Negative Nudges
Hi,
This week’s email is about a common type of manipulation that you should watch out for.
The information here is from my article on the topic.
Here are the key practical points you should know:
A nudge is a simple aspect of people’s environment that alters their behavior in a predictable way, without forbidding any options or significantly changing their incentives.
A negative nudge (or sludge) prompts people to make a decision that’s bad for them.
Negative nudges usually involve making it easier to choose a bad option (e.g., by offering people a needlessly expensive service as a default), or making it harder to choose a good option (e.g., by adding inconvenient steps to the process of switching to a cheaper service).
Negative nudges can also involve other techniques, like increasing the salience of a bad option (e.g., by putting unhealthy snacks near the cash register to make them stand out), or setting a psychological anchor (e.g., by displaying an unrealistically high initial price for a product, which is then supposedly discounted).
Be mindful of negative nudges, and try to either remove them from your environment, or adjust your behavior to overcome their influence (e.g., by using relevant debiasing techniques, like slowing down your thinking).
Although negative nudges are sometimes put in place intentionally to benefit someone other than the person that they’re influencing, this isn’t always the case. Notably, people often create negative nudges for themselves, like when they put snacks that they’re trying to avoid in a location that’s highly visible when they’re hungry (e.g., on their desk or countertop). Fortunately, these nudges are usually easier to remove, as long as we’re aware of their presence.
If you want a relevant exercise for this week, try spotting at least one negative nudge in your life, and then either remove it or do something else to counter its potential impact.
As always, I'm happy to hear your thoughts.
Have a great week,
Itamar