secondguessed my purchase of Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein's Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness, almost the minute I received my Amazon email receipt I had already read Malcom Gladwell's Blink, and heard about the literary disaster that is Sway, and yet there I was, reading Nudge's introduction about the arrangement of cafeteria food.
I'm glad I did, While Thaler and Sunstein are happy to revel in the small ways that their insights into "choice architecture" can lead to better or worse choices, they also lay out their political principles and detail their impact on current policy debates e.
g. , Social Security, Medicare Part D, Education, To
top it all off, they begin the book with a treatment of our cognitive failings, distinguishing between our automatic and reflective processing systems what's not to love!, leading right into their arguments for how to help the automatic majority overcome their cognitive frailty without infringing the reflective minority's ability to choose.
So what is choice architecture Well, are you choosing out of ten choices, orAre you automatically enrolled in one choice or another if you don't make an active decision How is that default set How is information presented to you to about the available choices All of these questions speak to choice architecture in other words, the arrangement and organization of choices which has a nasty habit of leading individuals to choices that they themselves would not find optimal see don't be bob bias, the mind and morality.
Furthermore, "choice architecture, both good and bad, is pervasive and unavoidable, " This point is essential to Thaler and Sunstein's argument if you are a libertarian, Ignoring choice architecture won't make it go away, it will only make it more likely that the choices favored by choice architecture are more likely to be poor.
For instance, you can make the default option for new employees enrolled atin ak with an option to optout, or you can make the default option to not be enrolled as is often the case.
If you stick with the current default, many who would otherwise enjoy being enrolled will not do so because of the choice architecture, Thaler and Sunstein recommend acknowledging the importance of choice architecture and deliberately deciding on its design,
Thaler and Sunstein aren't interested in helping individuals pick out their dry cleaners as the authors note, if a dry cleaner performs poorly, it is fairly easy for individuals to make a better decision the next team.
Rather, "people are most likely to need nudges for decision that are difficult, complex, and infrequent, and when they have poor feedback and few opportunities for learning.
"
Individuals are primed to make poor choices for Medicare Part D, Mortgages, and retirement investments, Thaler and Sunstein don't advocate for eliminating choices because of these problems, On the contrary, their final chapter points to the infamous "third way" separate from both the commandandcontrol left and the singleminded 'choice' monkeys of the libertarian right.
There needn't be a war between 'no choice' and 'unlimited choice, ' Thaler and Sunstein spend aroundpages explaining that this is indeed a false choice, Like myself, they side with the libertarians when it comes to the importance of choice, and side with the left when it comes to the failure of 'choice' to solve all problems.
Choice is important. Coercion isn't necessary. Focus on the choice architecture,
Oh, and I have to add, As someone who has long supported responding to the gay marriage debate by taking government out of the marriage business perhaps keeping a civil union or partnership business and leaving it to independent churches, I was very happy to see Thaler and Sunstein put forth such an argument in Nudge.
Whether you are on the left or right, worth a read! Taken from sitelinkmy post
Loy Machedos Book Nudge by Richard H.
Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein
I love reading book,
Books on ThoughtProvoking, CriticalThinking, Cognitive Science, Business, Biographies, SelfImprovement and so on, But the most important characteristic I admire and love about a book, is its ability to make something simple and understandable,
Nudge is one book that fails to qualify the last criteria,
I presumed that this book was in relation to how we think, how the mind works and connect that to either the economy or money More like Steven D.
Levitts Freaknomics or Malcolm Gladwells The Tipping Point or the Outliners, However, this book turned out to be a blueprint that most probably only someone from United States would relate to as most of the content in between was all aboutKs, Taxes and other stuff that I dont find appealing at all.
Now, these are what I felt the authors tried to do:
Cover a lot of ground without being deep,
Cherry Picked popular points of Psychology and Influence which have been covered by other authors and streamline them into this book the smiley face technique, public statement on losing weight, the paradox of choice, peoples inability to explain why they do what they do etc.
And then bring in taxes, organ donation, medical insurance plans that was never ending, privatizing marriages, political decisions, social security and its benefits, libertarian paternalism and well the list goes on.
