Is brainwashing no longer in vogue?

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The state’s reliance on behavioural science strategies – ‘nudges’ – to facilitate the public’s compliance with covid restrictions has been widely documented. The many psychologists and behavioural scientists advising the government during the covid event (such as those in the SAGE subgroup, SPI-B, and the Behavioural Insight Team, BIT ) have, reasonably, been assumed to hold a significant degree of responsibility for using these methods of persuasion in communication campaigns. Intriguingly, however, several prominent psychological specialists within these advisory groups have attempted to distance themselves from involvement in nudging, not only from the specific use of fear inflation but also – more recently – from being associated with all forms of this type of furtive persuasion. So what is the evidence that the state’s psychological experts are denying responsibility for the deployment of behavioural science strategies, and what could be motivating these claims?

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