Choice Architecture as an Apparatus for Biopower
1: ☐ Tick this box to opt in
2: ☐ Tick this box to opt out
Do you think there’s a difference in the 2 options above?
Well, there is – and it’s huge.
A study in 2004 found that organ donation in Austria is almost at 100%, whilst Denmark only rests at 4%. Even accounting for the cultural differences, the gap shouldn’t be so wide. The difference is that in Austria, you need to fill up an opt-out form, while in Denmark, an opt-in form is used instead
The framing of choice, namely — choice architecture, influences our choice in decisions as big as organ donation. It boils down to our mental laziness to stray away from the default. It is also a matter of framing as we see things differently in both cases.
Option 2 (Opt-out) prompts us to think “Do I really want out?” This frames your conscious action to opt out as a direct action that may cause the death of someone in need of an organ, injecting a moral dimension in decision making. The conscious choice of opting out seems like the selfish and immoral choice. It makes us question ourselves “Why wouldn’t I want to do that?”
As you can see, option 1 (Opt-in) is flipped. It presents the default decision as a “no”. The person in question would not feel as guilty for his “inaction” of not ticking the box. To him, he is just doing nothing but following the default choice already set out for him, what is the wrong in that? Furthermore, option 1 may prompt us to envision what opting in organ donation would be like. The macabre imagery of your kidney being dissected and corneas extracted could make you shy away from actually ticking, even if you know that you won’t be alive to experience it. It makes us question ourselves “Why would I want to do that?”
As we can see, setting a different default choice can greatly alter the decision of a person and temper the level of guilt they feel from not donating their organs. Governments have realised this and have made use of this fact to push for an “Opt-out” or “Yes unless” donor policy, where citizens are automatically entered into the donor register and are given the option to opt-out.
In Singapore, all citizens and permanent residents are automatically registered into the HOTA (Human Organ Transplant Act) when they turn 21. The government makes use of the option 2 approach, making it default that everyone is included in HOTA. It is interesting to note that the government website explaining HOTA does not visibly endorse organ donation, it mainly outlines the technicalities of HOTA. Perhaps the government does not want to make use of any subjective language that may tarnish and otherwise fair and professional implementation of the act. However, there is one statement that stands out: “Those who choose to remain under HOTA will have a higher priority in receiving an organ if they need a transplant in future.” As you can see, the language here is high specific, having no subjective elements, but the message itself carries a message redolent of the government’s pragmatism. It deploys a tit for a tat approach in dealing with uncooperativeness.
Behavioral psychology can have very big impact in public policy. One may even suggest that this is manipulative and takes advantage of our behaviour, warping our supposed sovereignty of our own bodies. It is interesting to see that even the tweaking of such a process (opt-in/out) can be construed as biopower, where the state uses behavioral psychology as a tool to optimise and prolong the lives of the population by facilitating organ donation.
As Foucault talks about one of the basic forms of biopower, “…seems-centered on the body as a machine: its disciplining, the optimization of its capabilities, the extortion of its forces, the parallel increase of its usefulness and its docility, its integration into systems of efficient and economic controls all this was ensured by the procedures of power that characterized the disciplines: an anatomo-politics of the human body.”
Biopower itself is not a virus that infects and corrupts the sovereignty of our bodies. It is simply an interaction that takes place in the arena of our biology; a mortal wrestle between the state and self, the state armed with behavioral psychology.
Sources:
Do Defaults Save Lives? (Eric J. Johnson and Daniel Goldstein)
The History of Sexuality, Vol. I, 1978 | Part 5 “Right of Death and Power over Life” (Michel Foucault)
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