By the time I reached the book half way, from loving the book, I began hating the book, I honestly could not bear to read it, And then I struggled to complete it, Predominately, it was the Political theories they had in place that totally put me off, I mean why cant you stick to either a Politics or b How the Mind works
Personally, I feel the authors tried to replicate and combine a style of what Freakonomics Dubner and Levitt, Predictably Irrational Dan Ariely, Influence Robert Cialdini and Tipping Point Malcolm Gladwell all have done and ended up messing up a good book.
Overall Summary
A confusing book that miscommunicates to the read what the book is about, The Authors tried to be everything to everyone and ended up being nothing to no one, In my opinion, I feel there are two books here and the Authors need to divide these two books, make them two separate titles and sell them to two different audience groups.
Otherwise, they will end up having more people give negative feedback to this book than positive,
Overall Ratings
out of
That was my opinion and feel for this book as I found nothing of value that I could use or didnt know off from other authors.
هذا الكتاب ينقسم إلى جزئي الأول يناقش الأساس الذي يبني عليه الكاتب فكرته ونصيحته nudge والثاني هو ما يسعى فيه لإبداء النصح للحكومات والأفراد فيما يتعلق ببعض الشئون المالية والصحية والإجتماعية.
لذا كان القسم الثاني ويحتل ما يقارب ثلثي الكتاب لا فائدة منه بالنسبة للقاريء العربي مثلي الذي لا شأن له في تقرير السياسات و القوانين.
لكن الجزء الأول من الكتاب على مدىصفحات فيه الكثير من المعلومات والإشارات الجيدة و عرض لكثير من الدراسات المميزة في المجال. ويعطي للقاريء اشارات مهمة يمكن استخدامها في الحياة الشخصية و فهم الحياة العامة من حوله.
كما يعرض الكتاب لخلاصة جيدة لجهد كاهنمان وتفيرسكي مما شجعني للعودة إلى مراجعة كتاب الأول التفكير بسرعة وببطء.
انصح بقراءته
کتاب تماما مثال های اقتصادی داره اما محوریت اون تصمیم گیری در زندگی در هر زمینه ای هست. مثال هایی که میزنه بیشتر در زمینه اقتصاد در تفکر سازمانی هست برداشت شخصی اما بسیار میشه اون رو تعمیم داد.
در نهایت این رو بگم که تمرکز کتاب روی ایجاد شرایط بهتر برای تصمیم گیری در انسان هایی ست که میدونیم در زندگی انتخاب های زیادی دارند ولی به علت ندانستن آمار و ارقام و به علت خطاهای شناختی میتونن اشتباه فکر کنن و اشتباه تصمیم بگیرند. نویسنده به اختیار قیم مآبانه اعتقاد داره و بارها اون رو در کتاب بیان میکنه. به این معنی که ما کسی رو مجبور به گرفتن تصمیمی نمیکنیم بلکه شرایطی رو فراهم میکنیم که تصمیمی بگیره که براش مناسبتره.
حرف جالبي كه ميزنه اينه كه انسان ها در زندگي بايد تصميم هاي زيادي بگيرن و اون ها توي تصميم گيري هايي مثل اينكه چه طعم بستني رو بخورند بيشتر متبحر هستند تا اينكه چه رشته اي رو انتخاب كنند و يا چطوري پولهاشونو پس انداز كنند يا چه خونه اي بخرند. . به علت اينكه بارها و بارها ممكنه در معرض انتخاب بستني قرار بگيرند ولي تنها چندبار در بهترين و پولدار ترين حلت مي تونن در انتخاب خونه تمرين كنند. لذا وظيفه سازمان دولت مدرسه ارتش و همه سازمان هايي كه در زندگي و تصميم گيري آدم ها نقش دارند اين هست كه با تكيه به مطالعات و تجربيات به مردم كمك كنند كه بهترين تميم رو با توجه به شرايطشون بگيرند. اين سقلمه ها بعضا طوري عمل مي كنند كه آدم ها حتي متوجه نمي شوند كه اون لحظه در معرض يك تصميم گيري قرار گرفتند.
مطالعه اين كتاب رو به همه علاقه مندان به اقتصاد رفتاري توصيه مي كنم. The book has some value, but the title led me to pick it up under the belief that it might help me to understand myself better and learn better ways to navigate my choices.
It turned out to be more of a laundry list of examples how businesses try to manipulate us, a list that was nudged into booklength.
. . I don't understand why this is a runaway bestsellerit's just not that enthralling, I've been reading lots of books lately about behavioral psychology and economics: why people make the decisions we do, economically and in other life areas.
