Author Isabel Chew, second from right, learning about interethnic relations in Northern Myanmar during her doctoral fieldwork.
Racism and hate crimes are on the rise worldwide. In 2023, 265 hate crimes were reported in Vancouver alone, up 31% from the previous year. But why do people discriminate, and importantly, what can we do about it? Alongside social psychology and the social sciences, behavioural insights has much to offer us here.
Before joining the BC Behavioural Insights Group (BC BIG) as a methods specialist, I spent a large amount of my time attempting to get at a small subset of these big questions. To change people’s behaviour, we first need to understand why people are behaving the way that they do. As a doctoral candidate in political science at the University of British Columbia, I wanted to know: How does ethnic identity shape political attitudes and behaviour in Southeast Asia? Described by historian D.G.E. Hall as “a chaos of races and languages”¹, Southeast Asia provided me with a natural laboratory to test theories around identity politics. My choice of research topic was also a personal one: born and raised in Singapore, I spent some time as an adult in Tokyo and Honolulu where ethnicity and identity politics took on very different shapes and forms. These experiences would later become a catalyst for my doctoral work.
Ethnicity as an informational shortcut in situations of uncertainty
Ethnicity’s effects on behaviour are fundamentally rooted in humans’ desire to reduce uncertainty. One way that we do this is by categorizing our social environment into groups to make better sense of our place in it as well as our relationship with the people around us. For example, perhaps you identify as a Vancouver Canucks fan. You go to a party to watch the playoffs between the Canucks and the Edmonton Oilers. At the party, you meet two strangers for the first time. You find out that one of them is also a Canucks fan, while the other is an Oilers fan. Without knowing anything else about these two people, you might find yourself gravitating more towards the Canucks fan. The two of you cheer on your team, but alas, the Canucks lose. Although the team’s performance has no material impact on your wellbeing, you feel sad and disappointed.
Our perceptions of ourselves as well as others around us are thus often shaped by group membership. We may make certain assumptions about how other people would behave based on the social groups they belong to. Ethnicity is one such group. Because ethnicity can be observed (e.g., through dress, language, or names), people often use it as an informational shortcut. For example, individuals may discriminate against immigrants from certain ethnic backgrounds because of behavioural stereotypes attached to these groups. This tendency is more likely when individuals have limited information to use in their judgments of other people. My own research in Singapore found that when people were provided with information about immigrants’ behaviour, they did not rely on ethnicity as a heuristic and did not discriminate based on immigrants’ ethnic background. This echoes similar findings in places like Germany and the United States.
How the institutional environment can influence behaviour
Although ethnicity operates as a heuristic cue, its significance and the kind of information it transmits can change over space and time. We might ask ourselves, Why is ethnicity more salient as a heuristic cue in some contexts and not in others? Why do voters vote along ethnic lines in one constituency but not in another? Institutional and policy environments have a huge part to play in shaping the effects of ethnicity on behaviour. Take Singapore and Malaysia for example. These two countries share similar demographics and a colonial legacy. For a brief period in the 1960s, the two even belonged to the same federation. Yet we are much more likely to see ethnic voting in Malaysia. This difference in voters’ behaviour is of course multi-faceted, but one reason has to do with institutional choices taken by the early leaders. While the Malaysian government pursued policies that gave advantages to a dominant ethnic group, the Singaporean government, for the most part, avoided policies that could be seen as privileging any single ethnic group. As a result, ethnic identity became associated with resource allocation in Malaysia, which in turn affected its citizens’ voting decisions. Here, a behavioural lens helped us consider how institutions and policies shape the way ethnic identity affects behaviour.
Increasing social cohesion using BI
What about situations when ethnic conflict or divisions are already present? How can behavioural insights facilitate the design of more effective interventions that foster social cohesion? The behavioural insights approach has been used to develop several interventions that have been tried and tested in different contexts. One commonly tested intervention includes emphasizing similarities across groups to remind individuals of the common ground they share as part of a broader group.
In Myanmar, the Rohingya people have been subjected to active persecution for decades including denial of citizenship rights and ethnic cleansing by the country’s military. During my PhD, my co-investigator and I wanted to know if nudging people towards similarities they shared with the Rohingya would reduce prejudice towards the Rohingya. Although we found that it increases support for Rohingya citizenship rights, we did not find any evidence that it promotes pro-Rohingya altruistic behaviour. These findings speak to the complexities of prejudice reduction and reiterate the importance of creating institutions that reduce structural inequalities in addition to the use of behavioural interventions.
My road to BC BIG
Upon the completion of my PhD, I found myself at a crossroads with my career. I had spent several years working as a policy consultant for governments in Southeast Asia and East Africa and had spent some time at a research centre focusing on health equity in Canada. A lot of the work that I did on a day-to-day basis involved behavioural insights principles. For example, I worked on projects that aimed to effectively communicate and promote the uptake of government programs among different segments of the population. My work also frequently required me to persuade and mobilize stakeholders to new ideas and approaches to doing things.
From my prior experiences, I knew I wanted to continue making a difference through my work while applying the research skills I had picked up during my doctoral studies. BC BIG, within its parent ministry the Ministry of Citizens’ Services (CITZ), was a perfect place for me to land. As someone who researches identity politics and inclusion, this couldn’t be a more exciting time to be located within CITZ as the Ministry begins its work on implementing B.C.’s Anti-Racism Data Act. Meanwhile, at BC BIG, not only do I get to continue examining the motivations behind people’s behaviour but I am also especially glad to be located within an interdisciplinary team with opportunities to work across different policy sectors. While trained academically as a political scientist, I have found that complex research questions are best addressed by integrating various disciplinary traditions and being open to research methods that suit the question at hand (as opposed to force-fitting any one particular methodology – no matter how fashionable that method may be!).
My passion for Southeast Asia also sets me up well here. For the longest time, insights about human behaviour such as risk appetite, rationality, and moral reasoning were primarily drawn from studies that used WEIRD (Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic) samples. Yet B.C. is the most ethnically diverse province in Canada, welcoming over 40,000 new immigrants from other countries each year. To solve some of B.C.’s most pressing challenges effectively, we must recognize and address the immense heterogeneity in the province’s population.
Needless to say, I am most thrilled to be continuing on my career at BC BIG and am looking forward to contributing to and learning from both the team and our partners!
¹ Hall, Daniel G. E. 1981. A History of South-East Asia. 4. ed. Macmillan Asian Histories Series. London: Macmillan, (Cited page 5)