Fantastic book that everyone interested in human thought should read! This extremely important concept seems to be unknown across society: namely, how an issue is phrased has a HUGE impact on how people will respond. For example, where a school cafeteria chooses to place high calorie food items has an effect on childhood obesity.
The scary thing is that many of the nudges that we receive in everyday life are unintentional. There is a paucity of Macchiavellis in business and government. For every supermarket which purposely designs the flow and placement of items to maximize sales of high ticket items, there is a corresponding set of poorly designed bodegas. The myriad opportunities to guide people's decisions are being poorly utilized.
This book also explores the ethics of using available knowledge regarding how people make choices to guide them toward the choice considered most desirable. Personally, I think that the authors err a little too much on the side of caution. How could it be unethical to place a picture of a duck in a men's urinal to increase accuracy? Could it possibly be a bad idea to try to reduce childhood obesity merely by deciding where to place the chocolate cake? If we know that people are likely to be affected by inertia to the point of letting their retirement money ride, how is it immoral to exercise great care in designing the default choices?
Those questions and more are why I loved this book. It is highly provocative and provides a great deal of food for thought. Hopefully, more people will examine the opportunities that they have in their own lives to provide beneficial nudges and will exercise great care to ensure that these nudges are not solely motivated by self-interest and do not have too strong of an effect on free-will. I definitely recommend this book!
No comments:
Post a Comment