Gentle nudges

This is the fourth day without a wee story for the blog. There have been social interactions and my thoughts and feelings have been got at by those of other people. Other people think differently from me. There are contrasting worldviews. They ‘nudge’ each other and alter behavior.

This morning I used my pensioner's free bus pass to take a cheque from the income tax people to my bank in Banff. I left at 10:32 from the bus stop directly across the street from my front door. The bus dropped me immediately outside the bank at 10:55. There was no queue and the business was done within a couple of minutes. At 11:04 I caught the bus back and it dropped me just up the street from my front door at 11:27. So it was 55 minutes in total with nine minutes to do my business in Banff. Public transport. Amazing.

Another amazing wonder is the Kindle ereader from Amazon. One click on the Amazon website and payment is made through Paypal and a file of the book is deposited wirelessly to my Kindle via Amazon Whispernet. And, as well as reading, I can make bookmarks, highlight and copy key words and phrases, and attach notes. I can also see how many other readers have highlighted the same quotes. It seems like magic.

Here are a couple of gleanings from the field of Behavioral Economics.

‘A choice architect has the responsibility for organizing the context in which people make decisions.’

‘A nudge, as we will use the term, is any aspect of the choice architecture that alters people’s behavior in a predictable way without forbidding any options or significantly changing their economic incentives.’

Thaler, Richard H; Sunstein, Cass R (2012-10-04). Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness (Kindle Locations 128-129). Penguin Books Ltd. Kindle Edition.

For more on  behavioural economics I can strongly recommend Daniel Kahneman’s “Thinking, fast and slow."