
Why 'Nudges' Hardly Help - RyanMcGreal
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/12/nudges-effectiveness/418749/?single_page=true
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saidajigumi
I'm a bit surprised that this article doesn't deal with the increasing amount
of science behind neurological food reward mechanisms. The tl;dr is that our
junk food (and much mass-produced food in grocery stores) has been tailored
for a kind of hyper-palatability that mutes the effectiveness of our normal
satiety mechanisms. So in the article's context the "nudge" is up against an
evolving attack by industrial food against very low-level neurological
mechanisms.

I don't have a good "lay" source for this field, but I'd recommend digging
into Stephen Guyenet's blog[1], that is if you're up for wading through an
academic's professional musings. He's a neurobiologist and obesity researcher,
and as such the blog provides his perspectives on ongoing work (his and
others') in this field. Warning: DO NOT go here expecting any specific
answers, and be able to deal with a fair bit of hypothesizing (i.e. untested,
maybe totally wrong) both on Guyenet's part and via the work he reviews.
You'll only really get a sense of how this field is going as you pick up
enough context of ongoing work. IMO, the most interesting self-contained posts
that go by are the significant negative results, where robust work comes to
light that just crushes an existing hypothesis.

[1]
[http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/](http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/)

~~~
rjdevereux
Related book by the former head of the FDA

"Dr. Kessler shows us how our brain chemistry has been hijacked by the foods
we most love to eat: those that contain stimulating combinations of fat,
sugar, and salt"

[http://www.amazon.com/The-End-Overeating-Insatiable-
American...](http://www.amazon.com/The-End-Overeating-Insatiable-
American/dp/1605294578)

------
richmarr
It probably won't come as much of a shock to folks here, but this article has
a misleading title.

In the third paragraph, "Nudges hardly help" softens all the way to "nudging
sometimes... isn’t effective".

I've come across three groups of reactions to "Nudging":

1) Yay! Let's use science for good!

2) Yeah but it's not a silver bullet

3) I think they're brainwashing us

Camp 1 is sensible, and has room for discussion about ethics, rigour, etc.
Camp 2 is arguing against a straw man. Camp 3 is a reasonable position to hold
if you have government trust issues and don't understand what's happening, so
is an education and operational transparency problem more than anything.

Edit: disclaimer, I've worked closely with a nudge unit but am not an employee
of one

~~~
nickff
I have issues with nudging, but am unsure of whether I fit in one of your
categories. My issues are:

a) When a few people make de-facto decisions for everyone else, those
decisions are prone to causing black swans because of a lack of (real)
diversification of risk. One example of this would be if 20 countries used the
default retirement portfolio scheme (that is often used to support nudges),
and in one country, the portfolio was not diversified against a type of risk
(i.e. interest rate or mortgage default), that could cause severe
malinvestment and economic calamity in one country. It would have been much
better for 1 in 20 people to make the mistake than 1 in 20 countries.

b) People's decision making abilities are like any other skill (i.e. language,
writing, arithmetic), in that they atrophy over time if they are not used. If
the people have no reason to look out for themselves, they may not realize
when the nudgers are abdicating their responsibilities. In addition to that,
financial decisions give clear feedback and have good incentives for the
individual, which allows and requires people to exercise their decision making
abilities, that will be useful in other areas of life.

