Behavioural public policies for the social brain

Abstract Behavioural public policy is increasingly interested in scaling-up experimental insights to deliver systemic changes. Recent evidence shows some forms of individual behaviour change, such as nudging, are limited scale. We argue that we can scale-up change by accounting for nuanced social complexities which human responses behavioural policies situated. introduce the idea ‘social brain’, a construct help practitioners and policymakers facilitate greater transmission welfare-improving behaviours. The brain collection brains, who connected other brains through cues’, affected material immaterial properties physical environment they situated (‘social complex’). Ignoring these cues complex runs risk fostering localised changes, actors, neither scalable nor lasting. identify pathways changes brain: either path dependencies or critical mass shifts behaviours, moderated brain's property cohesion multiplicity situational dispositional factors. In this way, stimulated one part reach parts evolve dynamically. recommend designing engage different brain.