E028: Nudge Theory

hello. This is James and Jane, and here we are again with another episode of a world of work podcast, a very exciting one for us. We've started to order new equipment, and we've got one of the new pieces of equipment here today. Well, strictly speaking, we've got two, because we've got both a mic and a mic. Well, maybe we've got three. We've got the little, like, foamy bit that goes over the top as well. Yeah, that's got a name and I can't remember. Yeah, I don't know either. Anyway, it's very exciting for us, so hopefully it sounds a little bit better for people today. We're going to be following on our series, our series three, which is all about behavior and behavior change. So we've done a lot of work and conversations early that look at things like, what behavior change is, things like habituation, motivation, lots of things around individuals and behavior change. What we're going to be doing today is we're going to be speaking a little bit about nudge theory. So nudge theory is like, it's a popular theory. It's out there. It's had an interesting history. So we're gonna be focusing on that. But before we do that, why don't we check in and figure out how people can get in touch with us. Jen, what do you think? I think that sounds like a great idea. So as always, we are all over the social so you can find us on Insta, Facebook, LinkedIn, just search the WoW podcast. But our favorite places to talk to everyone, our Twitter, at the WoW podcast, our website, www podcast.org, and if you go there, you can also sign up for our Wow mail, and we'll drop you an email when we've got new episodes out. Cool and on the on the website, Steph, we're gonna, as we said before, be releasing a new website soon. It's World of work.io, the world of work.io, so

you'll be able to check out some new stuff there. We're not entirely sure when that's going live, but it'll be in June, so probably a little bit after this episode, but we're not entirely sure. So hopefully that's something that you can look forward to. We're really looking forward to it. It's been fun creating it. So why don't we check engine? How are you getting on? I am. All right, I've had a bit of a cold this week. I have, and I've been I'm a bit of a negative Nancy. When I've got negative Nancy, hiding it pretty well. Thank you. I so I feel a bit ropey, but summer is coming like it's freezing outside. That's the opposite of winter is coming, isn't it? Yeah, it's literally. I'm not watching Game of Thrones, so the last series of Game of Thrones is on for those as we're watching it, and I'm refusing to watch it until the end, but it seems to have taken over the world. But yeah, otherwise, I'm good. I've got lots going on. I'm back at uni for term three, so that's a bit blow my mind at the moment. So I've just found out I'm a massive feminist. I was just a bit of a feminist. I kind of would have guessed that. No, I was, yeah, I always knew I was a bit of a feminist. And I've also discovered that critical theory is probably my home, okay, because I basically quite like the idea of exposing power relationships, which is kind of fun. So that's what I've learned. That's what I've learned this week. Cool. What about you? I've had a good week. I've been working on website. I've been coaching people. I've been doing a range of different things in that space, speaking to a few different people about different bits of work that might be coming up in the future, which is pretty fun. So things like workshops and webinars and things like that, you know, sort of networking, getting to know people, thinking about how a lot of our things we talk about fit together in a slightly different way, which is great fun. That sounds great and potentially off on holiday in a bit. But more about that once I know a little bit more, maybe in another episode or so. That sounds good. But you've had your family here as well. Yeah, that's right. I've heard my my brother lives in Shanghai, so he's been here as you do. Yeah, exactly where, a bit spread out. My mom lives in America. She's been here. They crossed over for a little bit, so loads of family stuff. That sounds Lush. Yeah, it's been really good, really good, good, cool. So nudge theory. Nudge theory. Yeah, I know. So I guess we're going to do it the way we do a lot of these episodes. So we're going to do definition, discussion, research, Roundup, list of weeks, stories from a keyboard, some final thoughts and top tips, and then a bit of a checkout at the end and saying goodbye. So what do you think you wanna, should we just jump into it? Or I think we should just crack on. Just, are you gonna start us off with some definition? You know, there's very little I'd like more than talking about some definitions, so I really well go on. All right, all right, let's do it. So let's see what I can do. And I'll run through the words we're gonna discuss, and then I'll bring them up individually, and you'll be able to get a flavor of roughly what this stuff's about as I do it. So we're going to start by explaining behavioral economics. I'm sure a lot of you know about it, but we'll touch on it. We'll touch on libertarian paternalism, which is a framework that exists around the concept of nudge and nudging. We're going to define nudge itself in some of the language used by the people who published the book nudge. We're going.

To touch on choice architecture, and we're going to talk about heuristics, which we've, I think, probably touched on elsewhere in conversations, and we certainly will, yeah, it's the one I can't pronounce properly. Yeah, it's a hard one. We'll get a whole list of those. Yeah, heuristics.

Cool. All right, so behavioral economics. This is from Investopedia. It says that Behavioral Economics is the study of psychology as it relates to the economic decision making process of individuals and institutions. The two most important questions in this field are, one, are economists assumptions of utility or profit maximization, good approximations of real people's behavior? And two, do individuals maximize subjective expected utility, right? So that's a bit of a clouded set of statements for people who aren't involved in economics and who maybe haven't looked at it, but basically what it says is, do people make decisions in the way that economists say they make decisions around sort of rationality and things like that, yeah. Are we rational, like they say we are, yeah, and, and I think we all know the answer is yeah, and we're kind of rational, but not in the way they say we are, right? So, and sometimes we're not rational, we're not rational as well, but we're kind of rational to ourselves, I don't know, yes. And then then you get to a very interesting place where you start questioning whether it's our context. It's all about context, really, isn't it? Yeah. And where you're making those decisions, sounds like that might be another podcast.

