choice architecture

Blank Space: A Cultural History of the Twenty-First Century

by W. David Marx  · 18 Nov 2025  · 642pp  · 142,332 words

the oddities of human behavior to reveal rational economic patterns, while in the book Nudge, “libertarian paternalists” Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein introduced “choice architecture” as a way to shape behavior without restricting freedom. All these books shared a fundamental belief that data-driven solutions could improve society without direct

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, 251–52, 253, 259 Cho, Alexander, 175 Choate, Henry, 263 Cho, Benjamin, 78 “Chocolate Rain” (song), 91, 96 Cho, David, 106 Choe, David, 88, 267 “choice architecture,” 84 Christian Dior, 128, 251, 252 Christianity, 199 Christiansen, Jeanette, 17 Chungking Express (film), 245 Cirque du Soleil, 124 Cisco, 60 Clark, Larry, 16 Clarkson

Fixed: Why Personal Finance is Broken and How to Make it Work for Everyone

by John Y. Campbell and Tarun Ramadorai  · 25 Jul 2025

the title of their 2015 book. 37. Cass Sunstein and the Nobel Prize–winning economist Richard Thaler pioneered the use of subtle changes to the choice architecture of finance and other domains to induce good outcomes for individuals by harnessing their inertia. They refer to such light-touch paternalism as a “nudge

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system, 9 checking accounts, 237–238, 241 China: income inequality in, 16; peer-to-peer lending market in, 187 chip-and-pin ID card, 201 choice architecture of finance, 269–270n37 chonsei, 64–65 Christmas clubs, 281n21 Church of England, 145 Clark, Brandy, 292n9 climate change: catastrophe insurance and, 252–253; effect

The Elements of Choice: Why the Way We Decide Matters

by Eric J. Johnson  · 12 Oct 2021  · 362pp  · 103,087 words

Elke Weber, my family, and all designers, now and in the future ■ Contents 1 Shaping Choices 2 Plausible Paths 3 Assembled Preferences 4 Goals of Choice Architecture 5 Decisions by Default 6 How Many Options? 7 Putting Things in Order 8 Describing Options 9 Building Choice Engines 10 Becoming Better Choice Architects

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they ultimately purchased. More recently, I was a senior visiting scholar at the newly formed Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, consulting on many issues related to choice architecture. How do you write disclosures for loans and mortgages? How can you display information about a complex product, such as a prepaid credit card

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bed. He reported that bedtime became much less stressful for everyone involved when he started presenting options instead of a yes-or-no choice. * * * — Choice architecture has a lot in common with actual architecture. Winston Churchill knew this, saying, “We shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us.” He was

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. Similarly, intentionally or not, choice architects present choices that will make a difference in what information we examine and what we ignore. Not knowing about choice architecture can result in designs that steer choosers in ways neither we nor they imagine. * * * — Doctors are busy decision-makers. In the examination room they

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because these demonstrations are so inconsistent with traditional economics. The New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission unintentionally demonstrated this when they accidentally ran a choice-architecture experiment. The commission was trying to modernize the famous yellow cab fleet in the city, adding a video screen, GPS, and credit-card readers

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in selecting how we do a task. One benefit of reading this book, for both designers and choosers, may be to better understand when choice architecture goes bad. Choice architecture, whether it is good or bad, does the same things: it changes the information we see and changes what we recall from memory. While

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examines the different tools that designers have available, how they work, and how they work together. Without understanding the processes underlying choice architecture, we can’t be responsible designers. Knowing how choice architecture works will allow us to invent new and more effective tools. 2 Plausible Paths On the afternoon of January 15, 2009

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, including plans for kids (you might not have any) and lots of information about coverage for pregnancy (you are a single man). Often the choice architectures we encounter lack any serious consideration of how to display information. Instead, the display is haphazard, based on approximate intuitions of what looks good. It

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can lead to screening, which can lead to dating dishonest men, buying high-deductible insurance, and choosing risky investments. This is the disturbing thing about choice architecture. Its effects can be huge, potentially even determining your romantic partners, but these effects are often not understood, either by web designers or choosers. Fluency

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know about and think about the brand. It is acquiring information, not from the outside world, but from memory. What we remember is influenced by choice architecture as well, and to understand that, we turn to the world of memory. 3 Assembled Preferences Derren Brown, a charismatic British entertainer, has been

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thinking. Every additional thought recalled about living longer increased their perceived estimated life expectancy by 4.6 years. These findings raise another important point about choice architecture, one that we must all be careful to remember. Not every designer has our best interests in mind. Knowing how respondents reply to the

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longer than you expect, you are covered.10 How can a choice architect identify when people make an error? How can we say that one choice architecture provides more accurate choices than another? Researchers tend to use three different approaches: dominance, consistency, and what I will call the decision simulator technique.

