Choice Architecture and Behavioral Design Flashcards
Nudge part 2
When do people need to nudged?
when decisions require scarce attention, when decisions are difficult, when people do not get prompt feedback, and when they have trouble translating aspects of the situation into terms that they can easily understand
When people are in situations that are unfamiliar or rare, they might well need a nudge.
(FRAUGT CHOICES)
You are trying to decide how to design the choice environment, what kinds of nudges to offer, and how subtle the nudges should be. What do you need to know to design the best possible choice environment?
Spacing out
Benefits now, costs later
Degree of difficulty
Feedback
Knowing what you like
(FRAUGT CHOICES) What is spacing out about?
refers to the practice of strategically timing and delivering interventions or reminders at specific intervals to influence behavior. It involves spacing out the delivery of nudges over time to maximize their effectiveness.
Get out the vote
- technique used to increase voter turnout by employing multiple reminders or messages over a period of time leading up to an election. people were more likely to fulfill their goals if they had made explicit “implementation intentions.”
Checklists
-refer to a tool or technique used to help individuals make better decisions or perform tasks more effectively. Checklists provide a structured framework that guides people through a series of steps or considerations, ensuring that important aspects are not overlooked.
- One interesting key to the success of such programs is to authorize everyone in the room to remind absentminded offenders. Lower-status members of the team, such as nurses, might normally be reluctant to pipe up if a famous surgeon has skipped a step, but if it is considered part of their job, they do it.
(FRAUGT CHOICES) What is benefits now, costs later about?
refers to the tendency of individuals to prioritize immediate benefits over long-term costs when making decisions. It highlights the human tendency to have a present bias, where immediate gratification and short-term rewards often carry more weight than delayed benefits or future consequences.
what might be called temptation goods: smoking, drinking a lot of alcohol, binge-watching old episodes of Friends, and eating jumbo chocolate doughnuts are in this category. We get the pleasure now and suffer the consequences later.
Self-control issues are most likely to arise when choices and their consequences are separated in time
(FRAUGT CHOICES)What is Degree of Difficulty about?
refer to the level of complexity or effort required to make a decision or take a particular action.
e.g. many problems in life are quite difficult, and sometimes no technology as easy as a spellchecker is available to help. We are more likely to need more help picking the right mortgage than choosing the right loaf of bread.
(FRAUGT CHOICES)What is frequency about?
refers to the repetition or regularity of a nudge or behavioral intervention. It involves consistently presenting the nudge or intervention over a period of time or in a recurring manner.
hard problems become easier with practice; solving them can even become automatic
(FRAUGT CHOICES)What is feedback about?
Even practice does not make perfect if people lack good opportunities for learning. Learning is most likely if people get immediate, clear feedback after each try
(FRAUGT CHOICES)What is knowing what you like about?
refer to a strategy that utilizes individuals’ known preferences or personalization to influence their behavior or choices.
e.g.
You might be asked whether you want the two-hour or three-hour treatment, and whether you have any dietary restrictions. The benefit of having so little choice is that the chef is authorized to serve you things you would never have thought to order
What is choice architecture about?
refers to the way in which choices are presented to individuals and the design of the decision-making environment. It recognizes that the way options are framed and presented can significantly influence people’s decisions and behaviors.
e.g.
When the students came to these doors, they were faced with two competing instincts. One instinct says that to leave a room you push the door. The other instinct says that when faced with large wooden handles that are obviously designed to be grabbed, you pull. It turns out that the latter instinct trumps the former, and every student leaving the room began by pulling on the handle. (There is a reason such handles are called pulls.) Alas, the door opened outward.
Those doors are bad architecture because they violate a simple psychological principle with a fancy name: stimulus response compatibility
the Automatic System reads the word faster than the color-naming branch of the Reflective System can decide the color of the text. See the word green in red text and the nonthinking Automatic System rushes to press the left button, which is, of course, the wrong one
(Choice architecture) What is stimulus response compatibility?
The idea is that you want the signal you receive (the stimulus) to be consistent with the desired action. When there are inconsistencies, performance suffers and people blunder.
(Choice architecture) What is Defaults: Padding the path of least resistance about?
if, for a given choice, there is a default option—an option that will prevail if the chooser does nothing—then we can usually expect a large number of people to end up with that option, whether or not it is good for them
extra
Defaults are ubiquitous and powerful. They are also unavoidable in the sense that for any node of a choice architecture system, there must be an associated rule that determines what happens to the decision maker if she does nothing
Usually the answer is that if I do nothing, nothing changes; whatever is happening continues to happen. But not always. Some dangerous machines, such as chain saws and lawn mowers, are designed with “dead man switches,” so once you are no longer gripping the machine, it stops.
many people will take whatever option requires the least effort, or the path of least resistance. Recall the discussion of inertia, status quo bias, and the “yeah, whatever” heuristic
(Choice architecture) What is expect error about?
Humans make mistakes. A well-designed system expects its users to err and is as forgiving as possible
(Choice architecture) What is give feedback about?
An excellent way to help Humans improve their performance is to provide feedback. Well-designed systems tell people when they are doing well and when they are making mistakes
An important type of feedback is a warning that things are going wrong or, even more helpful, are about to go wrong
Feedback can be improved in many activities
(Choice architecture) What is understanding “mappings”: From choice to welfare about?
refers to the concept of evaluating the impact of nudges on individual welfare or well-being.
it is important to assess whether the interventions designed to influence people’s behavior actually lead to better outcomes and improve their overall welfare
“Mappings” refers to the process of mapping or connecting the choices individuals make as a result of nudges to their subsequent welfare
e.g.
A good system of choice architecture helps people to improve their ability to map choices onto outcomes and hence to select options that will make them better off. One way to do this is to make the information about various options more comprehensible, by transforming numerical information into units that translate more readily into actual use.
(Choice architecture) What is structure complex choices about?
refers to the practice of presenting options and information in a way that simplifies decision-making for individuals facing complex or difficult choices. The goal is to guide individuals towards making choices that align with their preferences and long-term goals.
The old expression that less is more rings true here. Good choice architects often winnow the choice set down to a manageable size
extra
People adopt different strategies for making choices depending on the size and complexity of the available options. When we face a small number of well-understood alternatives, we tend to examine all the attributes of all the alternatives and then make trade-offs when necessary. But when the choice set gets large, we must use alternative strategies, and these can get us into trouble.
