Behavioral Public HR: Experimental Evidence on Cognitive Biases and Debiasing Interventions
| Author | Paolo Belardinelli,Nicola Belle,Paola Cantarelli |
| Published date | 01 March 2020 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0734371X18778090 |
| Date | 01 March 2020 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
research-article2018
Article
Review of Public Personnel Administration
2020, Vol. 40(1) 56 –81
Behavioral Public HR:
© The Author(s) 2018
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Experimental Evidence
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https://doi.org/10.1177/0734371X18778090
DOI: 10.1177/0734371X18778090
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on Cognitive Biases and
Debiasing Interventions
Paola Cantarelli1, Nicola Belle1, and Paolo Belardinelli2
Abstract
We draw on behavioral science to investigate a set of decisions that may have an impact on
public human resource management, thus affecting public service provision. Our survey-
in-the-field-experiment with the nursing personnel of a local health authority showed that
respondents’ decisions in the area of health care operations management were affected
by social pressures (bandwagoning), the presence of a decoy option, and the framing of
alternatives. Anchoring and halo effects severely biased the assessment of subordinates’
performance. Decisions in the domain of health policies were influenced by denominator
neglect and zero-risk bias. Debiasing interventions eliminated the bandwagoning and framing
effects. Being midway between abstract and un-testable grand theories and data-driven
testable hypotheses, our findings advance behavioral human resource (HR) as a fruitful
middle range theory in public personnel administration. Normative implications for
scholars and practitioners about the power of the architecture of choices are discussed.
Keywords
cognitive biases, debiasing interventions, behavioral public administration, decision
making, public managers and employees, survey-in-the-field experiment
Introduction
Traditional research in human resource (HR) management in governments around the
world at different administrative levels includes work on how to select, develop, motivate,
assess individual performance, and terminate employment. Abundant scholarship exists on
1Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa, Italy
2Bocconi University, Milan, Italy
Corresponding Author:
Paola Cantarelli, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Piazza Martiri della Libertà, 33, 56127 Pisa, Italy.
Email: paola.cantarelli@santannapisa.it
Cantarelli et al.
57
how to design civil service reforms to improve service delivery (e.g., Battaglio, 2014;
Ingraham & Rubaii-Barrett, 2007; Perry, 1993, 2010). The application of behavioral sci-
ence (e.g., Kahneman, 2002; Thaler, 2017) to the management of public employees is
still under-developed. However, scholars in our discipline have argued that “one cannot
really understand how organizations operate without a strong sense of how individuals
process information and make decisions” (Jones, 2003, p. 401). Indeed, “how our minds
work is not a niche interest; it is of wide relevance to many, if not all, aspects of work-
place behavior and performance” (Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
[CIPD], 2014, p. 3).
Behavioral public HR can help improve service delivery and provide higher-impact
HR strategies by clarifying what affects individuals’ thinking in making job-related
decisions. Behavioral public HR is also concerned with the designing of an optimum
environment for employees’ effective thinking, satisfaction and well-being. Taking up
the call to apply behavioral science to HR much more widely (CIPD, 2014), this work
investigates how public employees and managers actually make decisions. For
instance, how do they choose between competing management practices, personnel
policies, and programs that have uncertain outcomes? What cognitive biases and debi-
asing interventions predictably influence their decisions?
Our study is set to make three main contributions. From a descriptive point of view,
time seems ripe to test the ecological validity of behavioral science evidence about the
effect of systematic decision-making errors in a public context. Although we expected
to replicate extant findings, our study departs from previous work for the following
reasons. Whereas most available research has explored one systematic error and/or
one decision domain at a time, we experimentally investigated the effects of a broad
range of cognitive biases (i.e., asymmetric dominance, bandwagoning, attribute fram-
ing, anchoring, halo, denominator neglect, and zero-risk) across multiple decision set-
tings (i.e., public management, public personnel management, and public policy).
Moreover, we tested whether and to what extent the impact of cognitive biases depends
on debiasing interventions because “the sincere desire of many people in this field is
to discover flaws not for their own sake, but with the intention of improving decision
making” (Larrick, 2004, p. 334). Finally, our work represents one of the few studies
that not only employ a sample of real public sector workers but also tailor the research
design to the settings of participants’ real organization.
