Nudges are behavioral interventions to subtly steer citizens’ choices toward “desirable” options: Mapping Conditions of Susceptibility to Nudge Influence

Nudgeability: Mapping Conditions of Susceptibility to Nudge Influence. Denise de Ridder, Floor Kroese, Laurens van Gestel. Perspectives on Psychological Science, August 23, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691621995183

Abstract: Nudges are behavioral interventions to subtly steer citizens’ choices toward “desirable” options. An important topic of debate concerns the legitimacy of nudging as a policy instrument, and there is a focus on issues relating to nudge transparency, the role of preexisting preferences people may have, and the premise that nudges primarily affect people when they are in “irrational” modes of thinking. Empirical insights into how these factors affect the extent to which people are susceptible to nudge influence (i.e., “nudgeable”) are lacking in the debate. This article introduces the new concept of nudgeability and makes a first attempt to synthesize the evidence on when people are responsive to nudges. We find that nudge effects do not hinge on transparency or modes of thinking but that personal preferences moderate effects such that people cannot be nudged into something they do not want. We conclude that, in view of these findings, concerns about nudging legitimacy should be softened and that future research should attend to these and other conditions of nudgeability.

Keywords: nudges, awareness, preferences, dual-process models

Discussion

In this article, we examined conditions that determine people’s susceptibility to nudge influence in an effort to probe common assumptions about when nudges are effective in guiding people’s choices. Although it has been repeatedly emphasized that nudges are “gentle directions” to promote decisions in people’s own best interest, there has been considerable debate about nudging legitimacy insofar as it may violate principles of good public policy that require transparency, acknowledgment of citizen preferences, and a reasonable degree of informed decision-making. We have highlighted these issues from the viewpoint of nudge effectiveness to determine nudgeability under conditions of disclosure of nudge presence and purpose, nudge-congruent and nudge-incongruent preferences, and either or not being able to deliberate on one’s choice (System 1 or System 2 processing).

Our review reveals that people are equally responsive to nudges regardless of whether their presence, purpose, or working mechanisms are disclosed—suggesting that transparency does not compromise nudge effects. Our analysis also shows that preexisting preferences matter insofar as nudges prove generally ineffective when not concordant with goals and intentions. Rather, nudges appear to have the greatest impact on choice when people have less developed preferences because they are ambivalent or in doubt about their choice. We further showed that nudges are not specifically effective when people are in a System 1 state of mind, which would, according to the prevailing assumption, make them more susceptible to nudge influence. It is uncertain, however, to what extent explicit encouragement to reflect on choices may attenuate nudge effects, although potentially weaker effects after a consideration of options may also be due to more articulated preferences.

Together, these findings call for greater scrutiny of the theoretical underpinnings of nudges. Nudges have been presented as typical System 1 devices targeting heuristics and biases that would require unawareness of their influence while, according to some (Bovens, 2009; Steffel et al., 2016), disregarding people’s preferences for a particular choice. More recent theoretical work displays growing attention for a new generation of nudges that explicitly target System 2 processes (Sunstein, 2016). “Overt” System 2 nudges that are easy to discern are generally better accepted by the target population (Bang et al., 2018; Felsen et al., 2013; Jung & Mellers, 2016; Sunstein, 2016), presumably because they do not rely on “unconscious processing.” Moreover, System 2 nudges are expected to boost people’s decision-making capacities (Hertwig, 2017; Hertwig & Grüne-Yanoff, 2017). Although these novel types of nudges may thus potentially be more (or at least equally) effective and more legitimate, our review shows that “traditional” nudges already do not depend on being hidden and operating in the dark.

In view of these findings, note that this initial review primarily serves the purpose of agenda setting. More systematic research on which conditions make people more (or less) responsive to nudges is warranted. This applies to all three dimensions of nudgeability that our central to our review. Once more evidence becomes available on these factors, a meta-analytic synthesis of the literature would give a deeper insight into how each of these factors determines nudgeability. Future research should also take into account what type of nudge is involved. As alluded to in the introduction, “nudge” is an umbrella term that relates to many types of interventions. A better categorization of nudges in general and a particular focus on the relevance of a distinction between so-called System 1 nudges (of which people are supposedly unaware) and System 2 nudges (that aim to support people in reflecting upon their choices) are needed to make a significant step forward in unraveling when and why people are susceptible to the influence of nudges.

Examining the role of the type of nudge is important because many studies on the conditions of nudge effectiveness have been conducted with defaults, which are considered to exert the strongest influence on choice and thus provide a critical test of nudgeability. However, even in view of the finding that default effects remain after disclosure and are weakened when they do not accord with preferences, concerns about the deceitful nature of defaults have persisted (Steffel et al., 2016). It is therefore urgent to systematically address softer categories of nudges such as repositioning, framing, and salience (Keller et al., 2011) and examine whether our observations on nudgeability apply to these milder classes of nudges.

In addition to a more systematic synthesis of research into nudgeability incorporating the type of nudge, a number of topics require more research to find out whether they affect susceptibility to nudge influence. This especially applies to the source of the nudge, the complexity of the issue of interest, as well as to the role of SES—topics we could touch on only briefly because of the lack of empirical evidence. In particular, nudgeability of disadvantaged groups is a topic that should be put high on the agenda for future research, as nudges are supposed to benefit the health, wealth, and happiness of all. Not much is yet known about the potential distributional consequences of nudges, as only a few studies have examined the extent to which nudges specifically would affect people from disadvantaged groups. Whereas some studies have suggested that people from low-SES groups are more responsive to default nudges (either or not to their own benefit), other studies have indicated that poor people benefit from nudges in a way that they would not have from conventional policy instruments, such as informational campaigns (Hotard et al., 2019).

Once again, we would like to emphasize that our review is a first attempt to document nudgeability with a specific focus on elements that have been generated in debates on nudging legitimacy. More research on other facets that are so far absent in studies on moderators of nudge effects is much needed for the systematic documentation of the conditions that make people responsive to nudges. An important candidate for further study is self-regulatory capacity, or the extent to which people can identify relevant goals and act on them. Theoretically, people with poor self-regulatory capacity might experience greater benefit from nudges, but as of yet it is unknown whether people with low competence to regulate their behavior are more or less susceptible to choice guidance. Initial research suggests that people with low trait self-control are somewhat less responsive to nudging than those who have high trait self-control (Thunström, 2019). However, whether people with poor self-regulatory skills are nudgeable may critically depend on self-insight; people who have less self-knowledge may be more opposed to nudges than those who have more self-knowledge. Social connectedness is another feature that may explain heterogeneous responses to nudges. Decision makers who have few social ties and only a few friends serve as potential role models for questions about important choices might be more susceptible to nudges that function as social cues when in doubt, as is also demonstrated in defaults serving as (implicit) recommendations for a certain choice.

Finally, returning to the debates on nudging legitimacy that we addressed at the beginning of this article, it seems that concerns should be softened insofar as nudges do impose choice without respecting basic ethical requirements for good public policy. More than a decade ago, philosopher Luc Bovens (2009) formulated the following four principles for nudging to be legitimate: A nudge should allow people to act in line with their overall preferences; a nudge should not induce a change in preferences that would not hold under nonnudge conditions; a nudge should not lead to “infantilization,” such that people are no longer capable of making autonomous decisions; and a nudge should be transparent so that people have control over being in a nudge situation. With the findings from our review in mind, it seems that these legitimacy requirements are fulfilled. Nudges do allow people to act in line with their overall preferences, nudges allow for making autonomous decisions insofar as nudge effects do not depend on being in a System 1 mode of thinking, and making the nudge transparent does not compromise nudge effects.