Nudging and Choice Architecture: Perspectives and Challenges

Abstract

First paragraph: The architecture of choice is present in everyday life, and the ways in which decisions are made have become increasingly complex. This special issue responds to the need to explore the complexities of nudging and choice architecture in the current environment. Decisions can be decomposed into a diverse and intricate process of decision-making. Individuals are required to navigate in successive frames of choice and optimize their decisions, while facing limitations of time, information, and brainpower to process options of choice and come out with a decision. For instance, we make over 200 food-related decisions a day (Wansink & Sobal, 2007). Some of these decisions are deliberate and thoughtful, but the vast majority is made through a very short conscious period of liberation, automatically, using rules of thumb or as a habit. In fact, 45% of daily behaviors are out of habit and tend to be repeated in similar contexts (Neal, Wood, & Quinn, 2006). Habits are shortcuts that do not guarantee the best decision every time, but that may work quite well for triggering a fast response, which means that either good or bad habits tend to be repeated. Cumulative choices have consequences, and they interact and influence subsequent decisions that tend to be repeated over time.