1. Nudge
(on the architecture of choices)
MAURO MEANTI
HAWASSA UNIVERSITY, MARCH 2105
Based on the work of R.H Thaler and C.R. Sunstein : «Nudge»
2. Agenda
Introducing the concept
Libertarian Paternalism
Human Biases and
Blunders
How do we work? Two
cognitive systems
Rules of Thumb
Overconfidence
Status Quo bias
Framing
Humans make mistakes
Self control strategies
Conformity strategies
When to Nudge
How to Nudge
Defaults
Expect Error
Give feedback
Understand mappings
Structure complex choices
Incentives
Examples
3. Caroline and the school cafeteria system
How do you present the
food?
Rearranging the way food is
presented changes the
consumption of a category by
25%
How do you use this power?
Make the children best off
Use a random criteria
Try to not to influence the choices
Maximise suppliers who bribe you
Maximise profits
4. Caroline is a choice architect
Organize the context in which
people make decisons
Who design the ballots
A doctor who describes alternatives
A parent describing educational choices
to her children
A real architect – designing spaces
Restroom designers
5. Libertarian Paternalism
Libertarian
Freedom of choice should never
be in doubt
Architects should preserve or
increment the number of choices
Paternalism
Architects can influence people’s
behaviors to make their lives
better (as judged by people
themselves)
Nudge
Alters people behavior in a
predictable way
Does not limit options
Does not significantly change the
economic incentives
6. The Homo Ecomomicus objections
Everyone will make the right
decisions for himself
In abstract, yes
Concretely, humans are
predictably wrong:
Planning fallacy
Status quo bias
Perception issues
The more the choices, the better
Choices are better than “one size fits all”
But people not always can make the right
choice (as in “better for themselves”)
Lack of experience
Lack of information
Lack of feedback
Influencing people choices is unavoidable
Influencing choices does not equal coercion
Freedom of choice is the ultimate safeguard
9. Are you awake?
A coffee and a book cost 1100 Birr in total.
The book cost 1000 Birr more than the coffee.
How much does the coffee cost?
If it takes 5 machines 5 minutes to make 5 coffee, how long would it
take 100 machines to make 100 coffee?
11. Rules of thumb: Anchoring
Heuristics
Anchoring
Availability
Representativeness
Anchoring
How many habitants in Awasa
Write down the 3 last digits of your phone number.
Now answer: When did Attila invaded Europe?
Answer two questions:
How happy are you?
Do you have a boy(girl)friend?
Anchors are nudges!
Suggest a starting point for people thought process: the more you ask for, the more
you tend to get
Give an offer of either: $100, $250, $1000, $5000
Give an offer of either: $50, $75, $100, $150
12. Rules of thumb: Availability
Heuristics
Anchoring
Availability
Representativeness
Availability
Availability of news:
homicides vs suicides
Availability of experience:
people buy flood insurances AFTER the flood
happens
Use availability to nudge!
13. Rules of thumb: Representativeness
Heuristics
Anchoring
Availability
Representativeness
Representativeness
When people are asked:
“ how likely A belongs to category B”
they answer based on their stereotype of B
Linda is 30, single, smart. She has a major in
statistics. As a student she was very
concerned with issues of discrimination and
social justice.
Ranks, in order of probability, amongst this
futures for Linda:
Bank teller
Bank teller active in the feminist movement
Other
London bombing mystery
14. Optimism and Overconfidence
Know yourself!
In which decile you expect to fall in
this class?
94% of professors believe they are
above average
www2.nea.org/he/heta06/iamages/2006pg7.pdf
At marriage, people gives themselves
~0% chances of divorcing
May make people fail sensible
preventive steps
15. Gains vs Losses
People are loss averse
Heads you win $X
Tail you lose $100
How much does X have to be for
you to take a bet?
Loss aversion produce inertia,
people want to stick to what they
have, even if a change would be
in their interest
16. Status quo Bias
Stick with the existing
Why students always sits the same
place?
Half the participants a pension fund
plan never change their asset
allocation.
This is generated by lack of
attention
This is why “free for three months”
marketing promotions work
If renewal is automatic and
cancelation requires an action….
Likelihood of renewal is much higher
The power of the default
Loss aversion + lack of attention imply that
the “default” option attracts a very high
market share
In addition, often the default option may be
seen as “endorsed” by the default setter
17. Framing
Formulation matters
Of 100 patients who have this
operation, 90 are alive after 5
years
Of 100 patients who have this
operation, 10 are dead after 5
years
The Automatic System gets VERY
scared (this also works with the
doctors themselves)
Framing is a nudge
(a) if you use energy conservation
methods, you will save $350
(b) if you don’t use energy conservation,
you will lose $350
Framing, exploited together with the loss
aversion, may be a powerful nudge
18. Humans are fallible
People choices are influenced in ways that are not
explained by the standard economic framework
People can be nudged
Rules of thumbs
Overconfidence
Loss aversion
Status quo bias
Framing
19. More human fallabilities
Temptation
You can be in two
states: cold and hot
Something is “tempting”
if we consume more of
it when we are hot vs
when we are cold
Sometimes is good,
often gives us troubles
There is a “hot-cold
empathy gap” since
we underestimate the
effect of arousal
Mindless choosing
The popcorn experiment
The experiment of tomato
soup
Large packages are a form
of choice architecture, they
work as nudges
Lack of self-control and
mindless choosing combined
spell BIG issues. Obesity,
smoking , alcoholism all
derive from this combination
Same for economic matters
– people lack of saving
Procrastination
We have all said “ I will do
it tomorrow”
20. Social Influences: we like to conform
Information and Peer Pressure
The Asch experiment:
You are given a very easy task
Everybody around you gives what seem to be the
wrong answer
What will you say?
If the task is difficult, the conformity effect increases
Answers also become very sensitive to “confidently
expressed” nudges
Collective conservativism:
The tendency of groups to stick to established patterns
even if new needs arise
Pluralistic ignorance:
Following a tradition not because we like it but merely
because we think that most other people like it
The spotlight effect
People believe that others closely
pay attention to them
So they conform to what they think
people expect
21. Does conformity affect choices?
Socially
Music downloads
Elections
Instrumental usage of polls
US primaries
Economically
All the bubbles of the word are
driven by conformity thinking
Helped by media
Helped by speculators
22. How to use conformity for nudging
Tax Compliance (Minnesota)
4 different groups were told 4 different
stories:
1. Your taxes will go to fund good things
(education…)
2. You will be jailed if you do not pay
taxes
3. We will help you to file you tax return if
you are not sure how to do
4. More than 90% of your state co-citizens
already paid their taxes
Guess which one had an impact?
Energy Saving (California)
Tell users how much energy they
consume against the average in their
neighborhood
Above-average users decreased
significantly but….
Below-average users increased
significantly
Then they added a emotional nudge
to the bill
And that corrected the negative impact
23. When to nudge
The Golden Rule:
Offer nudges that are most likely to help
and least likely to inflict harm
People will need nudges for decisions
that are difficult and rare, for which they
do not get prompt feedback and when is
difficult to translate the terms in
something easy to understand
Categories of difficult choices
Benefit now – cost later
Smoking, drinking, eating chocolate cookies
Pay the price now, benefit later
Diet, exercise, brush teeth
Save money for retirement
Degree of difficulty
Pick a mortgage, chose an insurance
Frequency
Choose a college, find a spouse, buy a house
Feedback
You only get feedback on the options you select, not on the one you reject
Translating choices into experience
Easy for choosing an ice-cream or a movie
Hard for a retirement fund: too many variables involved
40. So, … how to nudge?
6 Principles
Defaults
Expect Error
Give feedback
Understand mappings
Structure complex choices
Incentives
41. Defaults: the path of least resistance
Inertia+Status quo bias
We expect a large number of people
to end up with the “do nothing”
option
If the default option comes with a
suggestion that is “normal” or
“recommended” will drive more
people to it
Examples and impact
Automatic renewal for magazine subscriptions
Downloading/installing software
Data usage consensus
Defaults are (almost) unavoidable
There is always the choice to force an
option to be chosen (required choice)
When choice is complicated and
difficult, this is not the right approach
42. Expect Error (and accommodate it)
Provide error tolerance
Insert your card / ticket
Automobiles
Gas tank cap
Headlights
Help avoiding errors
Take your pills
Attach your file
Right fuel?
Look to the right!
43. Give feedback
Tell people when they are
doing well
Digital Cameras fake “shutter
click”
Don’t overdo with warnings
Repeated and continuous
warnings tend to be ignored
Get creative with feedback
Painting a ceiling: the magic pink
paint that becomes white when
dry
44. Understand Mapping (1)
Mapping and Ice Cream
10 different fruit flavors
All made with fruit and water
Easy to map the relation between
choice and your experience
If you do not know how lychee
tastes, ask for a sample!
