Nudge Database III. This is part 3 of the Nudge Database.Part I || Part II || Part III || Part IV || Part V || Part VI || Part VII || Part VIII || Part IX || Part X || @Makeuya Nudge: RCT in Malawi where treatment groups received financial incentives to come pick up their HIV results. Even a tiny incentive doubled the % of people coming to collect their results compared to the control, before tapering off quickly as the incentive increased. Tags : financial incentives / HIV / Malawi Source: Thorton (2008), 'The Demand for, and Impact of, Learning HIV Status', The American Economic Review. 22.Nudge: In 2 get-out-the-vote experiments, the authors find that messages emphasizing high expected turnout is more effective at motivating voters than messages emphasising low turnout.
Tags : voting / social proof / norms Tags : insurance / nudges / Wharton Source: Kunreuther et al. (2012), ‘Insurance and Behavioral Economics : Improving Decisions in the Most Misunderstood Industry’. 24. 25. 26. Libertarian paternalism and school lunches: Guiding healthier behavior while preserving choices. The term 'libertarian paternalism' is a peculiar phrase because it invokes feelings about two seemingly contradictory philosophies. Yet, as a principle of the behavioral sciences, this phrase actually implies gentle guidance, without force. Recently, the USDA passed regulations designed to make school lunches more nutritious. Schools participating in the National School Lunch Program are required to increase whole grain offerings, cap the fat of milk at 1% for white and non-fat for flavored, and ensure that students take either a fruit or a vegetable with their purchased lunch.
Unfortunately, forcing behavior jeopardizes the potential to accomplish the most important goal of improving children's diets. After all, it's not nutrition until it's eaten! Make the Fruit More Visible After the "makeover" was implemented, students were 13% more likely to take fruits and 23% more likely to take vegetables. Smarter Information, Smarter Consumers. Last year, the two of us helped organize a White House summit on information disclosure policy. The preparatory material we sent out before the summit to the more than 300 registrants from over 60 federal agencies started with two sentences of event reminders and then informed attendees that they would get the healthy lunch option unless they requested an alternative. Just 10 lines later we explained: “Healthy options for lunch may include, but are not limited to, a bean sprout and soy-cheese sandwich on gluten-free soda bread.”
In the final sentence of the information packet, we offered a “special reward” to anyone who sent us an e-mail with the subject line Full Disclosure. Fully 80% of attendees neglected to opt out of the unappealing lunch option, and only 1% earned their reward. We believe, though, that a potent mix of modern technology and new government policy is about to transform disclosure—and with it the workings of many parts of the economy.
Open Government. Nudge-Policy: Does the nudge-approach lack ambition? The nudge-approach to policy making is an efficient and costless tool, as well as non-invasive on citizens’ privacy and autonomy. But does it lack ambition? In a recent New York Times Op-ed, David Brooks praises the impact psychological insights have had on policy making and economy. He mentions quite a few examples on how attention to psychological factors have created insights and solutions for a variety of problems. In fact he states that the interplay between psychological insights and policy making holds great potential. Although Brooks does not mention ‘nudge’ in the piece, some of the examples he mentions are well-known nudges.
The main message of his Op-ed is that although behavioral insights have helped the creation of many solutions and great policies, the ambitions are missing: My problem with these efforts is that they are still so modest. This piece mentions the possibility of applying nudges at universities. Left is the question of scale raised by Brooks: Is the claim true? Ethics: Framing and medical choice. A new article takes up the issue of nudge and ethics. The article argues how framing certain medical treatments more favorably might be ethically optimal. The article is titled “Decision Aids: When ‘Nudging’ Patients To Make A Particular Choice Is More Ethical Than Balanced, Nondirective Content”. It is featured in the newest issue of the Journal, Health Affairs. The article deals with an interesting problem and offers a surprising conclusion – namely that it is ethically sound for doctors to frame certain choice-sets presented to patients in a “favorable” way.
This is especially interesting since a forthcoming paper in European Journal of Risk Regulation by Pelle Guldborg Hansen and Andreas Jespersen argues against using framing in exactly such cases against the background of a systematic framework developed to deal with the issue of “Nudge & The Manipulation of Choice”, which is also the title of their paper. Why not sign up for future posts? Decision Aids: When ‘Nudging’ Patients To Make A Particular Choice Is More Ethical Than Balanced, Nondirective Content. + Author Affiliations ↵*Corresponding author Patient decision aids, such as instructional leaflets describing treatment options for prostate cancer, are designed to help educate patients so that they can share in decisions about their care.
