Here's the book
Nudge in three paragraphs:
- Human beings are bad at making rational decisions in their own self interest where they lack the opportunity to practice, with strong and immediate feedback on their choices. That covers a lot of areas.
- The way you give a person a choice will have a sometimes massive effect on the choice that person will make. This effect cannot be avoided.
- It is therefore appropriate to structure choices in a way that promotes good decision making, so long as this does not prevent anyone from doing exactly what they want to do.
That is what Nudge is about. Let's stop pretending that human beings are good at making difficult decisions, and start helping them where we know what the good decisions are.This book had plusses and minuses for me. First of all, after reading Blink!, a couple of the first few chapters were sort of review, but focussed on the particular problem of "choice architecture."Second, the last half of the book is devoted to proposing and defending specific nudges in the area of health, finance, education, etc., but those proposals are in the context of the United States. I found this section difficult to get interested in. Also, because I'm always reading these things with an eye to what they mean for democracy, those were not my primary areas of interest.So what does "Nudge" mean for democracy? Well, nothing good.People tend to make bad choices when the costs and benefits of those choices are time separated, when they are difficult, when they are made infrequently, where there is not good feedback, and where it is difficult to relate the choice you made to the effects that choice has on your life.Sounds like voting, to me.So our voting decisions get made on the basis of things like similarity bias, or conformity. That's why in US Presidential nomination races, winning Iowa is so important. It's at the start, and it makes it look as though others are voting for you.So interestingly, talking about how few Albertans actually vote is likely to have the effect of making fewer Albertans vote. If you take ideas like that seriously, you start to feel sympathy for spin doctors, and start to question whether you are really better off after watching the TV news.The generalized prescriptions of Nudge are pretty straightforward. Pick better defaults. Use incentives, or make those costs or benefits more salient to people. Give feedback. Expect mistakes, and deal with them gracefully. Draw direct links to consequences. Structure chocies so that known short-cuts in decision making will not result in bad decisions.Interestingly, the new federal regulations regarding credit cards are a good example of some of these ideas. The annual report required from the credit card company is taken directly from the second half of this book on giving more feedback. The fact that the reports have to indicate how long it would take to pay off your debt using minimum payments is an example of making information more salient, and drawing links to consequences for your life.Overall, the book was interesting, particularly in its first half. I think it actually suffers, though, from a problem of scope. The idea of choice architecture is something that can be applied to just about any area of endeavour. It would influence the design of the buttons on a remote control (How many times has your TV done something, and you say to yourself "what did I press?" TVs should expect error, and provide feedback.), as well as the design of a national health care insurance program. The authors have addressed those issues that they thought were most important, but the second half of the book was too devoid of story to be particularly interesting. You know that they're right, you just don't want to read it any more.Still, I'd recommend it for anyone who's concerned about getting regular people to make difficult decisions better, where there are objective and rational grounds to believe that some decisions are clearly better than others.