All right. So moving on, libertarian paternalism. This is from Wikipedia and libertarian paternalism. Reason we're mentioning it here is because it's an important sort of framework, or sort of concept, way of thinking around which some of this stuff's been based. So it's just worth getting it out there so people know what it is. And the reason it's relevant is that obviously things like nudging and behavioral economics, and a lot of this work is supports influencing people to make decisions in different ways. So this is a construct that sort of helps explain some of the morality around that and the way people see some of this. So a definition here is that libertarian paternalism is the idea that it is both possible and legitimate for private and public institutions to affect behavior while also respecting the freedom of choice as well as the implementation of that idea, right? So you know, like you can hold multiple ideas in your mind at the same time that don't always join up. What this is saying is that you can hold the idea of freedom of choice in your mind, while also, to some extent, nudging behaviors. Yeah, so you can encourage someone to do something without having to force them, yeah, and that's okay, yeah, and it's okay. I mean, that's the important piece. That's the that's what they're arguing Yeah. And people still, you're still respecting that freedom of choice while you're doing so, slightly, the cognitive dissonance, I think, is required for that one, some extent, for me, but we're not going to go into it, which is a risk that we face. Moving on swiftly with my shovel to get myself out of that hole. We're going to look at nudge. And here we're going to use the definition from Thaler and Sunstein, the you know, the authors that are often cited, who've written the most popular book on the subject in 2018

and when they talk about nudge, they say any aspect of a choice architecture that alters people's behavior in a predictable way without forbidding any options or significantly changing their economic incentives, they add that to to say, count as a mere nudge intervention must be easy and cheap to avoid, right? So what that's saying is that these are sort of minor things that affect the way that people change without materially changing the incentives that they receive. And to counter the anode to the intervention must be easy and cheap to avoid, right? So it's not like an imposition or a structure, yeah, it's always going to feel like a proper choice. Yeah? And they're saying that you can't bribe people to do it, yeah? And they're saying, you can't force people to do it. And those are the principles. The phrase I liked is someone said on the website, I can't find it, where I go from a gentle push in the right direction. That's nice. I like that. It made me feel more okay with Yeah, it's all in the right direction, right? But I guess things in this context, like, you know, if you build a wall that prevents somebody from doing something that's not a nudge. That's far beyond a nudge, right? Because it brings in all the barrier types of things in there. So yeah, interesting choice of example.

Yeah. All right, moving on, choice architecture, again, from fellow and Sunstein. So we see that phrase popping up quite a bit, and all we really mean by choice architecture, and what they say is that choice architecture is defined as the context in which people make decisions. So, you know, what are the structures, whatever relationships, what are the informations that are in there? Are there any predetermined things? What? What are the comparative options within a series of choices? Stuff like that goes into the creation of a choice architecture for any activity, I guess that you can have, you can have choice architecture around lots of things, and the last one, heuristics, from my Webster. This says that heuristics are a problem solving method that uses shortcuts to produce good enough solutions given a limited time frame or deadline. Heuristics are a flexibility technique for quick decisions, particularly when.

Working with complex data, decisions made using a heuristic approach may not necessarily be optimal. Heuristics is derived from a Greek word, meaning to discover, right? So this is just kind of decision making shortcuts. I've heard heuristics referred to as rules of thumb, yeah, that kind of stuff. I think in modern language, they might well be common hacks people, where people know how to do things quickly and easily that solve problems. You're well done with the kids. I own hacks. I like it. Oh no, I'm obsessed with life hacks. Yeah, that's why. And also, I obsessed about hacking my own brain, yeah.

Okay, so what do you think of those? I like, I like the things that are in here. I like the subject immensely. I think it's fascinating. I think some of the definitions for me are a bit a bit clunky. So I think you have a bit in behavioral economics that talks about utility and things like that. It's helpful, but it's not necessarily accessible. It's a definition for people who don't have that economic background. Yeah. And I think, I think the bit, and the reason I like that one, and I totally agree with you, it's not, but the point I think they make is that I think it's really important is around it? Firstly, it's a study of psychology, yeah. And I'm really tired of people telling me that behavior, economics, is economics. And as a student of both, yeah, not an always brilliant student of both, but as a student of both, I don't it is Psychology. I It's an economic it's an economist spin on psychology.

And I think that's really helpful to remember that. And I also think this concept of decision making, process of individuals and institutions, is really important, yeah, because I think

the book nudge talks about making decisions for health and well being, but the reality is that nudges could be used in many ways. Yeah, they're all over the world, I mean. And I guess that's part of the reason we're talking about them is, you know, they're such an important thing, yeah, and maybe that's a good time to talk exactly about that, because we did talk a little bit about just before we came on to record this, about why are we actually interested, and what's what's relevant. So I think it's really important to think about as a whole series we've been talking about changing behaviors and

nudge feels really relevant here. Yeah, it's been hugely popular. It's been used by governments all around the world with mixed results. Some of it's been really successful. Some of it hasn't. It may be being used in your environment right now to influence your behavior, yeah. And we think it's important people understand that. And it might be consciously or unconsciously used by people designing stuff as well. Some people do it with the knowledge and insight, but some people just some people do it because it feels instinctive, yeah. And some of it is common sense, which makes it slightly complex, but you should, but you should, but people should know that it exists, I think. And I also think really importantly, there's things that you can learn from nudge theory and from the uses of nudge that have been executed around the world that might help you change your own behaviors or change your own workplace for the better. Yeah, so that's why we thought it'd be really interesting, cool. I'm gonna kick a research roundup of which is always a moment of absolute fear. And I'm going to kick it off slightly confusingly, not with nudge theory. Oh, that sounds fun. So we're going to talk about Cialdini. Oh, right. I'm going to talk about Cialdini for two reasons. One is that back in the 80s, Cialdini, who is a psychologist, wrote a book called Influence science persuasion. And

it's a really influential book. Lots of people talk about it in the behavioral economics, behavioral science field, as a book they read early doors, and it really changed their thinking about when was it? When did it? I think it was 84 something like that. And shielding is a very easily accessible writer, so I read it before I had any background information, so there is an element of that. But he also did some really great field research, which makes me really happy, because I love field research, even though I sometimes question

how it's valid. But anyway, he did some amazing field research, and he was also really fascinated about how people are persuaded. So I want to start with children is six heuristics or six principles of persuasion, which are things that he believed people should could use as shortcuts to predict behavior and to influence behavior. Okay? And he and some of these, if you've not heard about this sort of stuff, will feel like common sense. But what's interesting about children is he went out and found evidence for found evidence for, yeah, and a lot of it is common sense, right? But it's important. And, you know, he spent an in so one of the studies he talks about, and it's not one of his, but one of the studies he talks about is, for example, getting hotel towels picked up off the floor so they don't get washed every night. Yeah, because that would save huge amounts of energy and cost. And he's he's just, I like him, because he gets really into that stuff. So his six are reciprocity. So the argument that if someone does something for me, I will do something for them, right? And the example he uses is when a relationship, when Mexico is having huge problems, okay? Ethiopia, do?

Despite facing famine and virtual bankruptcy as a state, still participated in the Mexico support,

financial support program to get them back on their feet after they'd had an environmental disaster. And if you unpick it and you go back 50 years earlier, Mexico had waded in to protect Ethiopia's sanctity political independence, so they felt like they owed them something. And this concept that that, that you can owe something between two people, but also you can inherit ownership, yeah,

owing someone something, and that as a society, you can feel like you owe something. That's pretty cool. I think it's a really cool thing. So reciprocity, next one is consistency. And this is really specific. It's about being consistent with your self image. So if you perceive that something is in line with your own self image, you will do it. So for example, if you imagine yourself to be a good father, yeah, and you are told that good fathers take time off work to go to their

kids parents evenings, yeah, you will do it. You are more likely to do it because you perceive that that's in line with how you perceive yourself. And if your perception is that bad, fathers don't go, then you are more likely to go, yeah. So you can influence people by

creating an understanding that certain behavior is in line with their self image. So therefore, if you get famous people who are good fathers to talk about being a good father and going taking times off, then you change people's perceptions of what being a good father is. How does that relate? Well, so the next one is social validation. So I think that's sometimes called social proof. So other people like me think this is a great thing. So that's when they put people who look like you and sound like you and have the same as you on the telly and say, Hi, did this, and it was amazing, and it changed my life. You're like, oh, well, I'm like that too. So it's why it's the ridiculous thing of looking for people who've had lived experienced to be the only people who have

the answers and liking is his next one, and that's about, do people like the person selling the idea or trying to persuade so if you like me, you are more likely to do as I ask, or more likely to do what I hope you will do fine. And when shielding, he talks about like, he also talks about attractiveness. So if you like me in any way, yeah, he then talks about authority, so creating an authority figure or expert. Now, if you're in the UK, experts get a bad rap at the moment, but realistically, if you look at how the

really best example I can give you that is that if your doctor tells you to go out and walk 15 minutes every day, you are more likely to do fine, because there's that whole credibility. Respect, it's your doctor. He must know, right? So using that, and then his final, which is probably the most common to people, is about scarcity. So if you make people think something is scarce, or if indeed it is scarce, they are more likely to want it. Can I? Can I just tell you a really like, total side story on that my parents did research field work a long way away, on a sort of island many, many miles away from anyway, as anthropologists. And this was in the sort of early 80s, late 70s, and it was around the time that a lot of environmental movements were taking off, and there was a lot of discussion around the endangerment of sea turtles, right? So they actually spoke to the people on the island and tried to save it, just so, you know, the Turtles are, you know, going extinct and all that kind of stuff, trying to change their behaviors. And the people went straight out hunting turtles, right? And they're like, well, if these things are gone, we better get them before they're gone.

So talk about unintended consequences. But that is, I guess, scarcity in action in a really unfortunate

way. No, no, that's absolutely brilliant, because it's a perfect example of why if you don't understand this stuff, yes, you can really accidentally accidentally in it, particularly if you're designing policy, yeah, you can see how people can accidentally do completely the wrong thing. And you just get, I like to think Cialdini would really like that example. Okay, so

although I mean Cialdini himself talks about failure and sunstein's work and the nudge book as very relevant and he they, I've seen a couple of interviews between the two of them, and they talk quite a lot about what they do and how it's influenced, how they've influenced each other. But certainly, if you now flash forward from the 80s, and you get to a place where Thaler and Sunstein are working together, and they are trying to understand how people can be influenced to make decisions for their own good without being forced to. And that's their thing, right? They don't want people to be forced to. They want it to be a freedom. They fundamentally believe that if you make that free choice, you're much more likely to do it, and it's meant for likely to be beneficial, and that's for all libertarian and that's where that comes in. Yeah. But so nudge theory is based on the idea that by shaping the environment, which.

