Nudging and it’s uses today

Nudging in our society.

Nudging is a concept created by Richard Thaler in behavioural economics which proposes positive reinforcement and indirect suggestions as ways to influence the behaviour and decision making of groups or individuals.

A nudge makes it more likely that an individual will make a particular choice, or behave in a particular way, by altering the environment so that automatic cognitive processes are triggered to favour the desired outcome. An example of this is the cafeteria experiment which utilises choice architecture.

In a cluster study undertaken by Marcano-Olivier et al. in 8 primary schools, these psychologists set out to prove that the physical layout of the school cafeteria has a significant impact on the food choices of children eating there.

To do this, they randomly allocated 4 schools to either a control or an interventionist cafeteria. In the interventionist cafeteria, healthy options, such as fruit and vegetarian food was laid out in an attractive and easily reachable way, whilst the unhealthy foods, such as chips and battered chicken were placed in a harder to reach location and the control cafeterias remained unchanged.

After three weeks of collecting data, the study found that significant increases were recorded in the intervention schools for children’s consumption of fruit, vitamin C, and fibre, for all three weeks, while there were no significant changes in the control condition.

These results suggest that by implementing minimal changes to the choice architecture of the cafeterias, the students can be successfully nudged into eating more healthily on a consistent basis.

This is just one example of how nudging can be used positively in today's society but sadly nudging can be easily utilised for unethical purposes by companies gaming to maximise profits for the company Uber.

The company has developed software and systems of nudges to urge drivers to continue driving, often in less lucrative places, long after they would have stopped of their own accord. Drivers are also shown their next possible fare before they’re even done dropping off their current rider, nudging them into accepting the fare and continuing to drive when they otherwise would not.

This can lead to driving while tired, which can put the driver, as well as the passenger at increased risk of a car collision. This is an example of a nudge, as the drivers are not forced to work, with Uber stating “any driver can stop work literally at the tap of a button — the decision whether or not to drive is 100 percent theirs” However, it is clear to see that this abuse of nudging can have negative effects on consumers and society as a whole.