Collaborative Research: Behavioral Science and the Making of the Right-Reasoning Public Health Citizenry

This award supports a collaborative research project that investigates how behavioral models in public health produce normative ideas about what it means to be a reasonable public health citizen. Behavioral science plays a pivotal, but understudied, role in shaping public health and policy responses to global health issues. At this critical juncture for both public policy and public health in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the team will investigate the models of moral reasoning and citizenship embedded in public health behavioral science in the U.S. More generally, this research investigates how predictive and explanatory models for public health behavior also create normative models for moral reasoning and public health citizenship. Research findings will be shared in two Science and Technology Studies articles, an article for health policymakers and practitioners, and a commentary written for a public audience. The team will offer substantial training and mentorship to graduate research assistants; convene a practice-based workshop with Master of Public Health students and Master of Public Policy students; and write a pedagogical article about the workshop. This is a project that studies the historical precedents and contemporary practices of behavioral science in public health. The team of researchers on the project will investigate the following research questions: How are normative images of the right-reasoning public health citizenry produced through public health behavioral science? How have these normative images acquired authority in the governance of health? How have these normative images been maintained in the face of resistance to expert authority? The team will employ methods of archival research and document analysis to develop a comparative analysis of principal behavioral models. By developing a theoretical conceptualization of the right-reasoning public health citizenry, the results of this project will serve to reconfigure public health sovereignty and citizenship, and open space for reflection and critical examination of behavioral science expertise in public policy. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.