03/17/2008: "To Nudge or Not to Nudge…?"

Systemic change appears to be what we need, but how will it be accomplished? Will it be a painful shove or an elegant nudge? Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein (2008) seem to think that the elegant path is the one to travel. In their most recent book entitled “Nudge” they suggest that small changes, albeit the right ones, can have a profound effect on how people behave. For example, they point out that when the city of San Marcos, California began comparing a person’s utility use to his or her neighbors’ (right on the utility bill) heavy users started reducing their consumption. They also found that when school cafeterias began placing healthful foods at the front of the food line the students chose them more often than less healthful options.

These examples of social-norms marketing and direct environmental manipulation show that people can be nudged into doing the right thing without the hassle of overtly changing their minds or taking away their choices. And even though one could certainly argue that any form of manipulation has its dark side, this particular form is at the very least an honest one. Presenting the best choice first and giving people a broader understanding of what is really going on and what other people are really thinking and doing is very often a very good thing. And, of course, the nudge factor isn’t limited to doing these things. There are lots of other options that we will probably need.

Humanity, like a fast-moving marble swirling around inside a bowl, is living near to chaos (Gleick, 1987; Laszlo, 2008; Prigogine & Stengers, 1984; Waldrop, 1992). That is, we’re about to leap out of the bowl, away from the great attractor of our current systems, institutions, and artifacts towards another great attractor (bowl) that will likely be much different. And this could either be a very good or a very bad thing. Therefore, it would be far better if we directed our own course, preferably in an elegant way, since left undirected the vast majority of all mutations die far short of their goal (Laszlo, 1987).

As we approach our “leap from the bowl” it has become clear that doing nothing is in the same league with trying to do more of the same. That is, it is neither functional nor available. So if we wish to take charge of our transition we must ask whether we will do it through a shove or a nudge, by pulling with all of our might on the rudder or by tweaking a trim tab (Willens, 1984), through bloody revolution or by releasing a butterfly that flaps its wings and causes a hurricane (Ormerod, 2000)?

A man once told me that he never did things the easy way, that whenever someone told him that something was impossible he went out and did whatever it took just to prove them wrong. But what if someone told him that it was impossible to do things the easy way?

Gleick, J. (1987). Chaos: Making a new science. New York: Viking.
Laszlo, E. (1987). Evolution: The grand synthesis. Boulder, Colorado: Shambhala.
Laszlo, E. (2008). The chaos point: The world at the crossroads. Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions, Bear & Company.
Ormerod, P. (2000). Butterfly economics: A new general theory of social and economic behavior. New York: Basic Books.
Prigogine, I., & Stengers, I. (1984). Order out of Chaos: Man's new dialogue with nature. New York: Bantam Books, Inc.
Thaler, R. H., & Sunstein, C. R. (2008). Nudge: Improving decisions about health, wealth, and happiness. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press.
Waldrop, M. M. (1992). Complexity: The emerging science at the edge of order and chaos. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Willens, H. (1984). The trimtab factor: How business executives can help solve the nuclear weapons crisis. New York: William Morrow.