Mapping a disease treatment
Doctor diagnosis prostate cancer
Gives your three options
Surgery
Radiation
Watchful watching
Extremely difficult to map the relation
between the choice and the experience
Doctor may have a bias
Normally you are asked to chose in a split
second
45. Understand Mapping (2)
Other complex mapping
decisions
How many megapixels should my
camera have
Buy a cellular phone plan
Choose a credit card, or a
mortgage, or an insurance
How to make the mapping easier
Translate the megapixel in “largest print size”
Regulate complex plans via a RECAP policy
RECAP: Record, Evaluate, Compare Alternative
Prices
Standardize by law all components of a complex
decision (NOT THEIR COST)
Make them available in a spreadsheet format
Issue to each customer a yearly recap of her usage
according to that format
That would make extremely easy to compare
what the impact of choosing a different plan
would be for any user
46. Structure Complex Choices
Strategies for choices
Few, well-understood alternatives: chose
between three offices
Examine all attributes of each
Make trade-off when necessary
“Compensatory” strategy
Many alternatives: chose an apartment in a
big city
First, do an elimination process
Second, move to a compensatory strategy
Elimination/simplification processes can be
suboptimal, but they are necessary
A good choice architecture must provide a
good structure for choice
Examples
Small ice-cream cart
Order does not matter if you offer 3 flavors
Ice-cream shop
If you offer 20, you group: fruit, creams, chocolats
Paint store
Catalogs of thousand hues
Alphabetical?
Use the paint wheel
Easier if you see them
From big data: collaborative filtering
Use the judgment of people “similar to you” to help picking
books/movies….
But sometimes an architect may want to nudge people in a
different direction
47. Incentives
The Economy IS important
Four key questions per each
choice architecture:
Who uses it
Who choses
Who pays
Who profits
Conflicts of interest may affect the
way the market works
Friends out to lunch
Healthcare systems
Salience: make the incentive visible
Does the choosers notice the incentives they
faces?
Buying a car (or not)
People tend to compare only cost of operating
the car and cost of public transportation
They forget the opportunity cost of putting money
into the purchase
Saving energy:
A) increase the energy bill
B) show on the thermostat how much more $ you
are spending
48. 6 principles
Defaults
Expect Error
Give feedback
Understand mappings
Structure complex
choices
Incentives
Using those nudges,
choice architects can
improve the outcomes
for their people
49. Example: donating organs
Explicit vs Implicit Consent
(Johnson/Goldstein research)
3 samples of population were asked the same
question: do you want to be a donor or not
The first sample had a default of not being a
donor, the second to be a donor, the third had
no default
Changing and choosing was extremely simple,
one click on a box
When participants had to “opt in”, the
percentual of donors was 41%
When participants had top “opt out” the
percentual of donors was 82%
When participants were forced to chose, the
percentual of donors was 79%
The concrete steps needed fails allow the
“status quo” resistance to prevail. Even if the
step was a simple click
Germany (opt-in) has 12% of donors, Austria
(opt opt-out) has 99% donors
Mandated choice
Some states introduced the concept of mandated
choice. If paired with exploiting the “social norm”
nudge it may prove very impactful
50. A program in the Philippines
For six months, the “would-be” non-smoker opens a bank account
and puts on it every month the money she normally spend in
cigarettes. The government matches part of the money
If she stops putting the money, the money in the deposit goes to
charity
After 6 months, she passes a medical test. If she is nicotine-free, she
gets her money back (plus the incentive), otherwise it goes to
charity
This program exploits the incentive nudge and the “aversion to
lose” fallacy
Example: Quit Smoking
51. The Globe
Is a globe wirelessly connected to
the home energy meter.
You keep it in the living room
It becomes red when the energy
consumption is above the
average
Can save up to 25% of the energy
bill
Is based on the feedback nudge
Energy Reports
Don’t only show your consumption but
compares it with the consumption of
the most efficient neighbors
Make the cost of the inefficiency
evident:
“THIS MONTH IT COSTS YOU $128”
Provides practical advice on how to
match the efficient neighbors
Uses social compliance, feedback
and loss-aversion
Examples: saving energy
52. Summing up
Small features of social situations can have massive effects
on people behaviors
Nudges are everywhere, even if we do not see them
Choice Architecture (both good an bad) is pervasive and
unavoidable
Choice Architects can preserve freedom of choice while
also nudging people in directions that will improve their lives
Notas del editor
Libertarian Paternalism means that people are “free to chose”
Nudges are not mandates. Putting fruit at eyes level is a nudge. Banning junk food is NOT
The whole theme applies both to public an private sectors. Employeers are important choice architects
Planning fallacy: contractors. Dissertations
Status quo bias: cellphone configuration
We will show how the right default option can save lives. Default options are a typical example of nudges
Choosing between different medical treatemnts
Choosing between fruit and ice-cream (long-term effect slow, feedback poor)
Legs and orientation create the illusion that the tops are different.
