A blog from the Centre for Research Ethics & Bioethics (CRB)

Nudging people in the right direction

Pär SegerdahlBehavioral scientist study how environments can be designed so that people are pushed towards better decisions. By placing the vegetables first at the buffet, people may choose more vegetables than they would otherwise do. They choose themselves, but the environment is designed to support the “right” choice.

Nudging people to behave more rationally may, of course, seem self-contradictory, perhaps even unethical. Shouldn’t a rational person be allowed to make completely autonomous decisions, instead of being pushed in the “right” direction by the placement of salad bowls? Influencing people by designing their environments might support better habits, but it insults Rationality!

As a philosopher, I do, of course, appreciate independent thinking. However, I do not demand that every daily decision should be the outcome of reasoning. On the contrary, the majority of decisions should not require too much arguing with oneself. It saves time and energy for matters that deserve contemplation. A nudge from a salad bowl at the right place supports my independent thinking.

Linnea Wickström Östervall, former researcher at CRB, has tried to nudge people to a more restrained use of antibiotics. It is important to reduce antibiotics use, because overuse causes antibiotic resistance: a major challenge to manage.

In her study, she embedded a brief reminder of antibiotic resistance in the questionnaire that patients answer before visiting the doctor. This reminder reached not only the patients, then, but also the doctors who went through the questionnaire with the patients. The effect was clear at the clinic level. In the clinics where the reminder was included in the questionnaire, antibiotics use decreased by 12.6 percent compared to the clinics used as control.

If you want to know more about the study, read Linnea’s article in the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, where the interesting results are presented in detail. For example, the nudge appears to affect the interaction between doctors and patients, rather than the individual patients.

Can you arrange your everyday environment so that you live wisely without making rational choices?

Pär Segerdahl

Wickström Östervall, L. 2017. “Nudging to prudence? The effect of reminders on antibiotics prescriptions.” Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 135: 39-52.

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1 Comment

  1. Wamae

    “Nudging,” I like that. Leaves room for people to still make a free, informed, ethical choice

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