Small changes to how options are presented can shift behaviour without restricting choice.
Thaler and Sunstein's 2008 framework. Average effects are heterogeneous across intervention types and domains, and meta-analytic estimates are affected by publication bias. The other contested part is the libertarian half: whether an architecture designed to produce a particular choice really leaves the choice free.
In practice
- A canteen that puts fruit at eye level and chips at the end sells more fruit without removing anything.
- A form that pre-selects the monthly donation raises more than one that leaves the field blank, and both leave the choice open.
- Possible explanations
- The explanation is that choices are always presented somehow, and features that should be irrelevant, such as order, framing and the default, reliably shift what people pick.
- In its favour
- Some interventions work well and cheaply, particularly defaults and simplified forms, and the framework changed how governments design services.
- Against it
- Average effects are heterogeneous, meta-analytic estimates are affected by publication bias, and several headline results have not replicated. Critics also question the ethics of designing choices people do not notice.
- Standing
- Average effects are heterogeneous across intervention types and domains, and meta-analytic estimates are affected by publication bias.
- Subject
- Decision-making & Reasoning
- Essay
- Why reasoning works the way it does