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Queens, a casino in Reno. It drove economists absolutely batty, because after all, preferences should be consistent, whether you are choosing or pricing. Of course, choice architecture itself is pretty irritating to economists for exactly this reason: many things that should not matter end up changing choices. These inconsistencies are important in

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opera. The goal is to see how close you come to finding this “ideal” match. The closer the match, the better the choice architecture. The hope is that the choice architecture has enabled you to find someone as close as possible to this ideal. Giving people a goal might seem unrealistic, but it allows

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decision simulator technique is work by the economists Sendhil Mullainathan, Markus Noeth, and Antoinette Schoar. Financial advisers, people who suggest investments, are living and breathing choice architecture. These researchers wanted to see how well financial advisers performed for customers. To do this, they hired actors as “mystery shoppers” to visit the advisers

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building invites use, welcoming the visitor, and a functional building makes it easy for the visitor to accomplish their purpose once there. The best choice architectures will be inviting to the decision-maker but still produce decisions that are in their best interests. 5 Decisions by Default Why aren’t more

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the cost of E and F is almost $2,500! We can also see how well insurance buyers in our study do with and without choice architecture. Without choice architecture, people do badly, overpaying by an average of $533 per family. We tried many things, including giving them annual cost totals like those in

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options were added. While we found that more options could hurt accuracy, that was only when decisions were made without choice architecture. With choice architecture, there was no adverse effect. The intelligent use of choice architecture lets us add options without reducing fluency, therefore getting closer to the best choice for each person. As such, “

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race. Since Jeb Bush was a Republican, his party was listed first across the ballot. Given the slim margin, could this subtle selection of choice architecture have helped decide who would be president? Woodrow Wilson earned his PhD in political science from Johns Hopkins University before becoming the twenty-eighth president

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for an attribute wrong, choosers cannot make choices the way they would like and make worse choices. Describing options is the least appreciated tool of choice architecture, and the least explored by research, but one that has very important implications. 9 Building Choice Engines Choices are made in many different settings:

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its choice engine.16 Understanding Uncertainty Decision-making is tough. You have to combine different attributes and consider many options. We have talked about how choice architecture can make this easier or harder, but there is one aspect of decision-making we have not discussed: uncertainty. By their very definition, forecasts

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hurricane chart brings us back to the key property of a choice engine. They are interactive, allowing the chooser the ability to control the choice architecture, customize the choice architecture, and, finally, to learn. They can increase the impact of the designer, though. They give the designer many more tools to use and,

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moves from a passive display of options and attributes to a more active partner in the choice. Choice engines increase the power and possibilities of choice architecture, making designers more central than ever to choice. Designers have more responsibility when they can customize the environment for every chooser, deciding what options

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them that they are going to be influenced. Warnings accompany all sorts of products, from vacuum cleaners to cigarettes, so why not choice architecture? Unfortunately, disclosing the presence and intent of choice architecture does not seem to work. Several studies have told people about what defaults do, in various ways, including saying that their

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designers are sometimes clueless about the effects of what they are doing? They might be harming choosers unintentionally, making haphazard selections of tools. Neglecting Choice Architecture Is Harmful Neglecting choice architecture can lead to harm. In chapter 4, we talked about how many people should wait to claim Social Security retirement benefits. But the

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Administration thought was in retirees’ best interests, and they removed the break-even age from the standard description of claiming benefits. This kind of choice-architecture neglect assumes that people know how to make the right choice within the choice environment you’ve provided, ignoring that they really need help. This

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are all examples of infrequent decisions with big consequences. Particularly if the decision-maker has conflicting goals, choice architecture will play a larger role. Deliberately Bad Choice Architecture Not all bad choice architecture results from ignorance or naivete. Neglecting choice architecture might be common but it is not universal. Some designers experiment to see what works—for example

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this knowledge to advance their interests, and not those of the choosers. The result may be malevolent choice architecture. What happens when choice architecture goes bad? Let’s start with several examples, of increasing severity. Some evil choice architecture takes advantage of fluency, people’s initial judgments of effort. As we know, choosers are very sensitive

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and bad, there are three things that we should consider going forward: Choosers are unaware of the effects of choice architecture and do not respond to warning. Designers can underestimate the effects of choice architecture. Choice architecture has a larger effect on the most vulnerable. If these three statements are true, what should we do? One

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the minority. Overall, a more widespread understanding of how our design choices affect others should result in more intentional and constructive choice architectures from which we can all benefit. Designing choice architecture is like picking a path on a map. Many paths are possible, but some are much better for the chooser. Defaults

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hope, is an understanding of the scope of the tools available and how they fundamentally work. While some have questioned whether choice architecture is ethical, I believe the opposite: ignoring choice architecture is ethically wrong. The designer will inevitably influence the chooser. Pretending otherwise leads to outcomes that neither the designer nor the

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with the two major tools of standard economics, information and incentives. I’ll offer three examples: climate change, inequity, and polarization and fake news. Choice architecture can be an impressively efficient addition to the other tools we have to address these issues. Climate change: We have seen how defaults can affect

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retweet something that has been labeled as false. We await data on the effectiveness of these changes, but they share two important characteristics that makes choice architecture so appealing: they are relatively cheap to implement, and we can do experiments, so we can evaluate their effects. These are big problems, and

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a bunch of academics sit around writing a chapter describing the state of the field. The resulting highly cited article, “Beyond Nudges: Tools of a Choice Architecture,” encouraged the idea of writing a book. Important contributors to that effort not thanked elsewhere include Suzanne Shu, Benedict Dellaert, Craig Fox, Ellen Peters,