But sitelinkPredictably Irrational and sitelinkMade to Stick both explore these questions in a much more engaging way,
"Nudge" is mostly concerned with how companies and governments can practice what the authors term "libertarian paternalism"gently, noncoercively pushing people toward doing something that they really want to do.
For example, a company might, by default, enroll new employees in aK plan and put a certain salary percentage into that plan, The employees can opt out or change their contribution amount at any time, but by enrolling everyone by default, the company does an end run around its workers' natural procrastination tendencies, without forcing them into anything.
Another use of "nudging," this one on the state level, might be to require that everyone signing up for a driver's license check a box saying either "Yes, I want to be an organ donor" or "No, I don't wish to be an organ donor.
" Or, a state could change its laws so that people are, by default, assumed to be willing donors unless they say they don't want to.
This would greatly increase the number of organs available for emergency transplants,
So, interesting stuffbut not enough to fuel an entire book, I wound up skimming quite a bit, and while some of the anecdotes are funny and interesting, many of the writers' proposals are dry unless you happen to be fascinated by the particular social or economic issue they're addressing.
It's worth picking "Nudge" up to see if it grabs you just don't be surprised if it lets go aboutpages in, Its the first day of, and Im writing an addendum to the first review I wrote of this book insee below,
Although this is a tedious read, In retrospect, this book, as well as Khanamans Thinking Fast and Slow remain profoundly influential on my work as a therapist,
So, I feel obliged to upgrade this from atostar review with an asterisk
The important takeaway of the book is that the environment home, work, school, the DMV etc.
has a WAY bigger effect on our behavior than we commonly understand,
Sometimes its easier to modify the environment, than to modify the person,
Additionally, we should be crafting our environments to elicit the types of behaviors we would like to emit,
I always say, its easier to choose not to eat chocolate chip cookies if there arent any in the house, and you have plenty of good healthy food to eat.
That sounds banal in that context, but when applied to other issues from organ donation, to saving for retirement, to recovery from addiction, the point is somewhat less obvi.
So without further ado,
Heres the originalreview:
I finally finished this fascinating yet oddly boring book! It took a while it sat on my currently reading list for aroundmonths before I finally caved to the guilt and finished the damn thing but finish it I did.
Here's some reflections . .
Traditional economic theory assumes that consumers are rational and self interested agents that make decisions based on the facts, The findings of experimental behavioral economics paint a very different picture, For example If given a choice between a hamburger that islean orfat, traditional economic theory predicts that consumers being rational will be indifferent because both products are in fact identical.
But behavioral economics observes that real people nearly invariably prefer one to the other,
The authors of Nudge economist Richard Thaler and legal scholar Cass Sunstein posit that human decision making is divided between two cognitive systems the "Reflective System" and the "Automatic System".
The Reflective System is deliberate and accurate but is slower to become involved in the decision process, The Automatic System is fast but inaccurate due to the fact that it operates primarily on the basses of reflexive, innate cognitive biases and heuristics which work well on average, but fail in certain predictable ways.
Thaler and Sunstein build their central argument upon the deceptively simple observation that the way in which choices are presented effects the choices that people make.
Thaler and Sunstein refer to people that design menus of choices as "choice architects" e, g. mortgage brokers, advertisers, web designers etc, Nudges are little design tweaks in the choosing environment that correct for those cognitive biases that reliably lead modern humans to make bad decisions,
Thaler and Sunstein advocate an approach to choice architecture, which they refer to as libertarian paternalism, that "nudges" consumers to make good choices without unnecessarily limiting their individual freedom.
For example, people who wish to become organ donors "opt in" to the organ donation program, Libertarian paternalism advocates making organ donation the default, unless people opt out, thereby raising life saving organ donation rates, while still allowing individuals who object to opt out if they wish.
I have to say that there is something very attractive to me about this approach, It utilizes the powerful techniques of design, public relations and advertising, combined with the insights of psychology and other social sciences, to create choosing environments that result in lazy people like me making good or at least better choices.
I love the fact that you're still free to be a dick, but you have to work for it, There's something so right about that!
As previously mentioned, Im upgrading my review fromstarsto five with an asterisk because its a bit of a snorebecause of the enduring impact the book has had on my life and work.
LiveLearn!!!!!!,