Developers of these decision aids strive for balance, aiming to be as neutral, unbiased, and nondirective as possible. We argue that balance should not always be a goal, and we identify three situations where it should not be. For example, men diagnosed with early-stage prostate cancer frequently are not advised by their physicians that active surveillance is a reasonable alternative to immediate surgery or radiation.
It may be desirable to design decision aids that promote active surveillance as an option. Smarter Information, Smarter Consumers. Last year, the two of us helped organize a White House summit on information disclosure policy. The preparatory material we sent out before the summit to the more than 300 registrants from over 60 federal agencies started with two sentences of event reminders and then informed attendees that they would get the healthy lunch option unless they requested an alternative. Just 10 lines later we explained: “Healthy options for lunch may include, but are not limited to, a bean sprout and soy-cheese sandwich on gluten-free soda bread.”
In the final sentence of the information packet, we offered a “special reward” to anyone who sent us an e-mail with the subject line Full Disclosure. Fully 80% of attendees neglected to opt out of the unappealing lunch option, and only 1% earned their reward. When we informed the group on the morning of the summit that most people had “selected” a soy-cheese sandwich for lunch, there was an audible groan.
Open Government. James Surowiecki: Are the Jets Falling Victim to the Sunk-Cost Effect? After a farcical 2012 season, in which the New York Jets invented ever new ways to lose games (thus the “butt fumble”), the team’s general manager, offensive coördinator, and quarterback coach are all gone. Yet Mark Sanchez, the starting quarterback, remains. He has played poorly for two seasons in a row, and has now thrown more interceptions in his career than touchdowns. But the Jets have invested an enormous amount of energy and money in Sanchez, and, assuming that no one will trade for him, they are contracted to pay him $8.25 million next year, whether he plays or not.
So figuring out what to do with Sanchez will be trickier than you might think. The Jets have stumbled into a classic economic dilemma, known as the sunk-cost effect. In a purely rational world, Sanchez’s guaranteed salary would be irrelevant to the decision of whether or not to start him (since the Jets have to pay it either way). The sunk-cost dilemma isn’t just about waste.
So how do you counter this problem? The Google Diet: Search Giant Overhauled Its Eating Options to 'Nudge' Healthy Choices. <br/><a href=" US News</a> | <a href=" Business News</a> Copy At Google's New York City offices, it's rumored you are never more than 150 feet from some kind of food. The building sports a cafeteria with too many options to choose from, with scattered micro kitchens full of free food for employees, 24/7. Employees never had to leave the building for nourishment. But with all this food goodness came unwanted pounds. Like most everything in the search giant's office culture, the cafeteria was hyper-analyzed and re-engineered to be loaded with "nudges" intended to lead people towards healthier food choices. Examples of Google's food tags. "There are all these different color-coded signs here to let you know what's healthy," said Googler Ashley Moak, pointing out green tags that indicate low-calorie food, yellow tags for moderate-sized portions and red tags for pastas and desserts.
The Most Sadistic Apps That Force You to Get Stuff Done. Health nudge: the stairs to fitness. Singapore has to be the nudge capital of the world. Everywhere you look behavior is being guided and shaped towards better outcomes. In this post I report on a nudge that actually works for choosing the stairs rather than the escalator – forget about piano-stairs and FunTheory!
Nudge stairs vs. escalators Take a good look at these stairs. They are located at the popular Bugis MRT station in Singapore. The intention of the choice architect is obvious and transparent: to nudge people to take the stairs rather than the escalator by capturing attention and force reflection on individual and collective benefits alike. As a nudge enthusiast Singapore is definitely a must visit – Singapore is simply bristling with well-designed nudges. Priming – Our acts are often influenced by sub-conscious cues Most people, well, probably everyone, are aware that exercise makes your body healthier. The stairs at Bugis MRT station prime choices in a brilliant way. Finally, people don’t like to stand out. Should We Be “Nudging” for Cadaveric Organ Donations? - The American Journal of Bioethics - Volume 12, Issue 2. Nudge blog · Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness. Think before you nudge: the benefits and pitfalls of behavioural public policy.
The government’s commitment to behavioural change is starting to be taken up by both central government departments and local authorities. Paul Rainford and Jane Tinkler look at the benefits and problems associated with so called ‘nudge’ theories and how this approach is being used in the UK. In 2008 Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein published a book entitled Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness. It draws on the emerging disciplines of behavioural economics and social psychology to explain why people often act in ways that are against their interests – that is the maximisation of welfare – as defined by classical economics The authors argue that this discrepancy between interests and actions reflects the fact that we are driven by two different, but interlocking, systems. It is via this second system that it is possible to ‘nudge’ people into making certain ‘beneficial’ choices.
Figure 1: A summary of the main influences outlined in the MINDSPACE framework.