At SUE we work from a clear principle: influence is only ethical when it leaves the person you are influencing better off. Here you will find all the tools to help you with that, along with our vision on Behavioural Design ethics. So that we can all work towards progress and positive breakthroughs.
To make ethical assessment practical, we use a set of questions that we run through for every intervention. Not as a bureaucratic checklist, but as a reflective tool that ensures we never accidentally drift in the wrong direction. It forces us to reason from the perspective of the person we are influencing. Not from our own interest, and not from abstract principles.
Can the other person still say no? Good interventions expand choices, they do not close them off. If your design works because people can no longer see a way out, you are on the wrong side.
Will this person be better off tomorrow? Not just you. Not just your client. The person themselves. If you ask yourself that question honestly and the answer makes you uncomfortable, listen to that.
Would your method hold up if you made it fully transparent? If the intervention suddenly stops working the moment people become aware of it, that is a red signal.
Does this serve what the person truly wants, or only what they want right now? Someone may want to buy something now while also wanting to remain financially stable. Good interventions align with the deeper goal, not with an impulse they will later regret.
Ethics needs to be something you can apply, not just understand. We have developed a set of tools that help you stay on the right side in every situation, and we share them freely with everyone. You will find them below. Further down the page you can read more about the three levels at which they operate.
Practical tools we use in our training programmes. Free to download in Dutch and English.
Our complete ethical framework: from the definition of influence vs. manipulation to the three levels of ethical design and how to apply them in practice.
An overview of the most relevant cognitive biases for Behavioural Designers, including ethical considerations for each bias.
A set of cards to open up ethical dilemmas within your team. At the organisational, project, and personal level.
Always put people first
Look at problems through human vulnerabilities, not bad intentions
Do not rely on assumptions, seek evidence
Think outside-in; let empathy be your guide
Help people make better decisions
Make desired behaviour as easy as possible
Aim for the scaling and sustaining of positive behaviour
Combine growth with responsibility
Always consider possible risks and unintended consequences
Fight injustice and never intentionally cause harmProtect privacyDo not lie
Positive influence helps people make a decision that improves their own situation. Manipulation uses the same techniques, but purely in the interest of the influencer, at the other person's expense. The distinction lies in who benefits. Influence helps the other person. Manipulation helps yourself. The transparency test is a practical aid: would your method hold up if the target audience knew exactly what you are doing and why?
Nudging is a neutral technique. Whether it is ethical depends entirely on the intention and the outcome. A nudge that helps people save better, eat more healthily, or drive more safely is ethically justifiable: it serves the person's own interest. A nudge that causes people to spend more than they intend, or pushes them towards a choice that harms them, is manipulation. The technique does not determine the ethics, the purpose does.
All our training programmes are grounded in outside-in thinking: radically starting from the psychology of the target audience. Every intervention and technique we teach is intended to help realise the progress that someone is trying to achieve. That is the ethics at the core of the method. In addition, the Guiding Ethical Behavioural Design Principles hang prominently on the wall as a constant reminder, not as a closing item on the curriculum, but as the starting point of every design.
Grey areas exist. Not every assignment is clearly ethical or unethical. In those cases we apply the following approach: we explicitly ask who will be better off as a result of the intervention, we test whether the methods could be made transparent, and we discuss the doubts openly with the client. If we still have doubts after that reflection, we do not take on the assignment. Doubt is a signal.
Yes. Commercial purposes are not inherently unethical. Helping people choose a product that truly suits them, understand a service, or make a purchase they genuinely want, that is legitimate and valuable. The ethical boundary is not commercial vs. non-commercial, but the question: is the customer better or worse off as a result of the interaction? If the answer is better, we are delighted to help.
Learn to apply behavioural design to your own practice. From understanding human behaviour to designing interventions that genuinely work.
