belgium, and Portugal in strengthening tax compliance by implementing behavioural insights. The project includes training for capacity building, quantitative and qualitative analysis of the current situation, and field trials for specific behavioural interventions tailored to the needs of the Member States.
On November 22nd, we held a workshop to boost energy savings in scientific labs. It focused on identifying barriers and opportunities for energy savings, informing the design of pilot behavioural interventions, and exploring JRC's role in EU lab energy efficiency. Activities included assessing lab scientists' and managers' hopes, fears, and energy use knowledge alongside the behavioural potential for energy optimisation. We brainstormed barriers and solutions to energy monitoring, behaviour change and cross-lab coordination and evaluated these ideas.
