Morgan Blackledge's Reviews > Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness

It’s the first day of 2019, and I’m writing an addendum to the first review I wrote of this book in 2013 (see below).

Although this is a tedious read. In retrospect, this book, as well as Khanaman’s Thinking Fast and Slow remain profoundly influential on my work as a therapist.

So, I feel obliged to upgrade this from a 4 to 5 star review (with an asterisk)

The important takeaway of the book is that the environment (home, work, school, the DMV etc.) has a WAY bigger effect on our behavior than we commonly understand.

Sometimes it’s easier to modify the environment, than to modify the person.

Additionally, we should be crafting our environments to elicit the types of behaviors we would like to emit.

I always say, it’s easier to choose not to eat chocolate chip cookies if there aren’t any in the house, and you have plenty of good healthy food to eat.

That sounds banal in that context, but when applied to other issues from organ donation, to saving for retirement, to recovery from addiction, the point is somewhat less obvi.

So without further ado.

Here’s the original 2013 review:

I finally finished this fascinating (yet oddly boring) book! It took a while -it sat on my currently reading list for around 3 months before I finally caved to the guilt and finished the damn thing- but finish it I did. Here's some reflections.....

Traditional economic theory assumes that consumers are rational and self interested agents that make decisions based on the facts. The findings of experimental behavioral economics paint a very different picture. For example; If given a choice between a hamburger that is 10% lean or 90% fat, traditional economic theory predicts that consumers (being rational) will be indifferent because both products are in fact identical. But behavioral economics observes that real people nearly invariably prefer one to the other.

The authors of Nudge (economist Richard Thaler and legal scholar Cass Sunstein posit that human decision making is divided between two cognitive systems; the "Reflective System" and the "Automatic System". The Reflective System is deliberate and accurate but is slower to become involved in the decision process. The Automatic System is fast but inaccurate due to the fact that it operates primarily on the basses of reflexive, innate cognitive biases and heuristics which work well on average, but fail in certain predictable ways.

Thaler and Sunstein build their central argument upon the deceptively simple observation that; the way in which choices are presented effects the choices that people make. Thaler and Sunstein refer to people that design menus of choices as "choice architects" e.g. mortgage brokers, advertisers, web designers etc. Nudges are little design tweaks in the choosing environment that correct for those cognitive biases that reliably lead modern humans to make bad decisions.

Thaler and Sunstein advocate an approach to choice architecture, which they refer to as libertarian paternalism, that "nudges" consumers to make good choices without unnecessarily limiting their individual freedom. For example, people who wish to become organ donors "opt in" to the organ donation program. Libertarian paternalism advocates making organ donation the default, unless people opt out, thereby raising life saving organ donation rates, while still allowing individuals who object to opt out if they wish.

I have to say that there is something very attractive to me about this approach. It utilizes the powerful techniques of design, public relations and advertising, combined with the insights of psychology and other social sciences, to create choosing environments that result in (lazy) people (like me) making good (or at least better) choices. I love the fact that you're still free to be a dick, but you have to work for it. There's something so right about that!

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As previously mentioned, I’m upgrading my review from 4 stars (2013) to five stars with an asterisk because it’s a bit of a snore (2019) because of the enduring impact the book has had on my life and work.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️*

Live=Learn!!!!!!