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The Ethical Quandary of Default Opt-Ins
Manipulating people’s choices should raise concerns about boundaries and power.
Posted April 5, 2021 Reviewed by Davia Sills
Key points
- Using a default opt-in is a popular way to manipulate behavior.
- The manipulation's suitability and purpose can be interpreted differently depending on the observer's bias.
- The power asymmetry between the manipulator and the manipulated raises ethical concerns.
This past Sunday, there were two articles on the New York Times website about default opt-ins. One was about encouraging people to get tested for COVID-19 using different nudges, including the default opt-in. The other article was about how former president Donald Trump’s campaign used default opt-ins to get contributors to set up recurring campaign contributions. The two stories had diametrically opposed and fiercely contradictory takes on default opt-ins that I want to explore in this post.
A brief primer on default opt-ins
The default opt-in is among the most well-known and widely used behavioral economics tools (I would rank it top 5), employed or at least considered by virtually everyone who is interested in influencing others' behavior.
The basic idea is simple. When presented with a choice, people are more likely to stick with whatever default choice is given to them for various reasons. So if you want to influence a person to do something you think is virtuous, like contribute to a company’s 401(K) retirement savings plan or donate their organs after death, you make these options the default. If the person wants to choose differently, they have to actively opt-out.
The fundamental contradiction
Let’s return to the two New York Times articles, starting with the laudatory one first. In “How to nudge people into getting tested for the Coronavirus,” the author argues that a default opt-in is an effective way to get people to participate in repeated COVID-19 testing by their employers:
“…coronavirus screening programs are more likely to see wider participation if they are opt-out rather than opt-in. 'The more you ask people to put in their own cognitive efforts and behavioral efforts into this, the less likely they’re going to do it,' said Derek Reed, who directs the applied behavioral economics laboratory at the University of Kansas.”
The other article is scathing. In “How Trump steered supporters into unwitting donations,” the author presents a very different perspective:
“Facing a cash crunch and getting badly outspent by the Democrats, the campaign had begun last September to set up recurring donations by default for online donors, for every week until the election. Contributors had to wade through a fine-print disclaimer and manually uncheck a box to opt out.”
Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder
The method is identical in both cases. Opt-in is provided as the default option. The individual has to actively opt-out if they don’t want to perform the desired behavior (get tested for COVID-19 repeatedly in the first case and make a recurring weekly donation in the second case). Yet, the way it is portrayed in the stories is dramatically different.
In the COVID-19 testing article, default opt-in is described positively: “more likely to see wider participation if [the programs] are opt-out instead of opt-in.” In the recurring donation article, however, it is described with harsh, critical phrases: “intentional scheme,” “(having) to wade through a fine-print disclaimer and manually uncheck a box to opt-out,” “made that disclaimer increasingly opaque,” and “featured lines of text in bold and capital letters that overwhelmed the opt-out language.”
It’s not difficult to imagine that a media outlet with a different political orientation could have described the two cases in very different, even reversed, terms.
Three ethical concerns with default opt-ins
Anyone using a default opt-in must make many design decisions, such as how to word the request(s), whether to use more than one default opt-in or opt-out, what font sizes and colors to use, and so on. Each variable can make the choice task more or less manipulative. The total manipulative power of the default opt-in plus the inconsistent evaluations we saw in the two stories only underscore the ethical concerns behind it that need urgent attention. Here are three of the most serious issues.
1. Which behaviors are virtuous and suitable for default opt-ins, and which ones are not? What criteria should be used to decide?
Whether the behavior is deemed acceptable largely depends on the manipulator’s (or a biased observer’s) perspective and goals. A different, adversarial manipulator or observer would have very different ideas of acceptability. Even manipulated individuals may think differently. For example, it is quite likely a handful of people are tangibly inconvenienced or even harmed by taking repeated COVID-19 tests, and there are Trump supporters who were only too happy to contribute to his campaign every week.
As it stands, as long as the method of manipulation and the manipulated behavior is legal, anyone with sufficient knowledge and resources can use any default opt-in. This seems untenable and irresponsible.
2. How much manipulation is acceptable, and at what point does it become excessive? Again, who gets to decide?
Academic studies generally take a “more is better” stance. Saving a higher percentage of one’s paycheck is better. Consuming fewer calories is better. And so on.
While this might be true in some instances or contexts, many areas where behavior is manipulated have limits of reasonableness. Perhaps manipulating employees to be tested for COVID-19 every week is OK, but having them opt-in by default to be tested every day is unethical? And is increasing employees’ COVID-19 vaccination rate using the same type of default opt-in acceptable, or is it out of bounds? If the Trump campaign had set up recurring donations once a month or once a quarter, would that be acceptable (assuming weekly nudged contributions are exploitative)?
This issue is mostly overlooked in academic and practical discussions. However, these are difficult questions that need to be answered with the same rigor that researchers put into designing experiments to test default opt-ins and without being biased by their political orientation.
3. How does the power asymmetry between the manipulator and the manipulated affect the previous two issues?
As I see it, this is the most perplexing question of the three. Using a default opt-in requires an asymmetrical power relationship. The manipulator is powerful, and the manipulated is weak. A government can nudge its citizens, an employer can nudge its employees, and a business can nudge its customers. But the reverse is not possible. If I tried to nudge the U.S. government to lower my tax bill, an outcome that I might, no doubt, consider to be virtuous and acceptable, I would very quickly find myself in prison.
Given the enormous and asymmetrical power differential, whenever the default opt-in is used, it will only take one thoughtless or ill-conceived (not to mention malicious) default opt-in campaign to produce tremendous and irreversible harm to a great many people.