They talk about choice architecture, which is the one you you talk about, someone can influence the likelihood that one option is chosen over another by individuals, right? Okay, so what they're saying, Yeah, so what they're saying is, change how the choices look and how they're presented, or the environment they're presented in change the context of that choice through a variety of methods, and I'll talk about those in a minute. And you can influence a person to make a better choice, okay, but you're not forcing them to and and the three principles are really important, right? All judge, they argue that all judgments should be transparent and never misleading. Oh, sorry. All nudges should be transparent and never misleading. They argue you should always be able to opt out of that nudge so and easily, so it's not forced. And they argue

that there should be good reason that the behavior that you're trying to encourage is good for the welfare of the person being nudged, yeah right, which is the paternalistic bit, I guess. So their point is that this is for good, not evil. Yeah, right. And what's the interesting is, if you, if you read some of the sort of more practitioner, more

less academic stuff, someone like Rory Sutherland, who works at Ogilvy, has been really passionate around nudging and talks about it a lot. Would argue that advertising has been doing this for a very long time. I totally Yeah. And so actually, some would argue that Thaler and Sunstein have learned from the practitioner world, not the one you expect, in order to use that information to influence people in a public policy environment, and that then makes a much more it seems to make much more sense, right, as a structure. So what I thought I'd do, that would be really useful, is talk you through. Sunsin wrote a summary paper for Harvard, which is publicly available, and he outlined 10 important nudges that he thinks people should know about and understand. So I thought be really good just to run through them so that people can see how they work, and we can have a chat. You tell me which one your favorite is, oh, my favorite. Yeah, I have a favorite. I have an absolute favorite. Okay, so he talks about one default, okay, so setting the default such that you're encouraging behavior. And the example for that would be donor cards, yeah, okay, so when you give, so those of you who don't know, in the UK, there's been an ongoing period of each country within the UK moving over to opt out, donor versus opt in. And this is organ donation. This is organ donation after something happens to you. And the idea is, if you make the default the better behavior, and people have to opt out, but they can opt out easily, then you are more likely to get people just going, well, that's fine. I'll do that in countries. My understanding is in countries where the default is that you're not an organ donor, organ donation rate. So which was, yeah, which was England up until two years, yeah. And it's like seven, 8% donation rates, because people actively take that, that action, to do it, and they need to. Whereas if the default is that you are an organ donor. It's like 90% organ donor, something like that. I don't know numbers, and it's big. It's because largely, people feel like it's a bigger decision than it is. So they change the way they think about the decision, whereas if someone presents it as the norm, it's like, oh, well, that's what everyone's doing. Cool. So simplification is his second and he goes on about this quite a lot, not goes on strong. That's harsh words, but he does talk about it, and he says, you know, people just don't get how much you need to simplify, and however complicated everything is in this world, if you cannot simplify it down to a literal what is the next action I take? And why am I doing it? Then it's too complicated. So his first challenge is, pretty much always go back and make it more simple. He talks about use of social norms. So the big one with the Cialdini also talks about was the nine out of by telling people that nine out of 10 guests reuse their towels. What you're saying is you're not dirty, it's not horrible, it's not you're not weird to reuse your towels. Actually, everyone normally reads his towels, and that's a good thing. And here's and they might tell you, why don't you want to be like everybody else? And don't you want to be like everyone else? Don't you want to be there? You want to be the majority? And they play to all of that third one,

sorry, the fourth one is around just increasing ease and convenience, so putting things in front of you. So my favorite is if you

reduce and he talks about reducing ambiguity. So my favorite one is when they put up signage of how to walk from Waterloo station to London Bridge in London. Yeah, the tube stopped being as crowded. The Metro, in other terms, stopped being as crowded between the two stations because it was only 18 minute walk. So it's decent walk, but it's a will, yeah, but it's a really awkward walk. Yes, because if you don't know where you're going, you get lost. Yeah, it's not those of

you listening. In America, we don't have grid systems. We have because we had horses and so we have bridges and horses all really complicated in London, so it's all a bit wiggledy, is the only way I prescribe it. But they really worked. It didn't work for like everyone, but it worked enough to change the pattern of pattern of behavior. Yeah.

And it's just because I tried it once without the signage, and I got lost. And I know London, so reducing ambiguity is really big. He talks about disclosure. So the biggest example of that would be when credit cards have to show the full cost of borrowing, not just the interest rate period, and in some cases, even have to compare how that compares to other the average. So disclosing as much information and forcing or encouraging people to close as much information so they make better decisions. He talks about warnings, which is one of the most common. So cigarette packets in the UK for have long had massive warnings on them. Yeah,

and that, that's a very straightforward and simple area of a nudge. He then talks about pre commitment strategies. So, and this relates whole so much to goal setting stuff we did. Yeah, so pre commitment is the idea that it works really well when people struggle to execute their behavior in line with their goals. So procrastination or behavior that is difficult, like changing behavior around your eating or something like that. And the idea is, if you commit something in the future that has a deadline, at some point, you're going, you're going, it's going to have to happen. Can I give you a great example of that? Yeah, of course. I don't know if you remember, but we started like we were recording all these podcasts at the end of last year, yeah. And then at one point in December, we just started going on Twitter and telling people we were going to launch it on a certain date, right? And then we didn't really have any choice. So I think it's really funny, you've chosen that example. Because, because I have massive issues around procrastination and sticking to behaviors. So I use pre commitment strategies all the time, and I use them with you all the time for me. So I will say things like, can we just block out two days do research and recording for that episode? Because then I know it'll happen, and I know that if I've got a deadline that's happening, I will get it done and I will get to that day. So the minute we're in for people listening, where we blocked out basically three days to record a series in a bit, in a bit of a sprint. And so for me, that was and we set that like three months, yeah, right, that was three months in the diary, but it forces me to protect that time. So it works really well. He talks about reminders and prompts. So email reminders of deadlines, or also email reminders that your, I don't know power

commitment to the company is coming up for renewal, and do you want to pick a different package? So encouraging people. So there's lots of stuff that's been done in the British in Britain around making power companies and utility companies highlight to their customers they can choose competition, yeah, and that there and that they have to let them know that is an option and they're not tied in eliciting implementation intentions.

