Sublime

Here’s the broader lesson: if people wrongly think that most people are committed to a long-standing social norm, a small nudge correcting that misperception can inaugurate large-scale change.

Consider a class of regulations requiring “cooling-off periods.” The rationale is that in the heat of the moment, consumers might make ill-considered or improvident decisions. Self-control problems are the underlying concern.

called Stickk.com that facilitates similar friendly commitments.

Democracy is inevitably messy, in part because the availability and affect heuristics that guide citizens’ beliefs and attitudes are inevitably biased, even if they generally point in the right direction. Psychology should inform the design of risk policies that combine the experts’ knowledge with the public’s emotions and intuitions.

When people have a hard time predicting how their choices will end up affecting their lives, they have less to gain from having numerous options and perhaps even from choosing for themselves.

Humans will often consider required choice to be a nuisance or worse, and would much prefer to have a good default.

An ongoing useful role for governments is the creation of standardized units to make comparisons easier for consumers.

A nudge, as we will use the term, is any aspect of the choice architecture that alters people’s behavior in a predictable way without forbidding any options or significantly changing their economic incentives.

that fairness through blindness doesn’t work. That’s the most established and most robust fact in the entire research area.”39