We are all familiar with the biases that can lead policymakers and professionals astray. Doctors and lawyers may be overconfident; teachers may have preferences for or against students based on gender, race, and sexual orientation; and judges on judicial panels may be influenced by the ideological orientation of their colleagues. Overconfidence and social preferences can all become traps in which unconscious biases, rather than objective analysis, influence decision-making. So can other factors like limited attention, confirmation bias (preferring evidence that agrees with one’s preconceived notions) and a tendency to be influenced by framing (the way options are communicated or framed).
While behavioral economists have long been aware of those decision-making traps, they are especially cognizant of how people can fall into them when they are operating under conditions of fatigue, stress, and time constraint. They know how these traps—functioning as cognitive default mechanisms—can cause policymakers to make sub-optimal decisions with significant impacts on public welfare.
Testing an Online Course
With that in mind, we wanted to test how well an online training course could improve decision-making skills. Could a course that familiarized policymakers with behavioral economics concepts and unconscious biases make a difference? By making people reflect on their choices, get feedback on their performance, and better understand the risks of making wrong choices, could it help them improve their problem-solving skills and perform better? Our results, provided in a recent study, were encouraging.
Since 2020, the IDB has been offering a free, interactive, multi-week-long course aimed at policymakers in Latin America and the Caribbean. The course, which had 25,000 registered participants by 2023, introduces behavioral economics concepts and the role of behavioral economics in public policy. It also examines our ability to make decisions, our unconscious preferences and beliefs, and other factors that affect our information processing. Importantly, it does so using real case studies in the areas of taxation and health, including decisions around the COVID-19 pandemic.
We randomly divided students who had registered in the course into two groups, a treatment and a control group, and provided them with a questionnaire with basic demographic questions. We then administered a survey test to the control group before the course began, testing both their cognitive skills and knowledge of behavioral insights. Both the control group and treatment group took the same tests after the course was over.
Impressive Results
We found that the treatment group did much better on the test after taking the course—the median number of right answers increased by 50%—than the control group did taking the test before the course began. The control group also improved its results before and after the course, indicating greater understanding and learning.
We found no heterogenous effects when we examined demographic characteristics. Neither gender, academic degree, or professional experience, in other words, had an impact on the results. What did matter was an apparent improvement in decision-making skills, on the ability to override fast, automatic, and intuitively attractive choices for more well-reasoned and rational ones. This showed not only that training could improve cognitive processing, but that online courses could engender those improvements.
A Call for More Research
That is not the final word. Further research might test policymakers regularly after they take the course and examine the decisions they make in their lives as professionals. In the meantime, our study does show that we are not necessarily doomed to obey our instincts and unconscious prejudices—and that training can help us to avoid cognitive traps.
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