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Men and Elephants: Providing Total Estimated Annual Costs Improves Health Insurance Decision Making”; Johnson et al., “Can Consumers Make Affordable Care Affordable? The Value of Choice Architecture.” 13. LoGiurato, “Meet the 16-Year-Old Kid Who Got to Introduce President Obama in Brooklyn”; Saddler, “The Day I Introduced Barack Obama”; Zazulia, “

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in Ordered Environments”; Diehl, Kornish, and Lynch, “Smart Agents: When Lower Search Costs for Quality Information Increase Price Sensitivity.” 13. Details are in Glazerman, “The Choice Architecture of School Choice Websites.” 14. Steve Miller, who teaches a menu-design seminar and is president of the Miller Resource Group, in Grafton, Massachusetts, quoted

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Trump’s Energy Independence Policy.” For a discussion, see Peters et al., “Numeracy and Decision Making,” and Johnson et al., “Beyond Nudges: Tools of a Choice Architecture.” See also Peters, Innumeracy in the Wild: Misunderstanding and Misusing Numbers. 9. Building Choice Engines 1. Hardwick, “Top 100 Most Visited Websites by Search Traffic

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and Netemeyer, “Financial Literacy, Financial Education, and Downstream Financial Behaviors.” The results from Mrkva and others is in Mrkva et al., “Do Nudges Reduce Disparities? Choice Architecture Compensates for Low Consumer Knowledge.” 19. As Pailhès and Kuhn say, “First, participants’ feeling of freedom is one of the key elements of a successful

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issue-briefs/2017/feb/efforts-support-consumer-enrollment-decisions-using-total-cost. Glazerman, Steven, Ira Nichols-Barrer, Jon Valant, Jesse Chandler, and Alyson Burnett. “The Choice Architecture of School Choice Websites.” Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness 13, no. 2 (2020): 1–29. doi:10.1080/19345747.2020.1716905. Glazier, Alexandra, and

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https://www.livescience.com/5031-hypermiling-driving-tricks-stretch-miles-gallon.html. Mrkva, Kellen, Nathaniel Posner, Crystal Reeck, and Eric Johnson. “Do Nudges Reduce Disparities? Choice Architecture Compensates for Low Consumer Knowledge.” Journal of Marketing, working paper, Columbia Business School, 2020. Muldoon, Dan, and Richard W. Kopcke. “Are People Claiming Social Security

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–81, 336n Apple, 285–86, 287. See also iPhone COVID-19 app, 86–87 privacy and, 16–18, 332n Apple Music, 276 architecture compared with choice architecture, 6–8 Ariely, Dan, 213–14 Arizona State University, 65 Arono weight-loss plan, 63–65 artificial intelligence (AI), 42, 276, 277 assembled preferences,

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146–51, 274–75, 302 weather and, 68–69 auto insurance, 4–5, 131–32 automatic voter registration, 156–58 average effect, 167 bad choice architecture. See malicious choice architecture ballot order, 186–90, 343n banking credit cards, 244 interest rates, 97, 240–44 overdraft protection, 5–6 prepaid cards, 5, 127–28 Bank

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customization and user models, 273–75 setting right default, 146–51, 302 Germany and organ donation, 109, 110, 110 global warming, 67–68 goals of choice architecture, 83–106 conversations, 84–88 finding right box, 92–95 Social Security benefits, 88–98 translating attributes to goals, 231–38 Goldstein, Dan, 5, 111

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism

by Shoshana Zuboff  · 15 Jan 2019  · 918pp  · 257,605 words

what behavioral economists Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein call the “nudge,” which they define as “any aspect of a choice architecture that alters people’s behavior in a predictable way.”1 The term choice architecture refers to the ways in which situations are already structured to channel attention and shape action. In some cases

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to shape behavior toward specific ends. In 1953 Skinner anticipated innovations such as Michael Jensen’s incentive systems designed to maximize shareholder value and the “choice architectures” of behavioral economics designed to “nudge” behavior along a preferred path: “Schedules of pay in industry, salesmanship, and the professions, and the use of bonuses

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; Skinner’s views on, 443; social credit system in, 388–394; use of location data in, 246 China Daily, 391 chips, 189, 245, 289, 392 choice architectures, 294, 370 Chomsky, Noam, 323, 441 Choudhury, Tanzeem, 419, 420 Chrome browser, 400, 487 CIA (Central Intelligence Agency), 114, 116, 117, 321–322 Cisco, 227

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operating systems: Android, 133–135, 137, 154, 264; Apple iOS platform, 248; Windows 10, 164–165 opt-in, 174, 235–236, 241 opt-out policies: choice architecture of, 294; and Google Street View, 149; lack of, for Facebook “Like” button, 161; and rendition, 241; Verizon’s, 169, 170; and Verizon tracking ID

Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness

by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein  · 7 Apr 2008  · 304pp  · 22,886 words

Introduction PART I HUMANS AND ECONS 1 Biases and Blunders 2 Resisting Temptation 3 Following the Herd 4 When Do We Need a Nudge? 5 Choice Architecture PART II MONEY 6 Save More Tomorrow 7 Naïve Investing 8 Credit Markets 9 Privatizing Social Security: Smorgasbord Style PART III HEALTH 10 Prescription

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you are a choice architect. If you are a salesperson, you are a choice architect (but you already knew that). There are many parallels between choice architecture and more traditional forms of architecture. A crucial parallel is that there is no such thing as a “neutral” design. Consider the job of designing

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choices remain unrestricted, we think that the risks of inept or even corrupt designs are reduced. Freedom to choose is the best safeguard against bad choice architecture. Choice Architecture in Action Choice architects can make major improvements to the lives of others by designing user-friendly environments. Many of the most successful companies have

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helped people, or succeeded in the marketplace, for exactly that reason. Sometimes the choice architecture is highly visible, and consumers and employers are much pleased by it. (The iPod and the iPhone are good examples because not only are they

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default. We are confident that many absent-minded professors will have more comfortable retirements as a result. This example illustrates some basic principles of good choice architecture. Choosers are human, so designers should make life as easy as possible. Send reminders, and then try to minimize the costs imposed on those

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protection. To promote energy conservation, a great deal can be done with well-chosen social nudges. We will have more to say about how choice architecture can be used to help the environment later. Priming Thus far we have been focusing on people’s attention to the thoughts and behavior of

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we are keenly aware that governments are populated by Humans. What can be done to help? In the next chapter we describe our primary tool: choice architecture. * * * *Camerer et al. (2003) call for “asymmetric paternalism,” which they define as taking steps to help the least sophisticated people while imposing minimal harm

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. The surgeon knows the operation is complete when Homer finally exclaims: “Extended warranty! How can I lose?” (Thanks to Matthew Rabin for this tidbit.) CHOICE ARCHITECTURE Early in Thaler’s career, he was teaching a class on managerial decision making to business school students. Students would sometimes leave class early to

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will want to ensure that the Automatic System doesn’t get all confused. In this chapter, we offer some basic principles of good (and bad) choice architecture. Defaults: Padding the Path of Least Resistance For reasons we have discussed, many people will take whatever option requires the least effort, or the

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called “drug compliance.” Many patients, especially the elderly, are on medicines they must take regularly, and in the correct dosage. So here is a choice-architecture question. If you are designing a drug, and you have complete flexibility, how often would you want your patients to have to take their medicine

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Guess which option we suspect might be underutilized?) The comparison between ice cream and treatment options illustrates the concept of mapping. A good system of choice architecture helps people to improve their ability to map and hence to select options that will make them better off. One way to do this is

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reveals that as the choices become more numerous and/or vary on more dimensions, people are more likely to adopt simplifying strategies. The implications for choice architecture are related. As alternatives become more numerous and more complex, choice architects have more to think about and more work to do, and are

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on choices (such as order effects) are likely to be minor because people know what they like. As choices become more numerous, though, good choice architecture will provide structure, and structure will affect outcomes. Consider the example of a paint store. Even ignoring the possibility of special orders, paint companies sell

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or Web pages covered by Google (billions). Many companies such as Netflix, the mail-order DVD rental company, succeed in part because of immensely helpful choice architecture. Customers looking for a movie to rent can easily search movies by actor, director, genre, and more, and if they rate the movies they have

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will put the right incentives on the right people. One way to start to think about incentives is to ask four questions about a particular choice architecture: Who uses? Who chooses? Who pays? Who profits? Free markets often solve all of the key problems by giving people an incentive to make

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introduces a complication; one of us may well order something cheaper if he knows that the other is paying. Sentimental but true.) Many markets (and choice architecture systems) are replete with incentive conflicts. Perhaps the most notorious is the U.S. health care system. The patient receives the health care services

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car ownership, and possibly other less salient aspects such as depreciation, and may overweight the very salient costs of using a taxi.* An analysis of choice architecture systems must make similar adjustments. Of course, salience can be manipulated, and good choice architects can take steps to direct people’s attention to

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Congress changes its mind, as it is entitled to do; the Constitution does not protect your right to Social Security benefits). From the perspective of choice architecture, defined-benefit plans have one large virtue: they are forgiving to even the most mindless of Humans. With Social Security, the only decision a

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program of automatic escalation of contributions, developed by Thaler and his frequent collaborator Shlomo Benartzi, called Save More Tomorrow. Save More Tomorrow is a choice-architecture system that was constructed with close reference to five psychological principles that underlie human behavior: Many participants say that they think they should be saving

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immediately, 78 percent joined the program to increase their contribution with every pay raise. The results provide a dramatic illustration of the potential power of choice architecture. Compare the behavior of three groups of employees. The first group consists of those who chose not to meet with the consultant. This group

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savers were participating in the program. The dramatic change in participation illustrates the power of inertia—and with respect to savings, the crucial role of choice architecture. The Role of the Government The initiatives discussed thus far have been entirely a private-sector phenomenon. Firms have tried automatic enrollment without any

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high-risk borrowers from any source of financing. And of course, we libertarian paternalists do not favor bans. Instead, we prefer an improvement in choice architecture that will help people make better choices and avoid loans that really are predatory—loans that exploit people’s ignorance, confusion, and vulnerability. In fact

