Name: Alican Sungur's review of Nudge by Richard H. Thaler
Item: Nudge
Rating: 4.5
Author: Alican Sungur

Richard H. Thaler

Offering a groundbreaking study of the application of the science of choice, a guide that uses colorful examples from all aspects of life demonstrates how it is possible to design environments that make it more likely for us to act in our own interests. Reprint.

Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness

Nudge

Selena Yang

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.

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. 

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

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!

vanessa

Must read for the case studies. Political arguments are not more than mere suggestions which is fine and the expectation from a book like this.

Alican Sungur

Timeo Williams

This is a book that applies Systems Thinking to thinking such as Health, Wealth and Happiness. It looks at Economics - most notably the Behavorial Sciences/Psychology and then applies it to systems architecture. 

Systems Architecture is a common word in the book, as those in charge of designing these systems have to ensure the incentives in place are rewarding the right behavior. And this is a lot trickier than it might seem. Sometimes, a "nudge" is necessary in the right place to get the system to act in the way you want.

Faith Ho 

engaging and easy to read. lots of real-world examples to support the theory they propose, making it easy to draw links and see how “choice architecture” is present in everyday life. 

mini chapter summaries (as usual, for myself, not for coherence):
intro: choice architecture, libertarian paternalism, Humans respond to incentives & nudges (v Econs - traditional perfectly rational theory) 

part 1, humans and econs
1, bias and blunders: 3 heuristics (anchor, availability bias, representativeness), humans’ tendency to unrealistic optimism, loss aversion, status quo bias, framing, brain operates on 2 systems (reflective and automatic) 
2, resisting temptation: 2 system brain (hot and cold) — make decisions at different points, often at battle; good way to combat through mental models (e.g. designating some amounts of money for saving v spending v rent even though money is non-fungible)
3, following the herd: asch’s conformity test, persistence of traditions across generations, appeal to identity, cascade effect

part 2, the tools of the choice architect
4, when do we need a nudge?: people forget (get them to talk about concrete steps, checklist), delayed gratification, difficult, rare events, lack feedback, knowledge of what one likes, market failure (businesses selling people things they don’t need)
5, choice architecture (i.e. how to engineer/design nudges): stimulus response compatibility, make it easy, defaults v required choice v prompted choice, systems built to expect error and circumvent, systems give feedback, mapping (choice onto outcome), structure complex choices (limiting/simplifying them), incentives, when to take a break
6 (pt 2 of choice architecture): curation, fun 
7, smart disclosure: measurement, smart disclosures instead of long T&C clauses, choice engines (e.g. expedia)
8, #sludge: bad stuff (deliberate barriers to make things difficult, red tape etc) 

part 3, money
9, save more tomorrow: retirement 
10, do nudges last forever? perhaps in sweden
11, borrow more today: mortgages and credit cards
12, insurance: don’t sweat the small stuff: when purchasing insurance, choose the largest deductible possible 

part 4, society
13, organ donation: why default may not be the best
14, saving the planet: excellent summary on why people don’t, various low-cost interventions (that can contribute to efforts tho not fully address issues)

part 5, the complaints department
15, much ado about nudging: addresses the criticisms of nudging; namely that nudging turns into shoving, or that people will stop at nudging 
epilogue: choice architecture irl examples

Gavin

Nutritious, wonkish, inspiring cynicism. Distillation of decades of research that overturned a few social sciences for the better. Both theoretically significant and intensely practical: If you've never understood pensions, or Medicare, or rational marriage, read this.

As is true of all social science books eventually, it cites a bunch of unreplicable BS. Wansink, Gilovich, Baumeister, Dweck. 

(This just in: Dweck is not unreplicable bs, she is merely enormously overheated and exaggerated bs.)

Jimmy Cerone

All app designers, salesman, and anyone else helping people make choices (including parents) should read this. An insightful look into how and why we choose and most helpfully, how we can do it better.

Nick Gracilla

The critical background to choice architecture and how "libertarian paternalism," a recommended approach for governments, organizations, and companies, can lead our society towards better and healthier outcomes.

Felipe Saldarriaga 

Las claves que entregan las investigaciones de Thaler y el equipo son sumamente valiosas para entendernos como individuos y sociedad. Este año está resultando sumamente enriquecedor. Junto a Hooked, me dejan la importancia de diseñar nuestro entorno controlable y regulaciones externas para darnos el empujoncito (Nudge) para hacer lo que necesitamos.

Offering a groundbreaking study of the application of the science of choice, a guide that uses colorful examples from all aspects of life demonstrates how it is possible to design environments that make it more likely for us to act in our own interests.

Nelson Zagalo

What a disappointment. An impressive first part, five stars, then completely debunked by themselves in the rest of the book. The authors, Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein, tried to present “Nudge” as the typical book of science communication, parting from Psychology, Economics and Behavioural Economics, using the style of Dan Ariely and Steven Levitt, but this is not that kind of book, this is a badly disguised political pamphlet.

The entire book is grounded in one sole concept, “Libertarian Paternalism”, which means: "tries to influence choices in a way that will make choosers better off, as judged by themselves”, preserving the freedom of choice through t”he possibility “to opt out of specified arrangements if they choose to do so”. Translating this, means, to create a society of complete individual freedom where the state never prohibits or ban anything, but instead try to influence choices, designing society rules, in ways that will nudge people to go for the good solution.

This is at best, naif, but can also be seen as a Troy horse for complete Libertarianism, “laissez faire”, in the end the destruction of the state, of all the collective working for the well being of all, in the name of the most pure and abject individualism. If you still have any doubts about this, just think this book was written right before the great crisis of 2008. Think about the origins of that crisis, and compare them to what is being defended throughout this book.

Lastly, this book still maintains some interest, or better, the concept of Nudge is still relevant, but not to be applied to humans, but instead to be used in the design of machines. Choice architecture is a big problem in the design of interaction and experience, and so nudging can be an interesting approach. But you just need to read the first chapter of the book for that, forget the rest.

Dana Kraft

Great book and an easy read. Most of the best examples in the book are related to public policy. How does this relate to the private sector? A great sales person knows how to control the "choice architecture" of his prospects in a way that gets them to buy.

Joshua Line

I gave this book twenty-four hours before I would sit down and write a review. I work in the realm of choice architecture - namely, information architecture. Every day, I run into situations where I have to make a decision that will help the user "decide" what they would like to do on a transactional web site. I think if I were far removed from this process, I wouldn't find this book interesting, but for the very reason of application, it necessitates reading by those working in usability and IA.

Ilia Markov

Not bad, but very basic and doesn't get into much detail on the psychology behind why nudges work. Feels like a collection of examples of nudges that an assistant collected

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Nudge by Richard H. Thaler

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