Title: Nudge: How Small Changes Can Significantly Influence People’s Choices – Effectiviology
Headings: Nudge: How Small Changes Can Significantly Influence People’s Choices
Nudge: How Small Changes Can Significantly Influence People’s Choices
Table of contents
Examples of nudges
Types of nudges
The psychology of nudging
Negative nudges
How to use nudges
How to respond to nudges
Ethics and criticisms of nudging
Summary and conclusions

Content: For example, sending students a few personalized text messages helped many of them remember to refile their application for student aid. Nudges can prompt people to pay better attention to their privacy. For example, giving social-media users a reminder about who will be the audience for content that they intend to post helped those users make better decisions regarding what to post and where to post it. Nudges can prompt people to make choices that benefit other members of society. For example, using an opt-out system for organ donations, where people are automatically registered as organ donors unless they choose otherwise, instead of an opt-in system, where people have to actively register to become donors, significantly increased the number of people that are registered as organ donors. Nudges can get people to make choices that are better for the environment. For example, providing feedback to households about their and their neighbors’ electricity usage led people to reduce their energy consumption. In addition, research shows that the benefits of nudges can persist long after people encounter the nudge itself. For example, one study showed that the effects of nudges on people’s choice of a pension plan persisted for two decades after the original nudge has affected their decision, suggesting that simple nudges can benefit people’s lives in the long-term. Finally, another well-known example of nudging appears in the following story: