A Book I Love: Nudge

Why do we make bad decisions on healthcare, marriage, mortgages, credit cards and education? What if we lived in a world that made it much easier for us to make better choices? What might this world look like?

Enter the world of Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein. They’ve laid out how to design a better society in this choice architecture masterpiece, Nudge.

Nudge is less about how we can make better personal choices in daily life and more about understanding how companies and governments nudge us into making choices that are sometimes bad for us. I wish the authors had spent more time on the former, but that’s a minor gripe.

This is still an informative take on behavioral economics, packed with examples you’ll recognize. 

A few points that stood out to me:

• Small changes can help public and private institutions shape better decision-making, while respecting our freedom of choice.

• It’s not only possible to design choices that improve all of our lives; In most cases, it’s very easy to do so

• We’re less likely to take action (e.g. get a health screening) based on the reduced risk of taking such action, versus the increased risk of not taking action. 👈🏾 Read that again.

If you’re interested in learning about how society works or simply interested in choice architecture and the lessons you can apply to your own field, Nudge is the perfect book for you.