The key ideas

Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness

Richard H. Thaler, Cass R. Sunstein, 2008

You think the choice is entirely yours. But someone has already decided what goes on the eye-level shelf, which box is checked in advance, and how difficult it is to cancel a subscription. A Nobel laureate in economics and a prominent legal scholar explain choice architecture and why it can be directed toward your benefit, or against you.

Who it is for

For anyone who wants to understand how shops, apps, and governments structure our choices, and learn to arrange their own surroundings so that beneficial choices come more easily.

There is no such thing as neutral design.

What the book is about

You take yogurt from an eye-level shelf in a shop, and the choice seems yours. But someone before you decided which yogurt to put there and which to move down below.

Economist Richard Thaler and legal scholar Cass Sunstein wrote Nudge about this. Their point is simple and uncomfortable: an arrangement is almost never neutral. Usually, someone has already decided what you see first and what happens if you choose nothing.

This book makes an argument: research by psychologists and economists supports the authors’ position on how choices should be arranged. Ahead are a school cafeteria, a fly in a urinal, pensions, and organ donation.

Idea 1. A cafeteria where influence is unavoidable

The book begins with a thought experiment. Carolyn directs food services in a large city’s schools. An acquaintance suggests testing what happens if different cafeterias arrange the same dishes differently.

In the authors’ scenario, rearrangement alone, without changing the menu, shifts consumption of many dishes by as much as a quarter. Carolyn is fictional: this is the authors’ thought experiment, not a report of a specific study.

How should the food now be arranged? Randomly, for children’s health, or to benefit suppliers? Every option is already a decision. The authors call someone who arranges the choice environment a choice architect. The whole environment in which you choose is choice architecture.

A banking app shows “Take out a loan” first, while “Put money into savings” is hidden in a menu. Neither button has been removed, but one is easier to press.

Avoiding influence is often impossible: if one choice architect has not decided for you, another probably has. So a useful question is usually: whose interests does this arrangement serve?

Read in Livria

About the author

Richard Thaler is an American economist at the University of Chicago, a founder of behavioral economics, and the 2017 Nobel laureate in economics. Cass Sunstein is an American legal scholar and Harvard Law School professor. From 2009 to 2012, he headed the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Obama administration.

All books by this author: Richard H. Thaler, Cass R. Sunstein

Terms from the book

  • Choice architecture: The authors’ term for the environment in which someone chooses: the order of options, their presentation, and the default. The book calls whoever arranges it a choice architect.
  • Nudge: In the authors’ definition, an aspect of choice architecture that predictably changes behavior without forbidding options or significantly changing incentives. It must be easy to avoid.
  • Libertarian paternalism: The authors’ position: you can try to move people toward decisions they themselves would consider better while preserving freedom of choice. Their political and ethical position, not a scientific law.
  • Default option: The option that takes effect when someone does not choose for themselves. The authors suggest many people may stay with it through inertia.
  • Econs: The authors’ humorous name for ideal, calculating people in economics textbooks, as opposed to real Humans.
  • Sludge: A term from the 2021 edition: unnecessary friction, such as forms, certificates, and complicated cancellations, that prevents people from doing what they need.

All terms

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