What is a Nudge?
Working in the field of consumer neuroscience I often get asked whether I have good book suggestions. So in the coming weeks, I will share a couple of them and ad my key takeaways. For all the lazy/busy people. :)
Today we will cover Richard Thalers & Cass Sunstein : Nudge.
Richard Thaler is a professor of behavioral economics at the University of Chicago and a recent Nobel prize laureate. He works on the science of decision-making. Cass Sunstein is a Harvard Law School Professor.
In a nudgeshell:(ok I couldn't resist) how can we unconsciously make decisions we like by re-designing our environment, so it pushes us in the right direction. And with that avoid being tempted. It's basically structuring our choices in advance.
The exciting part about this book is its focus on environmental design, rather than improving ourselves, or building our will power like so many other change and improvement books do.
So what is a nudge? Think about it as a cue that pushes you to make a specific decision without forcing you. Used in a good way, a nudge is a minimal action or change in your environment. These changes make it easier for you to make a better decision. And in his book Thaler covers a range of nicely detailed examples. One of the strongest nudges he dives into is the default. It's a powerful nudge since it requires you to actively do something to change it. Most of these default nudges are set up in a way that if you do nothing, you’ll still do the right thing. The amount of people that donate their organs differs strongly across Europe. The main reason is that in some countries (like Spain) you become a donor by default, so you actively have to do something to opt-out of the program. While in other countries you have to actively do something to opt-in, with the result that the % of donors is much lower.
If used right, nudges can be used to change behavior on a individual as well as on society level. It's a fun book to read, it's candid and shares lots of examples and stories about the writers experience and various reframing decisions. Or if you want to sound fancy: use nudges to change the decision architecture.