Perhaps I fit in to your 'group 3', but either way, I'd be interested to hear
your thoughts (if you would be interested in giving any) on these two
objections.

~~~
richmarr
Good points all.

Point (a) is a potentially a huge problem, I agree. An entire country
suffering from poor pension investments all at once could have disasterous
consequences.

My understanding of the typical pension opt-in change is that it opts you in
to your company's default pension rather than a state default pension, so the
nation as a whole would have diversification even if customers of some pension
providers are at risk (unless that nation didn't have diverse pension
providers, in which case they already have a problem). Could be wrong, not my
area.

Issue (b) is interesting too. I'd say it fell into my third group because it
seems to rest on people being lulled into a false sense of security and then
taken advantage of. There are a couple of reasons why I don't think it'd be a
problem... one applies to "good" nudge units and the other is more general.

Firstly, at a 'good' nudge unit they operate transparently, both at the point
of intervention and when publishing findings after the fact. If you look at
Richard Thaler's work, he uses 3 'laws' to define 'good' nudges that make it
hard for abuse to seem possible:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/01/upshot/the-power-of-
nudges...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/01/upshot/the-power-of-nudges-for-
good-and-bad.html)

Secondly, a more general point. Nudge units on the whole use a tiny subset of
the psychological arsenal that companies use daily. They only use the stuff
there's clear scientific evidence for ploughing on layers of gamification,
incentives, information assymetry, etc. Yet companies do not feel bound by
Richard Thalers "3 laws of nudging", they rarely follow more than 1. That's
fair enough, as it's harder to switch to a different government and
governments have more power over us, but it does raise the question... if our
decision making skills atrophy over time then that would have already happened
with companies, and I'm not sure I've seen evidence to support that view.
Again, could be wrong.

------
pbreit
Author hardly demonstrates how nudges "hardly help". In fact, my guess is that
nudges are extremely effective. Just the trivial 10c grocery bag fees (a
"nudge", imo) can reduce bag use by 80% (whether or not bag reduction is
good/bad is a different discussion).

~~~
saidajigumi
As my other post in this thread gets into, this example of a "nudge" doesn't
compare to the junk food case, since junk food is effectively designed to hack
our brains' "food reward" mechanisms. Bag use is effectively neurologically
"neutral", but junk food (and most other highly processed food) is very much
not. "Pringles, can't eat just one!" turns out to be a _lot_ more than a
marketing slogan.

~~~
Nadya
That slogan is for Lay's potato chips. Pringles' slogan is "you don't just eat
them".

Source: I love Pringles.
[http://i.imgur.com/oibfGJA.png](http://i.imgur.com/oibfGJA.png)

~~~
saidajigumi
Thanks for the correction!

------
vinceguidry
> Thanks to problems like these, the economist (and frequent Atlantic
> contributor) Teresa Ghilarducci has called the 401(k)

Is this true? Is your money better off in an IRA, even with an employer match?

~~~
Kluny
If you just let your employer put your retirement savings in their default
mutual fund, what you're going to get is some product sold to the company by a
money manager who is taking 2-3% of your money off the top.

Given how rare it is for a mutual fund to consistently return even 4% for any
amount of time (seriously, if you know of one that does let me know and I'll
sign up at once - 1-2% is more typical), you end up with something that's
worth less than a basic savings account, but with a bunch of rules attached to
it that prevent you from using your money when you want. Depending on the
circumstances, that could be a pretty poor deal.

~~~
chadgeidel
Forgive me if this is ignorant, but does that basically mean the "employer
match" (common at orgs I've worked for) is basically doing nothing as it's a
similar percentage?

~~~
vinceguidry
Employers only match what you put in, whereas mutual funds take fees off of
the returns. That suggests to me to contribute only enough to get your match,
and roll it into an individual account after you leave the company for more
control over where it goes.

~~~
Kluny
Agreed. Not as set-it-and-forget-it as it's advertised to be, but never turn
down free money. Just do the math so you know what you're getting.

------
weisser
We're currently in beta with a DNA-based health advice service
([http://withinhealth.com](http://withinhealth.com)) and here are a few
observations (this will be written about more in detail at a future date on my
personal website)

\- People remember health information that is specific (personalized) to them.

88% of our beta users are able to remember their genetic insights/advice 3 or
more days after receiving them.

\- A compelling, personalized reason can help users get over the hump of
taking an action.

No one wakes up in the morning and decides they want to get some blood work
done for the heck of it. We identified interesting genetic predispositions for
beta testers which were enough to motivate 7% of them to get blood work done.
21% of beta testers took an some type of action based on the personalized and
advice we presented.

It hardly goes against common sense to believe that personalization would
facilitate retention and action but it has been fulfilling to witness
firsthand.

~~~
cryoshon
Tried to sign up, but got:

"403 Forbidden

qXTJJBys/ed4Gx1wX @ Tue, 08 Dec 2015 18:00:18 GMT

BRICK-6"

~~~
weisser
Thanks - should be fixed!

