Quotes About Choice

You could pick your friends, but not your Presidents.

Large plates and large packages mean more eating; they are a form of choice architecture, and they work as major nudges. (Hint: if you would like to lose weight, get smaller plates, buy little packages of what you like, and don't keep tempting food in the refrigerator.)

Giving up the opportunity to sell something does not hurt as much as taking the money out of your wallet to pay for it. Opportunity costs are vague and abstract when compared to handing over actual cash.

In economics (and in ordinary life), a basic principle is that you can never be made worse off by having more options, because you can always turn them down. Before Thaler removed the nuts the group had the choice of whether to eat the nuts or not—now they didn't. In the land of Econs, it is against the law to be happy about this!

make an active decision

a nudge is any factor that significantly alters the behavior of Humans

First, never underestimate the power of inertia. Second, that power can be harnessed. If private companies or public officials think that one policy produces better outcomes, they can greatly influence the outcome by choosing it as the default.

people are more likely to keep what they start with than to trade it, even when the initial allocations were done at random.

people's choices are pervasively influenced by the design elements selected by choice architects.

Libertarian paternalism is a relatively weak, soft, and nonintrusive type of paternalism because choices are not blocked, fenced off, or significantly burdened. If people want to smoke cigarettes, to eat a lot of candy, to choose an unsuitable health care plan, or to fail to save for retirement, libertarian paternalists will not force them to do otherwise—

Doctors are crucial choice architects, and with an understanding of how Humans think, they could do far more to improve people's health and thus to lengthen their lives.

The false assumption is that almost all people, almost all of the time, make choices that are in their best interest or at the very least are better than the choices that would be made by someone else.

The nudge provided by asking people what they intend to do can be accentuated by asking them when and how they plan to do it. This

Private relationships, intimate and otherwise, might be structured in many different ways, and the simple dichotomy between "single" and "married" does not do justice to what people might choose.

it is thought to be somehow related to Adam Smith's invisible hand, the workings of which are both overstated and mysterious.

choices depend, in part, on the way in which problems are described.

It is usually good to provide people with lots of options, but when the question is complicated, sensible choice architecture guides people in the right directions.

Choosers are human, so designers should make life as easy as possible.

dumb principal" problems.

In our understanding, a policy is "paternalistic" if it tries to influence choices in a way that will make choosers better off, as judged by themselves. 3

Given that people would often choose not to choose, it is hard to see why freedom lovers should compel choice even though people (freely and voluntarily) resist it. If we ask the waiter to select a good bottle of wine to go with our dinner, we will not be happy if he says that we should just choose for ourselves!

As for information and educational campaigns, one of the main lessons from psychology is that it is impossible for such programs to be "neutral," regardless of how scrupulously designers try to achieve that goal. So to put it simply, forcing people to choose is not always wise, and remaining neutral is not always possible.

Choice architecture in domains from human resource departments to social security to health care must use some combination of curation and navigation tools. If they don't, people will flounder. As we have mentioned, some people have a simple philosophy: Just Maximize Choices. That's not always a bad idea, but it can be problematic without sophisticated choice architecture tools. Instead, a well-curated small selection and/or a good default can produce quite satisfactory outcomes.

The first is that seemingly small features of social situations can have massive effects on people's behavior; nudges are everywhere, even if we do not see them. Choice architecture, both good and bad, is pervasive and unavoidable, and it greatly affects our decisions. The second claim is that libertarian paternalism is not an oxymoron. Choice architects can preserve freedom of choice while also nudging people in directions that will improve their lives.