

on June 10, 2009 at 9:24 PM, updated June 11, 2009 at 11:12 AM

Most people support organ donation and organ transplants but, as it turns out, they don't donate. Given the former, how do we encourage the latter? How does (or can) society encourage positive behavior? Should government attempt to affect certain decision-making behaviors? Whether we're talking about limiting climate change, for example, or promoting healthy living, or donating organs, one crucial question is whether (and, if yes, when) to use the techniques and tools of science, particularly cognitive science, to try to steer people toward better choices.

In "Why Isn't the Brain Green?" (The New York Times Magazine) Jon Gertner explores this question. He is struck by the fact that Americans fail to place concerns about climate change, for example, high on the nation's list of critical priorities and so individuals fail to make decisions and take actions that reflect that concern. Accordingly, policy experts are turning to the work of cognitive scientists, especially those who work in the area of decision science, to discern ways to encourage behavior changes to protect the environment and limit negative climate change.

An image from an organ donation website



Organs in the body that can be donated and transplanted

There really is a difference in how a choice is presented.

In "Expand pool of blood donors" the The Star Ledger editorial on 15th of February, 2009, observed:

"When it comes to our blood, we're selfish. Only 2.5 percent of eligible New Jerseyans donate blood, compared to the national average of 5 percent.



We have to think about this problem differently.


In "Enlarging the Societal Pie through Wise Legislation: A Psychological Perspective," Max Bazerman, this time with fellow authors Jonathan Baron and Katherine Shonk, looked into the psychology of decision-making and the impact on policy. They asked this question, "Why are organ-donor programs constrained to the point where thousands of Americans die needlessly each year?" They posed the following hypothetical:

a. If you die in an auto accident, your heart will be used to save another person's life. In addition, if you are ever in need of a heart transplant, there will be a 90 percent chance that you will get the heart.


They asked the study participants which of these options they'd prefer. Most people choose "a" as the benefit of the trade-off is quite clear. Yet government policy, yielding to what psychologists term "omissions bias"-- which is the "irrational preference for harms of omission over harms of action"--follows an organ donation program that favors "b."

This is a striking result that clearly supports a change in policy: We need to switch to a 'default' system that functions as follows: Unless you specify that you do not want to donate your organs, you become a viable donor at death. By this simple shift in policy, organ donations would rise substantially.