What's that mean? Fancy, isn't it? So basically, it's when you get someone to commit something,

you get someone to tell them your intention in advance, and that will make them do something. So the easiest way to explain is practical. Okay, if you ask someone, do you plan to vote? Yeah, next month? Yeah. Irrespective of their answer, they are more likely to vote Yeah. Because you have asked them a question, you have forced them to make a choice, and therefore you've brought it, I assume, you've brought it into their consciousness and made them aware that this is something they need to do. Yeah. That's a fascinating one, isn't it? Yeah, and then the last one is informing people of the nature and consequences of their own past choices. It's apparently called Smart disclosure in the US. So the example I would give for that is,

and you see it in a few places, where people sort of highlight how far behind or how close you were to a deadline last time. So I've had it with my HR department. Have been like this time last year. You were

this time last year. We were three three days before the deadline for doing all your appraisals. Okay, and you did not submit your appraisals till x date. So just a reminder like that, you were two weeks over, and you probably need to get started. And it was probably phrased a bit nicer than that, but the idea you need, you need to look backwards and see what, what? What happens if you don't make different choices? You know, it's the I seen the Einstein thing. Don't keep doing the same thing and expecting different results, thinking of like, a little minor thing that's just popped into my mind thinking about all of it is, is, if you drive sort of electric or hybrid cars, and they've got all the different metrics on your console, so they'll have things but talk about your miles per gallon the last trip and things like that. And that might be a bit of a nudge thing. So by keeping it visible to you, disclosing how it's all going, and informing you of your last trip, maybe that helps drive your decisions in a different way, and it's a sort of a nudge to more environmentally, yeah, I would. And you know, you pick up on something that's really relevant, which is largely this stuff has been used in advertising and user design and products, right? And I almost feel like it's psychology learning from the practical versus the other way around, in some ways. And maybe it's not, maybe they're just really.

Quick on the opportunity. It's all at the same time, but there's lots of things that people have been doing without realizing that's what they're doing, yeah? And so I what do you think? I think it's cool. I mean, you know what a lot of people are going to listen and say, well, that's just common sense, right? And it is. I think a couple of them, couple of them don't feel like a couple of them aren't, yeah, a couple of them are a bit more deep, but a lot of it is kind of common sense, but they're still fascinating, and they're still really powerful, and they're great because they're human and they work. I mean, this is kind of reality.

I sort of wonder a little bit about whether you know, being aware of this diminishes the effect of these nudges. I don't really know, but as a set of things, I think they're really interesting, and I think it's great for people to learn about this, because it helps them have clarity over their own decision making process. So, you know, learning about how things work helps you more effectively. Yeah, and I think use your decision I think there's loads of stuff that can be used really easily in the workplace, in this stuff as well, because I think so, the example we were talking about the other day was an application form that didn't have UK at the top of the country list, even though it was a UK based job and it wasn't a particularly high pay one. So it's not like people, loads of people would be moving abroad, and so people were having to scroll down. And there's a particular, particular additional annoyance about the UK in that it could be Great Britain, it could be England, it could be UK. So there is a thing about where is it going to be anyway. So you're scrolling through all the countries, and they were saying that when they put UK to the top, instantly things just sped up. Yeah, I'm sure, massively. And people like weren't dropping out of their Wi Fi and stuff like that when they're filling the form in. Okay? So I've also picked out four real world examples that various,

some of the authors have talked about. So the probably the most famous story that gets told and Thaler was, I saw Richard Taylor in an interview, and he's like, he's he was like, I'm still trying to find out where the data comes from on this. But the story goes that in an Amsterdam, in the Amster Airport, in the men's toilets. They were having problems with spillage. I believe it's phrase, yeah, we're getting a little bit of a mess, yeah. And so they got decal stickers of flies, and they put them in the base of the rhinos, yeah, so that men had something to point at, yeah. And they saw spillage dropped by 80% Yeah, right? Which, which in failure. And the way sale and Sunstein talk about their work is just a classic example of you're trying to get something that everyone wants to happen, to happen, right? You know what? No one's happy about spillage in the toilet, right? Not even the people doing it. Yeah, no one wants to go into a bathroom today, it's not a big deal. It's influenced by lots of people doing small things, yeah, and it's not a lot of effort, no, but someone needs a bit of motivation, and so what they do is they just say, well, have something to aim at, because that's fun. Let's just moderate the built environment slightly. And I wonder how much better that worked than a big sign saying, yeah, please be careful. Yeah, I bet it worked infinitely more I can, I can confirm that those flyers are there. I'm not sure that they're still there now, but I've definitely that's so cool, so an interesting this is where quite a lot of nudge theory can borrow from the digital world and things like gamification. Yeah, because and we were talking about this earlier Candy Crush, yeah, and

certainly with something like the flying that is a classic example of gamifying something and learning from the digital world and saying, Okay, how can we make this fun? How can we make this a game, and how will that encourage people to behave the way we want? So the second one is, I've mentioned him earlier, Rory Sutherland, so Rory southern is not a psychologist. He's a advertising Well, I don't know. I mean, he's a very high up advertising man. He's at Ogilvy. He now is obsessed with nudge he runs something called nudge stock, which is a festival looking at behavioral economics in down in the south coast of England. And he talks about Alka Seltzer, the brand. And I hope I've got this right, because I don't want to get in trouble with Alka Seltzer. But Alka Seltzer. But he he says that the there was an advert in certainly the UK, and it had a glass with two tablets dropping into it, and it made the noise, blink, blink, Fizz, Fizz, or pop. Plot, please fit two tablets following two tablets falling in and

he says the the line was written at the beginning of a psychologist who suggested, if you create the social norm around using two Alka SEL rather than one, you'll double your sales.

