Improving decisions about health, wealth and happiness

Nudge is about choice architecture: the ways that various factors in how a choice is presented may affect the decisions made by the chooser.

The heart of the book can be summarized through a clever (if imperfect) mnemonic device: NUDGES.

• Ncentives (pricing and more: bonuses that can be offered, and even penalties)
• Understandable options (or as the authors say “Understand mappings”)
• Defaults (they are often taken, so make the default the best choice)
• Give feedback (it helps improve the quality of decisions)
• Expect error (and help people recover from it)
• Structure complex choices (a small number of choices at a time)

By using NUDGES, choice architects can be more effective at helping people to make better choices. For many excellent examples, from placement of food items in a cafeteria to software that makes you delay sending emails to that seem to be uncivil, read Nudge.