The British government's unit of behavioral scientists and psychologists, founded a good decade ago, is being sold in its entirety and taken over by an independent foundation.

She confirmed this transaction for 15 million pounds (around 18 million euros) in London on Monday.

The Behavioral Insights Team (BIT), better known under the name “Nudge Unit”, will now be wholly owned by the Nesta Foundation.

This wants to promote "social innovations".

Nesta’s goals include halving the obesity rate in the population, better preparing poorer children for school and reducing household CO2 emissions.

Philip Plickert

Business correspondent based in London.

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The Behavioral Insights team has already researched and advised in a wide variety of fields: How to better place the unemployed in jobs, fight obesity through a healthier diet, encourage citizens to pay taxes on time, save more for retirement, explain monetary policy better and Islamist Boko-Haram- Integrating fighters in Nigeria back into society - these are some of the topics addressed by BIT scientists and advisors.

To do this, they made hundreds of experiments.

The high turnover of the nudge unit

The research group was founded in Downing Street in 2010 after an advisor to the then government of David Cameron had enthusiastically read the book “Nudge” by behavioral economists Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler. Its basic idea is to move people to “better” behavior through small “nudges”. This can be done in that decision-making situations are formulated differently (“framed”) or people receive different information or incentives. Of course, there were also critics who warned of a paternalistic “nanny state” that patronizes or manipulates the citizens. A few years ago, the Berlin Chancellery also advertised positions for advisors trained in behavioral science.

The British nudge unit grew rapidly, from initially two dozen to almost 250 employees today.

In 2014 the government spun it off and partially privatized it;

Co-owner was Nesta, the then "National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts", which was soon converted into an independent foundation.

The BIT has now opened offices in the USA, Australia, Singapore, Canada and France and advised governments, administrations and companies in more than fifty countries.

Last year it posted nearly £ 2.3 million in profit on £ 21 million in sales.

New framework for ancient wisdom

David Halpern, founding director of BIT and professor at King's College London, called the collaboration with the Nesta Foundation ideal. "The deeper partnership will take applied behavioral science to the next level as we connect it to new innovative methods such as data science, social psychology and collective intelligence," he said.

A major topic of the BIT is the fight against obesity through an unhealthy diet that is too fatty. The sugar tax introduced in Great Britain is one of the concrete political measures. As a result, the sugar content in beverages has been reduced by a third, claims the BIT, although critics point out that sugar consumption is not falling significantly. The TV advertising bans announced by the Johnson administration for foods that are too fatty or too sweet are also based on approaches of the nudge theory. The BIT also boasts of helping more than 10 million job seekers through better placement. With differently worded mobile phone messages, the number of missed doctor's appointments could also be drastically reduced. For the pension, the advice from the FOITT is to speak of “investments” for old age instead of saving.This increases preparedness.