Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness

Richard H. Thaler · Cass R. Sunstein

Jan. 2008 · Yale University Press

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A New York Times bestseller with more than 1.5 million copies sold

Named a Best Book of the Year by the Economist and the Financial Times

“An essential read . . . loaded with good ideas that financial-service executives, policy makers, Wall Street mavens, and all savers can use.”—John F. Wasik, Boston Globe

“Save the planet, save yourself. Do-gooders, policymakers, this one's for you.”—Newsweek

Every day, we make decisions on topics ranging from personal investments to schools for our children to the meals we eat to the causes we champion. Unfortunately, we often choose poorly. Nobel laureate Richard Thaler and legal scholar and bestselling author Cass Sunstein explain in this important exploration of choice architecture that, being human, we all are susceptible to various biases that can lead us to blunder. Our mistakes make us poorer and less healthy; we often make bad decisions involving education, personal finance, health care, mortgages and credit cards, the family, and even the planet itself.

In Nudge, Thaler and Sunstein invite us to enter an alternative world, one that takes our humanness as a given. They show that by knowing how people think, we can design choice environments that make it easier for people to choose what is best for themselves, their families, and their society. Using colorful examples from the most important aspects of life, Thaler and Sunstein demonstrate how thoughtful “choice architecture” can be established to nudge us in beneficial directions without restricting freedom of choice. Nudge offers a unique new take—from neither the left nor the right—on many hot-button issues, for individuals and governments alike. This is one of the most engaging and provocative books to come along in many years.

Bewertungen und Rezensionen

Virtually all university students know about the pains of procrastinating. Why start with the assignment right now instead of in a couple of minutes? Nonetheless, we do it all the time and get ourselves in considerable trouble most of the time. Suddenly, time is short and deadlines approach sooner than we anticipated. Sounds familiar? There is help to make the right decision. One solution is to pledge to deliver your next paper on time. If you fail, you will donate a significant sum to charity. In this scenario, the short-term incentives to keep delaying are contrasted with the somewhat clearer long-term consequences of loosing money. The question remains—why do we fail to make the right choice so often, and how can we improve? The problem lies in human nature. We are good in long-term planning, but carrying out our decisions seems awfully complicated. Humans are good “planners”, but bad “doers”, to use two terms coined by economist Richard H. Thaler and law professor Cass R. Sunstein. The two have published “Nudge – Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness” last year, in which they deal extensively with how to turn us into better “doers”. Predictably Irrational The authors are both of the University of Chicago and were both informal advisors to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. Thaler and Sunstein have both worked on the intersection of rational economic decision-making and the predictable irrational behavior of most humans when it comes to economic decisions. The intellectual background of the book is formed by behavioral economics, a subfield of economics that integrates the systemic biases of human action into traditional economic models. The basic premise is that since people don’t seem to think very hard about the choices they make, policy makers should use their knowledge of the systemic biases to “nudge” people into making better decisions. A nudge is any device “that alters people’s behavior in a predictable way without forbidding any options or significantly changing their economic incentives,” the authors write. A “nudge” can take many forms. If you put fruits and salads in the beginning of the cafeteria line, you “nudge” students to eat healthier, since the way choices are arrayed to them influence their decisions. Thaler and Sunstein call the setting in which people make decisions “choice architecture”. Since there is no neutral way to arrange the foods, “choice architects” like cafeteria managers influence people in any case—so why not help the hungry students to improve their decisions about chips or Caesar salad? Another “nudge” are default options. A lot of patients die each year, because there are not enough organs for transplant available. How can more people be persuaded to commit to donate their organs after their death? They could either be asked to tick a box opting into donation or opting in might be the default setting and they have to actively opt out. The difference? One study found that with an opt in policy, 42% of people agree to donate, whereas with an opt out policy, 82% committed to donate. They were “nudged” to follow the default. Want more Soup? The examples for the influence of choice settings go on and on— sometimes to the point of absurdity. One study showed that how much you eat depends on the size of the plate you eat it from. In the experiment, test persons were asked to eat as much as they liked from a bowl of tomato soup, while the soup was secretly refilled from below the entire time. Some people continued to eat until the scientists stopped the experiment. Politically, Thaler and Sunstein’s ideas are in hot demand. Their book is popular both in circles around Tory leader James Cameron, as well as with the Obama crowd. In fact, Cass Sunstein has just been named to lead the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs—reason enough to turn attention to the policy recommendations of the book

Autoren-Profil

Richard H. Thaler, winner of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Economics, is the Ralph and Dorothy Keller Distinguished Service Professor of Behavioral Science and Economics at the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business. His latest book is Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics. Cass R. Sunstein is the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard Law School and most recently the author of Impeachment: A Citizen’s Guide.