Ducking when a ball is throw to you, smile when seeing a cute toddler = Automatic
Using R: reflective
Speaking English + reflective
Cursing in Italian: automatic
Cognitive reflection test
When we make judgements, we use simple rules of thumbs to help us. Those lead us to systematic biases, emerging from the interplay betweem the Automatic System and the Reflective system.
Addis: 3.100
Awasa: 225
Shashemene 120
Negele 45
Process is called: Anchoring and adjusting. But the adjustment is always insufficient
Attila invaded in 411
In that order, correlation is 0.11
Reverte the order, correlation is .62
Here the Automatic system tells us “ she can not be JUST a bank teller, read the description!!!
Same happens for cancer clsuters
Less than 5% self-assess “below median: >50% says “top 20%”
Second marriage is the triumph of hope vs experience!
Lotteries are successful bcause unrealistic optimsim
Framing works because people tend to be somewhat mindless passive decision makers. Their reflective system does not do the work required to check and see whether reframing the question would produce a different answer.
One reason of that is they do not know what they could do with the resulting contradiction
Examples:
Go for dessert
Another glass of wine
Busying something at a deparment store
When others give the wrong answer, your
Tax complaincer. The Minnesota example.
After the tax compliance , remember, as an example, that if you want to discourage poll astension, you should NOT lament the large number of people who fail to vote
Same example then Minnesota but for non-drinking campaigns: 70% of Etiopian university student have less than 3 alcoholic drinks a week
Extended warranty example :
Cell phone costs 200$. They offer extended warranty for the second year of its life for 20$
Chances of the phone to break in year two are 1%. So value is 2$.
If users have less than a fully rational belief, firms have incentive to exploiut it vs eradicate it
Those doors are bad architecture because they violate a simple psychological principle with a fancy name: stimulus response compatibility.
Don Norman’s wonderful book The Design of Everyday Things (1990)
Norman’s basic lesson is that designers need to keep in mind that the users of their objects are Humans who are confronted every day with myriad choices and cues. The goal of this chapter is to develop the same idea for choice architects. If you indirectly influence the choices other people make, you are a choice architect. And since the choices you are influencing are going to be made by Humans, you will want your architecture to reflect a good understanding of how humans behave. In particular, you 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.
Software downloading – some options are chosen in your favor, some not really
Examples on unavoidable choice. Good for simple yes/no decisions more than for complex ones.
Software configuration. Menu
Post completion error. When you have finished your main task, you forget things related to previous steps.
Gas tank cap, but also ATMs
Pills:
Once a day is better than once very to days and better than twice a day
Once a week – do it on Sunday
Birth control pills. Days 1-21 ans 22-28
Give feedback is somehow a variation of the Error theme, feedback is extremely useful to prevent errors
How can you decide to risk a one-third chance of incontince in change of increasing my life expectance by 3.2 years? First, I do not know the trade-off, second, I can not imagine my life as incontinent
Consider, for example, Jane, who has just been offered a job at a company located in large city far from where she is living now. Compare two choices she faces: which office to select and which apartment to rent. Suppose Jane is offered a choice of three available offices in her workplace. A reasonable strategy for her to follow would be to look at all three offices , note the ways they differ, and then make some decisions about the importance of such attributes as size, view, neighbors, and distance to the nearest rest room. This is described in the choice literature as a “compensatory” strategy, since a high value for one attribute (big office) can compensate for a low value for another (loud neighbor).
Obviously, the same strategy cannot be used to pick an apartment. In a large city like Los Angeles, thousands of apartments are available. If Jane ever wants to start working, she will not be able to visit each apartment and evaluate them all. Instead, she is likely to simplify the task in some way. One strategy to use is what Amos Tversky (1972) called “elimination by aspects.” Someone using this strategy first decides what aspect is most important (say, commuting distance), establishes a cutoff level (say, no more than a thirty-minute commute), then eliminates all the alternatives that do not come up to thiss tandard. The process is repeated, attribute by attribute (no more than $ 1,500 per month; at least two bedrooms; dogs permitted), until either a choice is made or the set is narrowed down enough to switch over to a compensatory evaluation of the “finalists.” When people are using a simplifying strategy of this kind, alternatives that do not meet the minimum cutoff scores may be eliminated even if they are fabulous on all other dimensions. So, for example, an apartment that is a thirty-five-minute commute will not be considered even if it has a dynamite view and costs two hundred dollars a month less than any of the alternatives.
The patient receives the health care services that are chosen by his physician and paid for by the insurance company, with everyone from equipment manufacturers to drug companies to malpractice lawyers taking a piece of the action. Those with different pieces have different incentives, and the results may not be ideal for either patients or doctors.