Nudge

Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness

By: Richard H. Thaler, Cass R. Sunstein

Narrated by: Sean Pratt

Every day, we make decisions on topics ranging from personal investments to schools for our children to the meals we eat to the causes we champion. Unfortunately, we often choose poorly. The reason, the authors explain, is that, being human, we are all susceptible to various biases that can lead us to blunder. Our mistakes can make us poor and unhealthy. We often make bad decisions about education, personal finance, health care, family, and the environment.

Thaler and Sunstein invite us to enter an alternative world, one that accepts that we are only human. They show that by knowing how people think, we can design choice environments that make it easier for people to choose what is best for themselves, their families, and their society. Using colorful examples from the most important aspects of life, Thaler and Sunstein demonstrate how thoughtful "choice architecture" can be established to nudge us in beneficial directions without restricting freedom of choice. Nudge offers a unique new take - from neither the left nor the right - on many hot-button issues, for individuals and governments alike. This is one of the most engaging and provocative audiobooks to come along in many years.

©2008 Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein (P)2008 Gildan Media Corp

Critic reviews

"A manifesto for using the recent behavioral research to help people, as well as government agencies, companies and charities, make better decisions." ( The New York Times Magazine)

Homo Economicus is dead

In the book: Great book on choice architecture and libertarian paternalism. Discussion on Medicare Part D, Mortgages, and Privatization of Social Security (among other things). Highly recommended.

Outside the book: Homo Economicus (the rational human with the computational brain power to make the most efficient decision on absolutely everything) is dead. This should effect and utterly obliterate the efficient-market hypothesis and most anything based outside of behavioral economics, but hasn't.

Starts hot, ends hot

The 1st few and last few chapters are great.

The middle section is a bit “long in the tooth” but makes the case understood.

Enjoyed the insights.

How to improve health, wealth and happiness!

I highly recommend this audio book to anyone who is open to new thoughts and ideas and is interested in the principles of choice architecture. The authors put forth many low cost ideas that could result in major life improvements. I found it fascinating and very entertaining.

I liked the first half.

I liked the concept of a nudge. The author's political viewpoints and recommendations distracted from this towards the end of the book.

A Book I Keep Coming Back To

Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness by Richard H. Thaler, Cass R. Sunstein covers many of the same studies and experiments, and then puts a public policy slant on the conclusions. I'm finding in these sorts of books that the same academic studies and examples pop-up time after time, which is good as it takes me about 5 times to get them straight. Where Sway helped me understand why I'm susceptible to make bad decisions, Nudge helped me understand how I can use the principles of "choice architecture" to influence events and decisions. Both worthwhile reads for folks like us who have a vision of education we are trying to implement, both in terms of why people do things the way they do, and some "libertarian paternalistic" ways to shape decisions and actions.