Nudging our Way to a Better World
Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein wrote Nudge with optimism and dedication as primary tools while arguing for ways which we could improve our world. And there’s no government policy shift necessary – we only need to pay closer consideration to how we present decisions to individuals. The authors show how small changes in such “choice architecture” can produce big results. You might be surprised, but just by changing the order of food items in a cafeteria can increase or decrease the frequency which certain foods are selected by as much as 25%. Imagine, just from placing the vegetables at eye level in a prominent position in our school cafeterias and placing the Hostess delicacies on a hard-to-reach shelf (or even more sinister, hide them in a cupboard where students must open a door to access them), we could significantly improve our children’s diets.