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, we think that the entire mortgage market could benefit from a major upgrade in choice architecture. The basic problem is that the old Truth in Lending Act is now hopelessly inadequate. When interest rates vary and there are myriad fees to

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the table. It is difficult to design public policies that inhibit “advisers” from taking that money. Better to inform the consumer by improving the choice architecture. If borrowers could compare loans more easily, then the price competition that was hoped for might actually emerge. One helpful nudge would be to simplify

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human frailties can lead to serious hardship and even disaster. Here as elsewhere, government should respect freedom of choice; but with a few improvements in choice architecture, people would be far less likely to choose badly. * * * *One brief aside here: economists often argue that when the stakes go up, people will

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Nudges The tale of privatization of social security in Sweden is highly revealing. The basic problem is that government planners did not choose the best choice architecture. Instead, they relied on a kind of dogmatic commitment to the Just Maximize Choices mantra, in a way that led to predictable effects from

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availability bias and inertia. Better choice architecture could have helped. We have emphasized that on the key issue of choosing a default, the designers of the Swedish plan did an excellent

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more to improve people’s health and thus to lengthen their lives. We focus on three particular problems here. The first raises complex questions of choice architecture. The federal government now has an extremely expensive prescription drug plan for seniors, one that operates on the familiar premise that government should give

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not enough to create good policy. The more choices there are, and the more complex the situation, the more important it is to have enlightened choice architecture. To produce a user-friendly design, the architect needs to understand how to help Humans. Software and building engineers live by a time-honored

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Although this topic is both interesting and important enough to deserve an entire book, we will comment only briefly on the potential effect of better choice architecture in increasing available organs.1 We think that some simple interventions would save thousands of lives every year—and do so while imposing essentially no

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which is not yet subject to effective international controls, and on which we shall have a few things to say here. Might nudges and improved choice architecture reduce greenhouse gases? Definitely; we will sketch some promising possibilities. Most of the time, governments seeking to protect the environment and to control the

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agreements, most libertarians tend to agree that government might have to intervene. It helps to think about the environment as the outcome of a global choice architecture system in which decisions are made by all kinds of actors, from consumers to large companies to governments. Markets are a big part of

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even day-by-day, about all of the personal and social costs. We thus begin our discussion of environmental problems with these two aspects of choice architecture: incentives and feedback. Better Incentives When incentives are badly aligned, it is appropriate for government to try to fix the problem by realigning them.

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to guess about parents’ true preferences so that the policy can be adjusted properly based on future feedback. Nudging High Schoolers Toward College Good choice architecture doesn’t need to originate with a wonkish professor and a powerful computer algorithm. It can be the brainchild of a local school official or

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. For now we note only that the official institution of marriage is neither necessary nor sufficient for good default rules. From the standpoint of good choice architecture, then, a central problem with the current licensing scheme is that it is not nearly libertarian enough. Of course, we recognize that no one

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arbitrariness that in many states, even experienced divorce lawyers often have no idea how disputes are likely to come out. At a minimum, the choice architecture should be changed so that people can have a clearer sense of their rights and obligations. More ambitiously, nudges should be introduced to protect those

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government neutrality of a certain kind. With respect to the right to vote, the government must avoid deliberate nudging in the particular sense that its choice architecture cannot favor any particular candidate. Something similar can be said about the right to free exercise of religion and the right to free speech.

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that seemingly small features of social situations can have massive effects on people’s behavior; nudges are everywhere, even if we do not see them. Choice architecture, both good and bad, is pervasive and unavoidable, and it greatly affects our decisions. The second claim is that libertarian paternalism is not an

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protection to planning for retirement to assisting the needy, markets should certainly be enlisted. In fact, some of the best nudges use markets; good choice architecture includes close attention to incentives. But there is all the difference in the world between senseless opposition to all “government intervention” as such and the

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1993). 24. See Levav and Fitzsimons (2006). 25. See Kay et al. (2004). 26. See Holland, Hendriks, and Aarts (2005). 27. See Bargh (1997). 5. Choice Architecture 1. Letter of July 2, 2003, to State School Officers signed by William Hanse, deputy secretary of education, and David Chu, undersecretary of defense. 2

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choices, and incentives, mappings, rules of engagement for, simplifying strategies, and social influences, starting points provided by, use of term, user-friendly environments provided by choice architecture, pervasiveness of Christmas savings clubs Cialdini, Robert Civility Check civil unions Clean Air Act climate change Clocky (alarm clock) coercion coffee, iced vs. hot cognitive

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Chicago London: bombing in World War II, pedestrians in Long, Bridget loss aversion lotteries low stakes Madrian, Brigitte magazine subscriptions, and inertia Maine, “intelligent assignment” choice architecture in mandated choice Manilow, Barry mappings markets, feedback in, free, incentives in, invisible hand in, trading systems in Markowitz, Harry marriage: anachronistic state control of

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, and children, choice architecture for, civil union vs., commitment in, cost/benefit analysis of, covenant, default rules for, discriminatory history of the institution of, and divorce, as domestic partnership

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redistribution Reflective System, and Planners Regulation Z (Truth in Lending Act) representativeness required choice restaurant health inspection retirement plans: automatic enrollment in, automatic savings for, choice architecture in, choosing, complex choices in, conflicts of interest in, contribution rates, default options in, defined-benefit, defined-contribution, discretionary contributions to, diversification rule of,

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slippery-slope argument smoking: CARES, intrusive paternalism vs., quitting without a patch, risks of, and self-control, and social influence Snow, Tony social influences, as choice architecture, conformity, and cultural change, in health care, and information, in Jonestown, learning from others, in peer pressure, power of, priming, spotlight effect, and unpredictability “

Empire of Things: How We Became a World of Consumers, From the Fifteenth Century to the Twenty-First

by Frank Trentmann  · 1 Dec 2015  · 1,213pp  · 376,284 words

direction. Today, the discussion of change is mainly framed in terms of choice, markets and the sovereign consumer. Behavioural economists have added the concept of ‘choice architecture’ to show that consumers do not make decisions in a vacuum but are influenced by available information as well as their own inertia, procrastination or

Gnomon

by Nick Harkaway  · 18 Oct 2017  · 778pp  · 239,744 words

of a given desired shape. Not putting a person into a book, but iterating that person in the minds of anyone who read it.’ ‘Like choice architecture.’ The use of big data and nuance to influence political decision-making: the attempt to corrupt the political process by deliberate manipulation of the cognitive

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become mobs. They can be divided by scapegoating and prejudice, bought off in fragments, even just romanced by pretty faces. And of course there’s choice architecture: the very thing we use at Tidal Flow to smooth your journey through London or to design serendipitous social spaces in the new developments of

To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism

by Evgeny Morozov  · 15 Nov 2013  · 606pp  · 157,120 words

set of assumptions accounts for the proliferation of what Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler call “nudges”: clever manipulations of default settings—what the authors call “choice architecture”—to get you to eat healthy foods or save money for retirement. Nudging is to manipulation what public relations is to advertising: it gets things

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agency without giving them much choice. Brownsword sees two problems with nudges. They appear to belong firmly in the prudential register; by tinkering with our “choice architecture,” regulators try to appeal to our self-interest. But in a truly democratic society, the choice of the appropriate register, as well as shifts across

Them And Us: Politics, Greed And Inequality - Why We Need A Fair Society

by Will Hutton  · 30 Sep 2010  · 543pp  · 147,357 words

world of imperfect decision-making that can be improved by smart interventions if we choose. The task becomes creation – usually by the government – of a ‘choice architecture’ that respects choice but guides individuals to exercise it rationally. The answer to individuals being myopic about saving, for example, is to set up schemes

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(2008) Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness, Yale University Press, esp. Part V. See also Jack Fuller (2009) ‘Heads, You Die: Bad Decisions, Choice Architecture, and How to Mitigate Predictable Irrationality’, Per Capita, at http://www.percapita.org.au/01_cms/details.asp?ID=215. 18 Friedrich Hayek (1945) ‘The

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, 148–9 Standard Oil, 130–1, 132 state, British: anti-statism, 20, 22, 233–4, 235, 311; big finance’s penetration of, 176, 178–80; ‘choice architecture’ and, 238, 252; desired level of involvement, 234–5; domination of by media, 14, 16, 221, 338, 339, 343; facilitation of fairness, ix–x, 391

Why Nudge?: The Politics of Libertarian Paternalism

by Cass R. Sunstein  · 25 Mar 2014  · 168pp  · 46,194 words

virtue of spotlighting efforts, all over the world, to develop sensible, low-cost policies with close reference to how human beings actually think and behave. Choice Architecture Findings about human error raise a natural question, which is whether an improved understanding of thought and behavior opens greater space for paternalism. Perhaps that

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for government action even without harm to others or some kind of collective action problem.33 We do know that people are much affected by choice architecture, meaning the background against which choices are made.34 Such architecture is both pervasive and inevitable, and it greatly influences outcomes, whether or not

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we are even aware of it. In fact choice architecture can be decisive. It effectively makes countless decisions for us, and it influences numerous others, by pressing us in one direction or another.35 For

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do printers have single-sided or double-sided default settings? People use a lot more paper with a single-sided default.36 Here as elsewhere, choice architecture cannot be avoided. The great novelist David Foster Wallace began a speech with the following joke: “There are these two young fish swimming along, and

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then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, ‘What the hell is water?’”37 This is of course a joke about choice architecture (fortunately, there aren’t many). It is also instructive, because it puts a spotlight on a central fact of life, which is that central,

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shall see, this point raises serious problems for the Harm Principle, because influences on our choices are omnipresent, and we may not even see them. Choice architecture exists whenever we enter a cafeteria, a restaurant, a hospital, or a grocery store; when we select a mortgage, a car, a health care

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ended up attending more selective colleges, thus obtaining higher expected earnings over their lifetimes.38 For all of us, a key question is whether the choice architecture is helpful and simple, or harmful, complex, and exploitative. Any architecture will exercise power over the people who are subject to it. Since we

