Nudge: Preface to the Final Edition

We have also added a new chapter on what we call sludge, which is nasty stuff that makes it more difficult to make wise choices. (Sludge is everywhere; you’ll see.) The use of Smart Disclosure is one way to reduce sludge. So is sending everyone a tax return that has already been completed and can be filed with one click. So is reducing the length of those forms you have to fill out to get licenses, permits, visas, health care, or financial aid, or to get reimbursed for a trip you take for your employer. Every organization should create a seek‑and‑destroy mission for unnecessary sludge.

The rest of the book also has numerous substantive changes and what we hope is fresh thinking. We introduce several choice architecture concepts, in addition to “sludge,” that are new to this edition. These include personalized defaults; make it fun; and curation. These concepts play a large role in the chapters about financial decision-making. We have increased the space we devote to climate change and the environment. We highlight both the limits of choice architecture (preview: we can’t solve the problem just with nudges) and the many ways in which nudges can help us succeed on a project that demands the deployment of every possible tool. And, oh, we do have a few things to say about the COVID‑19 pandemic.

Some topics that we originally covered get a fresh look. The passage of years has created the chance to evaluate how policies work over time. A good example is the Swedish launch (in 2000) of a national retirement savings program, which allowed investors to create their own portfolios. In the original edition, we discussed the initial design of that plan. Now, two decades after the launch, we can provide some insights about how long nudges last. (Preview: some of them can last almost forever.) We have also rewritten the chapter on organ donation, because everyone thought we supported a policy we actually oppose. We did state our policy in what we thought was plain language in the first version of the book, and we tried to make it a bit clearer in the paperback editions. But still our message wasn’t getting through, so we are trying once again. In case this is as far as you get in the book, please take note: we do not support the policy called “presumed consent.” Feel free to skip ahead to see why. We really do believe in freedom of choice.

Other topics with fresh looks are devoted to helping consumers make better choices with their money. People have amassed staggering amounts of credit-card debt, and then fail to take some simple steps to reduce the costs of maintaining those large balances. Consumers also make demonstrably bad choices in picking mortgages, insurance, and health-care plans. You may well be one of the people who could save a lot of money in these domains. But more importantly, we hope that our discussion of these issues will provoke others to make behaviorally informed policy changes in an assortment of domains that we have not explored. We emphasize that the concepts and approaches discussed here are fully applicable to the private sector. Firms should explicitly recognize that their employees and customers and competitors are human beings, and design policies and strategies accordingly. We will offer many specific ideas for how to do this.

It is important to stress what we have not done. We make no attempt to bring readers up to date on the remarkable nudge‑related activity, reform, and research that have come about in recent years. Governments all over the world have been nudging, often for good, and the private sector has also been exceptionally inventive. Academic research has grown by leaps and bounds. To explore these developments would take an entirely new book, and in fact many such books have been written, some even by Sunstein. Indeed, Sunstein has coedited a four‑volume collection of papers on this topic. (Sunstein thinks editing a four‑volume collection of papers on the topic of nudging is fun; Thaler would rather be counting backward from 10 million.)

We have some things to say about objections to nudges, and in fact we devote a whole chapter to that topic, but we do not respond systematically to critics. What we hope to offer is a book that will feel fresher, more fun, and less dusty to those reading it for the first time, or even to those returning for another look, as we have spent the past months doing ourselves.

Finally, a word about our decision to call this version of the book the Final Edition. One of the earliest topics to be studied by behavioral economists was self‑control problems. Why do people continue to do things they think are dumb (both in foresight and in hindsight)? These include acts such as running up credit-card bills, getting more than a bit chubby, and continuing to smoke. One strategy people use to deal with such problems is to adopt commitment strategies, in which some tempting (but ill‑advised) options are made unavailable. For example, some people with a gambling problem volunteer to put their name on a list of people who will not be allowed into a casino. Using this title is our commitment strategy to prevent us from ever tinkering with this book again. We have loved working on it, and we might even have gotten addicted to it, but we pledge, right here and right now, that there will be no “post‑final” edition of Nudge. And one of us actually believes that pledge.

From NUDGE: THE FINAL EDITION by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein, published by Penguin Books, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. © 2008, 2009, 2021 by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein.

Richard H. Thaler is the Charles R. Walgreen Distinguished Service Professor of Behavioral Science and Economics at Chicago Booth, and was the recipient of the 2017 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. Cass R. Sunstein is the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard.