Title: what is nudging? | Behavioral Science & Policy Association
Headings: what is nudging?
what is nudging?
By PG Hansen, PhD., Behavioural Scientist, Roskilde University
Nudge
Nudging
Ethics and Policy
About the author

Content: iii]
Still, it should be noticed that a common scientific framework of reference unites these efforts. In particular, nudging relies heavily on theories and methodology from behavioral economics as well as from cognitive and social psychology, using microeconomic decision theory as a baseline. In particular, a central focus within the field is the biases and heuristics program of Nobel prize winner Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, which is rooted in dual-process theories of cognition and information processing (Kahneman & Tversky 1979) and made accessible to the wider public by Kahneman’s dual-system theory presented in his famous book Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011). Dual-process theories vary greatly but generally share the overarching structure of positing two types of human information processing — automatic and nonautomatic — in explaining and predicting human behavior (Evans 2008). Using David Marr’s (1982) distinction between computational, algorithmic, and implementation-level theories of psychology, the explanatory function of dual process theories may be located at the algorithmic level of analysis where mental mechanisms that translate inputs into outputs are identified. Identifying processes according to the simplified distinction of whether they operate in an automatic and nonautomatic fashion – i.e., (a) when there is conscious awareness, (b) when there is no goal to start the effort, (c) when cognitive resources are reduced, and (d) when there is no goal to alter or stop the process – these theories thus seek to explain how the supposedly irrelevant features of decision-making contexts systematically influence human decision making and behavior, for a great brief introduction see (Gawronski, Sherman & Trope 2014). In addition to the shared psychological underpinnings, the widespread efforts falling under the auspices of nudging are also unified by the ambition to advance and apply quantitative experimental approaches to field research. The cho