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cannot eliminate choice architecture, might violations of the Harm Principle turn out to be inevitable? Might Mill and his followers have missed the inevitable effects of that architecture? This

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to move people’s decisions in their preferred directions? Would any such effort be unacceptably paternalistic? Who will monitor the choice architects, or create a choice architecture for them?39 Economists have an elaborate account of the “market failures” that can justify government intervention, including monopoly, an absence of information on the

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human propensity to err. Is it unacceptably paternalistic to use such failures to justify regulation? Is it legitimate to use choice architecture to counteract behavioral market failures? My basic answers are that choice architecture is inevitable and that behavioral market failures do, in fact, justify certain forms of paternalism.41 When these failures

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provide a full account of the paternalist’s toolbox (see chapter 2), nor did he have a full sense of the nature and power of choice architecture, but at least some nudges fall comfortably within the category of remonstrating, reasoning, and persuading rather than compelling. At the same time, there are

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Behavioral economists generally focus on means, not ends. Most of their key findings involve human errors with respect to means. Their goal is to create choice architecture that will make it more likely that people will promote their own ends, as they themselves understand them. And indeed, my focus here will be

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cure may be worse than the disease, and that all relevant benefits and costs must be taken into account. I emphasize five additional conclusions: 1. Choice architecture is inevitable, and hence certain influences on choices are also inevitable, whether or not they are intentional or the product of any kind of conscious

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emphatically moral argument for certain kinds of paternalism. Officials can make people’s lives better if they are alert to behavioral market failures and design choice architectures that give health, wealth, and well-being the benefit of the doubt. Of course there are important questions, which I will engage in due

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less, because of the affect that accompanies them. Advertisers and public officials try to create affective taxes and subsidies, which are an important part of choice architecture; consider public educational campaigns designed to reduce smoking or texting while driving. Some political campaigns have the same goal, attempting to impose a kind of

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is now simple prudence. In many communities, the social meaning of smoking has changed as well. Social meanings are a central part of society’s choice architecture, and they are often taken for granted, even though they could be otherwise. In many ways, we experience social meanings in the same way that

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is no problem of ends paternalism, and so long as only disclosure is involved, there might not be paternalism at all. If efforts to alter choice architecture are more aggressive—if they involve economic incentives designed to discourage the relevant behavior, or flat bans—then they would qualify as paternalistic. Nonetheless, they

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people’s choices. But unlike the Big Gulp ban, this approach is not merely a form of soft paternalism but also a genuine nudge, enlisting choice architecture on behalf of public health. Mayor Bloomberg’s approach here is not unlike that of Google, which found that its New York cafeteria, which

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consume less of it, it is behaving paternalistically insofar as it is making it harder for them to make the choices that they prefer. True, choice architecture is inevitable. True, many people may prefer that private or public institutions impose such costs, and some or many smokers may themselves share that preference

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behavioral market failures. But we have seen that in other cases, competitors do best if they exploit such failures. The broadest point is that good choice architecture, even if it is behaviorally informed, should promote rather than squelch competition, and it should keep Hayekian objections very much in mind. If choice architects

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to behaviorally informed regulation, and it helps to undergird its First Law. Antipaternalists are correct to emphasize the importance of learning. Some imaginable forms of choice architecture, dedicated to welfare-promoting paternalism, might indeed infantilize people; we could easily imagine science fiction stories in that vein, and indeed Brave New World can

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decide as they see fit, and to impose a flat ban on government efforts to influence their decisions. (I am bracketing here the inevitability of choice architecture and the inevitable fact that a number of choices are inevitably made for people already.) We could also imagine a world—call it Benthamville—in

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not because the general rule always leads in good directions, but because it is far safer, and far better, than a case-by-case approach. Choice Architecture and Inevitable Nudges We have seen an immediate objection to the rule-consequentialist suggestion, and it cannot be repeated often enough, simply because it is

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so often ignored (and so please forgive the italics): Choice architecture is inevitable. The social environment influences choices, and it is not possible to dispense with a social environment. This point holds whether the social environment

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is a product of self-conscious designers or of some kind of invisible-hand mechanism. There can be (and often is) choice architecture without choice architects.36 Default rules are omnipresent, and they matter. Do we have an opt-in design or an opt-out design? Whenever there

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their welfare, and hence are taking steps to influence or alter people’s choices for their own good. If so, we might think that while choice architecture cannot be avoided, it is possible to avoid paternalism. Perhaps choice architects—at least if they are working for the government—can self-consciously refuse

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alter people’s choices (if the only concern is the effect of those choices on choosers themselves). Government officials might respect those choices, and the choice architecture that is established by the private sector, and attempt to avoid any independent effects of their own. It is true that officials can work to

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minimize such effects. But some choice architecture is likely to be in place from government, and no such architecture is entirely neutral.37 Whenever officials are setting up websites or cafeterias, or

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on what people select. Programs from the Social Security Administration, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Energy, and the Department of Education inevitably contain choice architecture. If people have to fill out a form to receive a permit or to obtain aid (or to pay taxes), they will immediately encounter some

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favor of active choosing. But it is an empirical issue whether that question, properly answered, raises a serious problem for a proposed act of paternalism. CHOICE ARCHITECTURE AND FREEDOM Actually, there is a deeper problem, to which I briefly referred in the context of welfare: All of us could, in principle, make