Now we've talked mostly about how Thaler and Sunstein talk about for public good. That's clearly not a public good, but it is a very interesting example of how changing someone's norms ideas can about what what is what other people do, yeah, makes you do it. Yeah. So powerful. Yeah. Ridiculous. Third example I really like was a something called the dollar a day teen pregnancy project. And. Where. So that was over in the States, and one of the municipal councils started giving teenage girls $1 for every day they weren't pregnant,

little and often, yeah, yeah, which I thought I was like, You know what? That's kind of not dissimilar to some of the stuff I've talked about in terms of, like, giving up smoking and changing my eating habits, like, just do it every day and every day, you win today. Yeah, it's a micro change. The genius thing is, you're either pregnant you're not, right. So, yeah, so, so once, once you are, you are, yeah.

And then the last one, which we talked about earlier, which you pointed out, was the one around the UK tax system and the E reminders, and there was a whole experiment, and I've got some of the terminology they use, which I quite like, but it was a whole experiment to put various different types of statements in your tax reminder. So instead of just sending you a tax reminder, they would say, did you know nine tenths, nine tenths of the population of the UK pay their tax, yeah, okay. Did you know that

if you don't pay your tax? So they tried lots of different ones, and they had, like, did you know if you if tax pays for the NHS and all the great institutions and all of the things we do, and then it's got things like, they tried it. So one is just, did you know nine tenths of people pay their tax? And then the next one be UK based? So did you know nine tenths of the UK population? Yeah, and they tried all these out. And the bottom line is, people cough up right when you put information in a reminder letter. It had a big change. It significantly changed the way that they thought. And of course, public policy is the perfect place to test this, because it's millions of people doing lots of little things, yeah, on a repeated basis, on a massively repeated basis, and it is, it is not something they're not going to do. So if you have to write a tax return, you're probably going to have to do for 30 years of your life, and it's probably going to hang over your head for 30 years of your life. So lots of that, they saw a massive

increase in late payments, which sounds wrong, but actually what I mean is, rather than default payments, they were getting late, yeah. So loads of people going, oh, oh, maybe I, maybe I should pay tax, if everyone else is yeah, so. And I think, I think that's a really great example, because, because it's yeah, it's a good thing.

So there's my examples as well. So it's kind of bit of a bit of a mixed research round up in terms of some of it's like very practical, but the book itself is very practical, so it's difficult to pull away from that. And also, largely, and I'm probably gonna get myself, there's not a lot of theory in it. So for something that is a theory, it's a very, although it is Psychology. It's written in a very economic C way, which means that there's not a lot there's not a lot of theoretical underpinning, I would argue. Or maybe it's all theory and there's no problem. I'm not sure one way, yes, but certainly. But I think it's interesting. I think it's helpful. What are your thoughts on it all? Like I said, I think nudge is fantastic, and, you know, it's that sort of coming together of multiple things. I like, I like psychology, and I love economics and finance and all that stuff. So when they come together, it's great. I think it is inherently common sense with some interesting underpinnings that go behind it. And I love that. You know, I read something ages ago that stuck with me, but I kind of think relates to this a little bit. When we think about things like building, design and architecture, particularly engineering. We tend to think that we as humanity have understood the mathematics and the mechanics and all the sort of engineering mathematics behind stuff before we build it. But in reality, what's happened, if you look at the way that we've designed buildings over time, is we've just gone out and built stuff and it's worked, and then later on, engineers come in, and they then understand stresses and strange and well, and this is why I have so much problem with some of the management literature, because I'm sitting there, and what they've done is they've gone into businesses and looked at what worked, yeah, but they and they've been able to identify what worked, but they haven't necessarily been able to pull apart the context of why. Yes, it might be that's been satisfactory. And so for me, I sat in a lecture the other last week and someone, someone went, context is everything. And I was just like, Yes, I feel like standing up and going, because I think, I think psychology and economics have been treated in a very scientific way, yeah, and they're not. Yeah, that they can be, but there is an element of them that is,

is context highly context driven, and that that is quite difficult to define because there's so many variables in the context and a lot of nudges about the context in which you're it's nearly all about the I mean, I would argue that their choice architecture is another one, context design. It's context, right? It's how do you how do you change someone's context? And your built environment is absolutely your physical context. I mean, a lot of it context, yeah. And if we look at something that we talked about very early on, when we look at the, you know, a definition of behavior model, and we look at our maybe favorite person, Kurt Lewin, we said that an individual's behavior is a function of a person and their environment, and that's very much a context piece, right? And at the same time, that's very.

