Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness
Feb 16, 2010 Learning and Knowledge, Philosophy & Thinking, Self Help & Personal Training
This is one of the many books I’ve reviewed that focusses on irrational behaviour and its causes. Two things in particular stand out about this one:
1. It focusses on the economic repercussions of irrational choices, both for the individual, companies and the entirely of society
2. It advocates, and outlines, ways to structure options to gently steer people towards choices that clearly give more net benefits, while ensuring that all other choices are still open to them – having organ donations opt-out instead of opt-in, for example.
Some may find this idea a little bit controlling for their taste, but as the authors point out, “choice architecture” already exists – private companies in particular can, and do, nudge us towards choices that may not be the best for us. The authors argue that their own ideas of choice architecture simply work to redress the balance. Check it out, and tell me if you agree with them in the comments.
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