Review; Nudge!

Nudge; Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein (2009) is published by Penguin and is available on Amazon for £6.89

Nudge is a difficult book to categorise. In one sense it is an easy-to-read book in the style of many self help tomes that promises a quick fix to your looooooooooooong held problems. The tag line read like something you’d see on a cheesy 80’s paperback about wishful thinking or something.

On the other hand it’s an absolute game changer. It sets the tone for a revolution in the way we govern our own lives and indeed the way we are governed by politicians.

The underlying premise of the book is called (in the words of Thaler and Sunstein) Libertarian Paternalism. A seemingly oxymoronic concept that the two go to great lengths to show is actually a compatible idea. Personally I think it’s a misnomer... there’s no real paternalism in this book. In fact the book is quite respectful of it’s audience (which, from the examples given is obviously an educated, university-level professional, or semi-professional) and never gets too bogged down in idiosyncratic language normally ubiquitous in the special sciences.

The writing style as a whole is actually quite pleasing - the book is casual and moves at a decent pace. Neither Thaler nor Sunstein lose focus, nor sway off topic. However, strangely, they chose to refer to each other in the third person “Thaler did this...Sunstein did that” throughout. Weird, but hardly something to gripe about.

They begin this gem of a book by explaining why they think people need a “nudge” (and just what the hell a nudge is!) and then go on to apply it to Money, Health, and Freedom. They then look at some common objections.

I don’t want to spoil the book too much but underlying it is the idea that people are “Choice Architects” which is to say as we interact in the world with others and our environment we (consciously or not) affect our ability to make choices and the choices of those around us. Something so simple as putting something back on a shelf in a harder to reach place may be enough of a “nudge” to cause someone to go for something else... for better or worse.

The book is from a behavioural economics perspective which means it’s light on behavioural theory but anyone even passingly familiar with basic behavioural theory will easily identify relevant ideas.

The matching law plays a large role in this book. For those unfamiliar with the matching law I will write a more extensive post on it in the future, but for now the matching law essentially states that the proportion of behaviour we do in a given situation is directly proportional to the amount (and quality, rate etc...) of reinforcement received.

As such if I make it harder (but not impossible) to smoke, and relatively easier (but not mandatory) to chew gum I being a good Choice Architect (within the bounds of Libertarian Paternalism) since I am not forcing anyone to do anything, I am just influencing choices.

Of course the book raises deeper philosophical issues; like how can anyone claim responsibility for their actions? What about free will? Are we really to believe politicians only have our best interests at heart?

The book addresses some of these issues but there are many who would question the answers given  - however this book is not billing itself as a philosophical exploration of Libertarianism, Paternalism, Progressivism and so on. Within the bounds of bailiwick it does a good job of introducing the world to this game-changing theory.

I highly recommend you read it.