Nudges: It’s complicated

Unsplash/John Barkiple

The book Nudge, by Thaler and Sunstein, introduced marketers and others to the idea of nudges. However, the hype around the book almost suggested nudges were like magic.  Do A and B will happen, every time, which isn’t the case.

Last month, the pendulum swung the other way, with the journal PNAS declaring that there was no evidence that nudging worked at all. Now that counterpoint has also broken through in the popular press.

Behavioral science expert Michael Hallsworth strikes a sensible middle ground in this column, where he says, essentially, it’s complicated. He argues that what qualifies as a “nudge” can be unclear and therefore it isn’t fair to lump particular nudges into a “works/doesn’t work” framework. As he states, “effects can vary by context or group.”

In another column, two academics in the field, Dilip Soman and Nina Mažar, offer “Six Prescriptions for Applied Behavioral Science as It Comes of Age.”  One of them is that A causes B is too simple. “It might be helpful for our leaders to highlight narratives such as ‘A causes B in some conditions and C in others.”

In short, behavioral science nudges may be better positioned as a set of things that might work as opposed to clear solutions that definitively will change behavior in the same way with every person, every time.