Much what nudge is saying. So you can change the person by changing their information and the things that they have, and you can change their environment by changing things like their choice architecture or their physical environment. Yeah, and I guess the bit that I don't think they address, and I don't think they intend to, I'm not expecting them to, but I keep coming back to I keep reading in various things that values are hardwired, and you and I both have discussed at great length, but we don't think that's the case. But surely that's another part of context changing. So how do you actually

change what people value and how they value things and what their values are? Because for me, that if that is such a significant part of it, then yes, this is really helpful around changing whether you walk from this stage that and they can have huge impact. But

if we're not doing it for the right reasons, how quickly if someone changed our context back, will it drop? Yeah, therefore, is it a war of context around us? So if you know, if someone, if someone decides to knock down a building between London Bridge and Waterloo and those arrows disappear, yeah, how quickly will change? And again, that's your habituation, or whatever. And so the argument, I guess, is that, from chillini is, if you understand these heuristics, no, because the whole point is they're meant to be shortcuts, so that once you've done it that should be you should have learned that behavior. So I, I question that. Yeah, so it's fascinating. Anyway. Anyway, I think it's good, really interesting stuff. Should we? Should we have a little bit of a list? Why not? Although I I feel like I cheated and had loads of lists this week. Well, I've written a few lists, but that's okay. Okay, we've got a special economics. They like list exactly. We can do, um, something special that, um, so the list this week, I'll just run you through it. It's five ways that people can or do or could use nudging as an idea in the workplace, and we're looking at it just a couple of sort of practical examples that focus on different areas. So one is around things like programs of change, particularly something to do with ways of working or culture change and and if we think about that, you know, part of a challenge that you have with these programs is taking people along on your journey. So when we've talked about change, we talk a lot about communication and how you can make sure that you you take people along and keep up the momentum and all that kind of good stuff. And one way that you can use some nudging concepts behind that is to do something like create a visual progress chart or tracker or something like that on the wall. So by bringing something into the built environment and giving people these regular reminders of it, you can help nudge them towards continuing to adopt and maintain the behaviors you're trying to bring in, or whatever it happens to be. So that's a little example of how you can use nudge practically through through physical changes to built environment in the workplace. Another one would be, for example, around learning. So if you wanted to create more of a culture of learning, what you could do potentially is to say, set up in in, you know, a breakout area or a cafe or some part of your building,

books that are relevant to the direction your organization's going. In new research you could create, you know, a research library, and that has the advantage of both bringing the concept of research into the forefront of people's mind and reminding them regularly about it, but also giving them content that they can use to enrich themselves. So that would be a way to nudge behavior change towards learning, if we think about things like compliance. So if you've got a sort of annual process of compliance that you need to go through, or a quarterly process to help people do that. You can give them reminders of where they were this time last year. So you can say, you know, on the 20th of November last year, you were 90% of the way through completing your annual compliance process. How far along are you today, or whatever it happens to be. And that reminder and that self referencing point can help encourage that. And similarly, that could be saying, you know, 80% of your peers have done this. You know, it's your annual performance review process. 70% of your peers have completed their annual performance assessment by the end of November. Our health and safety of executive always used to do that sure 92 of the staff have completed. Who are the other three? We know there's 95 of us. So certainly in my world, where we had, you know, in financial services, it's heavily regulated, blah, blah, blah, you've got mandatory training on a quarterly basis, and you get emails. You know, 78% of your divisional team have completed their mandatory training with one month to go to the deadline. The slight problem we had was when they were automated messages, and it was like 12% of the team. Oh, yeah, I'm not saying Yeah. Well, if that's a great example of how it really need to be careful. Yeah, financial planning, here's a fun one to do with default. So if you look at things like pension contributions, and this is a huge thing, right, Behavioral Finance is a subject that's fascinating, but trying to get people to save and be prudent and sensible with where they manage their money is difficult, but if you bring in a default to pension contributions, you can have a huge impact. So for example, if you're changing a an annual review of pensions, you could say to.

People in a letter, you could say, we're introducing a new pension payment tick here if you'd like to be part of that at 3%

that would, you know, get a lot of people to do it at 3% but if you send them another letter that said, you know, annual pension plan changes are coming into place, you have three options. You could maintain your current rate of 3% you could go up to 5% or you could go to 7% if you pre tick the 7% then people will go to 7% or predominantly and they'll be better off in the long term. So that whole defaulting thing is powerful. And then the last one that's quite nice is around health and well being. So if you want to encourage people in your organization to spend more time outside, to exercise a little bit more to focus a little bit on their well being and health benefits that come from that. You could do things like provide a a little map. So if you want to do a 5k or 10k run at lunch, here's here's a map, you know. So if somebody from another office is there, you could do that that would both legitimize that activity, but also help give people the information that helps them do it. It just breaks down some of the barriers. So that was five ones, an example on culture change, an example around learning, an example around compliance, an example around financial planning and prudence, and an example around health and well being. So hopefully that kind of brings it to life a little bit in a more accessible way in the workplace. Yeah, and I think, I think it's interesting, isn't it? Because there's when you start realizing just how many ways, then it becomes trying to work out what's going to have an impact versus what feels like over engineering, a, testing B, testing C, testing D, testing whatever, A, B, testing, yeah, so, but it's interesting. And I guess the point is, and there's lots of writing on user design these days, but the point is, if you take a little bit more time in thinking about what might make someone want to do it a bit more quite often, you can save yourself quite a lot money, yeah, and quite a lot of time. Yeah, that's what I've learned, positive change. But sort of you just have to be careful people don't think they're conning you. Yeah, that's true. So you talked about that, yeah, I don't want to be taken from mug. Yeah, exactly. That's a very British phase. That basically means I don't want someone to take advantage of me. Yes, exactly. I don't want you to think I'm a fool and take advantage of me accordingly anyway. So I think that's a fun list. It's a great list. So I guess we're kind of starting to wind up a little bit. Why don't we look at stories? Yeah, have you got any specifics? Everyone's heard this one before, but I'm going to bang it out there, because I think it's really important. When I gave up smoking,

