Richard H. Thaler

Thaler and Sunstein offer a groundbreaking discussion of how to apply the science of choice to nudge people toward decisions that can improve their lives without restricting their freedom of choice.

Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness

Nudge

Nudge users to visualize doing an action and to create a plan. How might we nudge users to question, consider, and create plans? 

Selena Yang

The idea for these follow-up questions came from research by psychologist Peter Gollwitzer, who found that people were more likely to fulfill their goals if they had made explicit "implementation intentions." The theory worked well in this situation. Prompting voters tour out by 4.1 percentage points!

Examples of investment goods: exercising, flossing, and healthy eating. Costs are borne immediately but the benefits are delayed.

Self control issues are more likely to arise when chooses and their consequences are separated in time. 

With respect to health, romance, and money, it is not at all hard to exploit people’s lack of information. If one of those things is at stake, companies have a strong incentive to exploit behavioral biases, including availability, unrealistic optimism, and anchoring. And they certainly try to create informational cascades and sometimes they succeed.

Nudge quotes

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