The phrase ‘computer says no’ now has its own Wikipedia page. The first recorded use dates back to a Stasi-era 1970s East German film segment titled ‘Der Computer Sagt: Nein’. However, its idiomatic use arose in 2004 via a series of sketches in Little Britain, each illustrating an example of technology-enabled bureaucratic intransigence, typically flying in the face of common-sense human judgment. It is perhaps the 21st-century equivalent of ‘jobsworth’.

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To behavioural scientists, the phrase illustrates something known as ‘defensive decision-making’, whereby the primary motivation for a decision is not the likely quality of the outcome but the decision-maker’s often unconscious urge to use any available means to offload accountability for his actions. Unlike many behavioural science findings, this is not a trivial bias: many serious commentators........

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