The second contribution of our study is theoretical. Our findings can help nurture
behavioral HR as a middle range theory in the field of public personnel administration.
Middle range theories are particularly useful theory-building strategy for public
administration scholarship (e.g., Abner, Kim, & Perry, 2017; Perry, 2010). Our trials
seem to meet the requirements that Abner and colleagues (2017) identify to make
middle range theories functional to the development of grand theories: enough con-
creteness to generate testable hypotheses, consistency with reality sustained by the
derivation from data rather than pure theorizing, and predisposition to generate results
that can be synthesized.
A third contribution is of a normative nature. Normative studies in essence “tell you
the right way to think about some problem” (Thaler, 2015, p. 25). Our work suggests
58
Review of Public Personnel Administration 40(1)
how public managers and policy makers may improve decision making within their
organizations. On the one hand, they should recognize how the architecture of choices
affects their decisions. On the other hand, they may leverage on the same architecture
to encourage desired behaviors and avoid predictable errors. Indeed, our debiasing
interventions modify the architecture of choices without limiting the options available
or altering economic incentives. This tool seems to be particularly well suited to public
personnel administration, which is characterized by low-powered incentives—such as
limited use of performance-related pay and job security—but significant decisions’
impact.
Theoretical Foundations of Behavioral Public HR
Expected-utility theory (Bernoulli, 1954) used to be the dominant framework to under-
stand decision making under uncertainty. At its core, expected-utility theory features
the homo economicus: a rational decision maker with a clear and comprehensive
knowledge of the environment, a well-organized system of preferences, and excellent
computational skills to allow for the selection of optimal solutions. Behavioral sci-
ences—such as the bounded rationality paradigm (Simon, 1956), prospect theory
(Kahneman & Tversky, 1979) and the nudge theory (Thaler, 2015; Thaler & Sunstein,
2008)—instead, proposed the existence of the homo sapiens, endowed with bounded
rationality. The Nobel Prize Winner Herbert Simon (1956) was among the first scien-
tist arguing that individuals are unable to take optimal decisions and rather make sat-
isfying choices in predictable ways. He further envisioned the necessity of debiasing
techniques by contending that the core function of government organizations is to
design procedures that compensate for employees’ essential inability to judge and
compute in a complex and uncertain environment. This line of reasoning is still so
relevant and powerful that only “few social scientists today would disagree with
Simon’s premise that a sound organizational theory must rest on a defensible theory of
human behavior” (Jones, 2003, p. 401). Indeed, abundant evidence shows that people
rely on a limited number of heuristics to translate complex tasks into simpler judgmen-
tal operations (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974). Whereas neoclassical economics allows
for random mistakes in decision making, behavioral science posits that heuristics
bring with them errors that are systematic, and therefore predictable, under certain
circumstances (e.g., Ariely, 2010; Gardner, 2009; Gilovich, Griffin, & Kahneman,
2002; Kahneman, 2011).
Evidence of the effects of cognitive biases in judgment and choice is so widespread
across decision domains and scientific disciplines that research on debiasing strategies
(e.g., Larrick, 2004; Lilienfeld, Ammirati, & Landfield, 2009) and re-biasing interven-
tions (e.g., Thaler & Benartzi, 2001), which use one cognitive bias to offset another,
has also blossomed. More broadly, the recent applications of the nudge theory to pub-
lic decision making show that leveraging on the architecture of choices without limit-
ing the options available and without altering economic incentives can encourage
desired behaviors (e.g., Thaler, 2015; Thaler & Sunstein, 2008).
Cantarelli et al.
59
Social science disciplines such as behavioral economics (e.g., Ariely, 2010), politi-
cal psychology (Taber & Lodge, 2006), applied psychology (e.g., Kahneman, 2011),
general management (e.g., Cornelissen & Werner, 2014), and medicine (Blumenthal-
Barby & Krieger, 2015; Saposnik, Redelmeier, Ruff, & Tobler, 2016)...
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