Nudge: The Final Edition

We have used the term paternalism to include efforts to protect people against their own errors by guiding them to the choices they would make if they were fully informed and free from behavioral biases.

earnings tax-free until the money is withdrawn. Do such incentives work? The best study we know finds that they have little effect, especially when compared to (drum roll, please) defaults!

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.

Thus, the ads mostly affected the people who were in a “deciding” mindset when those ads ran.

repeated, attribute by attribute

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

The harms caused by climate change are often probabilistic, which makes it harder to reach consensus.

Some choice architects intentionally impose sludge, inserting friction into a process in order to achieve goals of their own.

For reasons we have discussed, many people will take whatever option requires the least effort, or the path of least resistance.

alternative is to adopt what has become known as automatic enrollment.