I combined two of Mr. Sun scene techniques, pre commitment, yes, by telling the whole office what was going to happen and visual in fact, it was three, because I had visual prompts as well. And I also advocated the dollar a day. So I had, I put up a big, a three poster of the calendar of the year, and I put a green cross through every day I didn't smoke cool. And it got to the point where I remember sitting in a pub on a Saturday night

six weeks in, I'd had a couple of drinks, yeah? And I really wanted a cigarette, yeah? And I remember thinking, I cannot go into the office and look Naomi, particularly in the UI, and not put my green cross up. I wouldn't even have to tell her, yeah, but I wouldn't be able to. And there is, there is an and obviously, you know, I could have just put it up and lied, but that's we were so far down that journey, sure. So for me, those little hacks behaviorally are huge. Yeah, that's cool. You Yeah. I've got a bunch of them. One I want to talk about. It kind of relates to one of the things on the list, but it's really nice, is to do with steps versus lifts and buildings. So, so you know, you see some buildings, particularly newer buildings I've seen, where the steps are more prominent, so the lifts are a little bit hidden. So if you walk into a foyer, particularly of you know, these aren't like huge, multi story, but two, three story buildings, you go in, and the steps are now a prominent thing, and the lifts, you've got to kind of walk around the corner. And I actually saw these in some university buildings, which, which I like. But one thing that I saw in one of the buildings in my old work, what they did was buy the lifts. They put up signs that told you where the stairs were. So you know, when you're pressing the button for the lift, there's actually a sign that says the steps are this way, yeah. And then when you got to the steps, it said at each flight, how many calories you burned walking up that step. So if you walked up one floor, it said, Well done, two calories burned. If you walked up another floor, it said, Well done, you've burned four calories. And just by putting those little reminders in, I think it helped change people's behavior. And, you know, do more step challenges. Yeah, so I liked that. That was a nice practical example in the workplace that too. Although I could also imagine myself getting the third floor and going, Oh, brilliant. I've done 10. I've done 10 first steps. I'm off to have a burger. Yeah, exactly. I've earned it. Cool. Brilliant. Okay, so any final thoughts or top tips from you on this? Um,

I guess maybe, like, you know, I really like this stuff. I like thinking about it, and so maybe this is really a message from me more than anybody else, as a top tip. But I think, you know, it's it's good to not overthink all of this. You know, it's possible. I think.

To overthink the world around you and what your decisions are and your processes are and and, you know, am I using a heuristic approach to something, or am I being rational, or am I making a clean decision, whatever? And I think it's great to know and to think about and to explore these things and what they mean around you, but I'd say, you know, just don't overthink it. Sometimes it's all right to go and yes, the world's trying to do stuff to do stuff to you, or you're trying to do stuff to change your behaviors, but just kind of have fun along the way. Don't, don't get too burdened with trying to

make optimal choices and all that stuff, because I think down that path lies a little bit of madness. Yes, I think that's probably a very fair assumption. Mine's mine's slightly less important equally. And I would just say,

you try and be curious about data, and if you try and be curious about what's going on in your workplace, quite often you will see things happening that you don't want to happen, right? And what I mean by that is, I don't know, you've got an application process in HR, and you're getting 50% of people drop off before they complete their application. Yeah, if you are curious, you will spot that and go on why that's happening, and you'll go and do the process, and you'll go, Oh, that's interesting. Ask the question, what would make and then the question is, what would be something small and simple that might, yeah, work with some of some of what we've learned today, and allow someone to maybe make a different choice and complete it, yeah? And I just think there is an element, and I know, I know it's not rocket science, any of it, but there is an element of being curious, and rather than trying to make everything better, just finding the one or two things that could really make an impact, because, because, and loads of the behavioral insight stuff has not worked or not worked the scale they want to, and that's okay. So it's the point, I think, is about little and often, and it's about so we do a interview with a lady called Jane Garza, yeah. And she talks about where it's in one of the other podcasts and after this. And she Oh, yeah, so it's after this, so you've got this to come up. And she talks about, as a consultant, try and encourage people to do little, and often, little and often when they're improving their processes, because it's much experience design and improvement, yeah, but it works on anything right? And I think nudge is particularly true of that, look for little things that are easy to change and see if they make a difference. Cool. Well, that sounds like a great tip. That's kind of us. It is kind of us, kind of done. Are you all nudged up? Am I nudged up? No, I kind of want to go back and read the book again now, because I feel like I've got extra thoughts. But that's never a bad thing. Maybe we'll do nudge 2.0 in a year's time. Maybe we should not pre commit to that, because it might happen if we do and we've probably got other stuff to talk about. If we were gonna count every time you suggest a new episode as a pre commitment, I would be signed.

Yeah, exactly, but yeah, I guess it just quick reminder on how to get in touch again. Yeah. So there is a new website coming, yeah, I can't say mine, because James has done so much work for it. It is but James and all the way, but it's amazing, and it's coming, and that's going to be at WWW dot, World of work.io.

And as always, please, please. Let us know what you think. Let us know of your favorite nudges. Let us know if you've been nudged recently. And you

can do that at the wild podcast, all right. Well, that's about next time. Oh, that's a good question. That was a good nudge maybe, thanks. That was more of a prompt, exactly. I don't know that I had a whatever, an option to not be that. So next time we're going to do something that I think is really interesting, we're going to take a lot of us thought about. US thought about behavior change and things around nudge and reflect on how different parts of the world are trying to use this to influence predominantly consumer behaviors. So we've talked a lot about the fairly benevolent side of nudge and things like that. What we're going to do next time is talk a little bit about influencing for consumption. Fundamentally. Are we going to explore the Ark seltzer. Guys, we could explore