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feel frustrated if their autonomy is compromised, choicepreserving approaches are usually best. But it is also important to recognize that many aspects of the prevailing choice architecture are fixed, and we cannot easily opt out of them. Thick, Again The thick version of the autonomy argument does not turn on empirical questions

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by what I am calling my reckless suggestion. Let us take the objection on its own terms. It bears repeating that in ordinary life, choice architecture ensures that we do not have to make countless imaginable decisions. Of course we are allowed to participate in markets and to vote, and in

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would go if they were fully rational. Paternalism, whether hard or soft, creates “as if” rationality. Indeed, that is a central point of good choice architecture. It would be possible to object that if this approach is understood in a certain way, it ignores the legitimate claims of System 1.11

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life worth living? Why should public officials, or anyone else, make people focus on something other than what they want to focus on, and promote choice architecture that devalues, denigrates, and undermines some of their most fundamental motivations and concerns? Indeed, might not System 2 be paralyzed if it lacks a sense

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of bounded rationality and of cognitive biases suggests that System 2 needs to be put firmly in charge. To the extent that it is not, choice architecture should be established to move people to a situation of “as if” System 2 primacy. This view raises many puzzles, because some of the

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bounded rationality and cognitive biases lead people to make what they themselves see as serious errors, or would see as serious errors after reflection, and choice architecture should be established to help make those errors less likely or less damaging. If inertia leads people not to take action that (they do or

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. Indeed, the disease itself may produce long-term benefits, not least in the form of learning. At the same time, we have seen that choice architecture is inevitable, whether or not it is intentional or a product of any kind of conscious design. We have also seen that the strongest objections

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but sometimes false. The central question involves the likely effects of particular approaches, whether paternalistic or not. Better understandings of behavioral market failures, and of choice architecture, are uncovering many opportunities for increasing people’s welfare without compromising the legitimate claims of freedom of choice. We will uncover many more such opportunities

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w19480. 39. It should be emphasized, however, that many behaviorally informed approaches, such as simplification of complex requirements, need not have a paternalistic dimension. On choice architecture for choice architects, see SUNSTEIN, supra note 9. 40. See BAR-GILL, supra note 20, at 2–4. 41. My emphasis here is on behavioral

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enrollment, 54, 71(t), 133, 148. See also default rules autonomy (freedom of choice), 123–42; antipaternalism and, 20–22, 88–89, 123–24, 164; choice architecture and, 17–18, 130–33, 137–38, 151–54, 184(n16); intrinsic value, 127–28, 133; vs. mandates or bans, 28–29; and reversibility,

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64 (see also means vs. ends paternalism); paternalism justified, 16, 20–22, 107, 121–22, 170(n39); technological corrections, 93; types, 34–35. See also choice architecture behavioral public choice theory, 100–102 Behavior Insights Team (U.K.), 12 Bloomberg, Michael, 51, 75–80, 77(f), 84, 148 brain: and cognitive systems

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; System 2 thinking); and optimism, 47–48 Bridge Exception, 105–7, 109 Cameron, David, 12 Center for Consumer Freedom, 76, 77(f) Chabris, Christopher, 39 choice architecture, 21; active choosing, 95, 100, 115, 125, 138, 140; and autonomy, 17–18, 130–33, 137–38, 151–54, 184(n16); Bridge Exception and,

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framing, 29–30; and loss aversion, 29–30; short vs. long-term, 35–39; unrealistic optimism and, 44–48. See also autonomy (freedom of choice); choice architecture; System 1 thinking; System 2 thinking default rules: vs. active choosing, 138, 140; and autonomy, 125, 129–30, 133, 138, 151–54; benefits, 114;

…

of Behaviorally Informed Regulation, 17–18, 72, 138, 164 Food Plate, 139, 148 food stamps, 84 framing, 29–30, 64–68, 85. See also choice architecture freedom of choice. See autonomy free markets, 8–11, 92–94, 141–42. See also fuel economy fuel economy: behavioral market failures, vi, 36, 42

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(see also specific forms of paternalism) Harm Principle: challenges to, 4–6, 8–9, 14–18, 41, 112, 163–64 (see also behavioral market failures; choice architecture); defined, 3–4; Epistemic Argument, 6–8, 16–17, 21–22, 163 (see also Epistemic Argument); hard vs. soft paternalism and, 17–18, 19–

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, 121 Kahneman, Daniel, 26. See also cognitive systems learning from mistakes, 94–96, 114, 125 letter grades, 65–66 limited choices, 104–5. See also choice architecture loss aversion, 29–30, 32, 56 Madison, James, 120 mandates: justifications, 38–39, 42, 140–42, 167(n5); means vs. ends paternalism and, 62;

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soft drinks, 51, 75–80, 84, 144, 148 Stewart, Jon, 76 surveys, 40–41 System 1 thinking: about, 26–34; and autonomy, 134, 136–37; choice architecture and, 149–51; and probability, 48–49 (see also probability judgment); by public officials, 101–2, 120; and reversibility, 152–53; and salience, 40; short

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