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Nudge

Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness

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Nudge

By: Richard H. Thaler, Cass R. Sunstein
Narrated by: Sean Pratt
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About this listen

 Every day, we make decisions on topics ranging from personal investments to schools for our children to the meals we eat to the causes we champion. Unfortunately, we often choose poorly. The reason, the authors explain, is that, being human, we are all susceptible to various biases that can lead us to blunder. Our mistakes can make us poor and unhealthy. We often make bad decisions about education, personal finance, health care, family, and the environment.

Thaler and Sunstein invite us to enter an alternative world, one that accepts that we are only human. They show that by knowing how people think, we can design choice environments that make it easier for people to choose what is best for themselves, their families, and their society. Using colorful examples from the most important aspects of life, Thaler and Sunstein demonstrate how thoughtful "choice architecture" can be established to nudge us in beneficial directions without restricting freedom of choice. Nudge offers a unique new take - from neither the left nor the right - on many hot-button issues, for individuals and governments alike. This is one of the most engaging and provocative audiobooks to come along in many years.

Download the accompanying reference guide.©2008 Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein (P)2008 Gildan Media Corp Career Success Consumer Behavior & Market Research Decision-Making & Problem Solving Economics Marketing & Sales Microeconomics Organisational Behavior Psychology Psychology & Mental Health Social Psychology & Interactions Sociology Marketing Money Health Career

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Critic reviews

"A manifesto for using the recent behavioral research to help people, as well as government agencies, companies and charities, make better decisions." ( The New York Times Magazine)
All stars
Most relevant
I read and listen at the same time as I make footnotes in the book so I can refer back to them at a later date. I have the 2009 edition of the book. I must presume that a later edition of the book is the audiobook as there were many parts in my book that weren't in the audio and vice versa.

Audio does not match the actual book

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The concept of this book is very interesting and it starts well with some interesting ideas and good stories and examples, even if they are a little patronising and laboured in parts.

Nonetheless, it is quickly possible to see how this principle can be applied at work or even in ones own life to bring about improvements, and for this alone the book is well worth it.

However, a little over half way through it becomes bogged down in endless and excesive detail about american monetary policy and savings options, which becomes a little indigestible after a while.

Good start but drifts a little

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Taking an oxymoron as your starting point, the anticipated route would be explore the apparent contradictions and show that from the thesis and anti-thesis there can be a synthesis that is something greater than the original parts. At least that's how Carlo Marlowe had it.

In the first instance I’d have been re-assured to see any evidence whatsoever for the existence - let alone the validity - of ‘Libertarian Paternalism. Our recent history lurches from one corporate scandal to covert operations emanating from one state after another.

Their central posit (whilst following the American way of liberally making nouns with founding-father verbs of our common language) is the idea that it is both possible and legitimate for private and public institutions to affect behavior while also respecting freedom of choice, as well as the implementation of that idea. When and where did this ever happen?

And what follows then is the application of the term ‘Architect’ to those who write the questions on which algorithms are programmed. It is enough to know that this most modern of dating-site drivers, derives from the name of the mathematician, Mohammed ibn-Musa al-Khwarizmi, who was part of the royal court in Baghdad and who lived from about 780 to 850 to confirm that a ‘Choice Architect’ is simply a grandiose common-place and an affectation served to flatter those who see themselves as the subject of this treatise.

And who are these targets - Whitehall Mandarins, Central Bankers, State Department Heads.....well, er..no....Pension Plan administrators, School Admission administrators - functionaries rather than our commissaires .

Bureaucracies do not speak unto Power - Power is delivered through the minutiae of everyday life...that’s the big idea that’s missing from this work.

Nudge, fudge - think, think!

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This book desperately needs re-recording. The narrators tone is unfortunately and most likely unintentionally condescending.

Good content poorly presented & delivered

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Having read Thinking Fast and Slow I was excited to read this as a more practical guide to using some of the information contained in Kahneman's book. This book was published before Thinking Fast and Slow came out so some of the chapters go over Kahneman and Tversky's work so that the reader is familar with the concepts. Most of the book is discussing various case studies where Nudges in the form of "Libertarian Paternalism" creates what the authors see as favourable outcomes.

From small areas such as putting a fly on a urinal to reduce spillage by 90%, an advertising campaign to lowering rates of littering coining "Don't Mess with Texas" or increasing organ donation rate in a variety of countries the key takeaways are that choice architecture (how choices are presented) matter a lot more than they probably should, whether an opt in/opt out system is used, how the questions are asked, inertia in making the same decisions without thinking about them.

Just mentioning that the majority of people perform an action is enough to increase compliance in Tax Returns.

A key method is the RECAP: Record, Evaluate, and Compare Alternative Prices Report which would allow consumers to easily compare their current plan with alternatives, formatted to allow for direct comparison between a variety of companies. Private companies would also then easily be able to compare different plans based on your last year's usage data and alternative plans for everything from Phones to Medicaid.

Increasing the number of options isn't beneficial to most people as they don't want to spend the time weighing them up and would prefer to not choose if the option was available.

Libertarian Paternalism has gained a lot of bi partisan support in the USA as it doesn't prevent people from making their own choices, and even the most die hard of republicans find it hard to argue against businesses having to disclose more data.

How small changes in options leads to big effects.

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