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Brain Modulation. Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness. ([nudged], [nudging]) to poke or push someone gently, especially with the elbow, to get attention, etc. By a nudge we mean anything that influences our choices. . Richard Thaler.
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Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness • ([nudged], [nudging]) to poke or push someone gently, especially with the elbow, to get attention, etc. • By a nudge we mean anything that influences our choices.
Richard Thaler A theorist in behavioral finance in University of Chicago, Booth School of Business
A simple example of a nudge • A simple example of a nudge would be placing healthy foods in a school cafeteria at eye level, while putting less healthy junk food in harder to reach places. • Individuals are not prevented from eating whatever they want, but the arranging of the food choices in that way has the effect of decreasing consumption of junk food and increasing consumption of healthier foods.
Libertarian paternalism • Libertarian paternalism is the union of two political notions that are commonly viewed as being at odds libertarianism and paternalism. • Thaler state that "the libertarian aspect of our strategies lies in the straightforward insistence that, in general, people should be free to do what they like-and to opt out of undesirable arrangements if they want to do so". • The paternalistic portion of the term "lies in the claim that it is legitimate for choice architects to try to influence people's behavior in order to make their lives longer, healthier, and better".
Active engineering of choice architecture • Choice architecture describes the way in which decisions are influenced by how the choices are presented. • It is in arranging the choice architecture in a certain way that individuals can be nudged in a certain way without taking away their freedom of choice.
Health care policy • Default choices for programs should not have been random, and that beneficiaries of the program were not given adequate resources to deal with the number of choices they were faced with. • They think that seniors who did not sign up for a program should have one assigned to them, and that, yearly, they should be mailed an itemized list of all drugs they had used and all of the fees they incurred. • This information would be freely available online, where beneficiaries could easily compare their programs with other similar ones.[
Organ donation • Thaler also propose a way to increase organ donation rates in the United States. • They argue that a mandated choice program should be put in place, where, in order for someone to renew their drivers license, they must say whether or not they would like to be an organ donor. • They also advocate the creation of websites which would suggest that the wide community supports organ donation in order to nudge people into becoming organ donors themselves
Thefunctionsof Oxytocin • Oxytocin is best known for its roles in sexual reproduction, in particular during and after childbirth. It is released in large amounts after distension of the cervix and uterus during labor, facilitating birth, and after stimulation of the nipples, facilitating breastfeeding. • Recent studies have begun to investigate oxytocin's role in various behaviors, including orgasm, social recognition, pair bonding, anxiety, and maternal behaviors. For this reason, it is sometimes referred to as the "love hormone". The inability to secrete oxytocin and feel empathy is linked to sociopathy, psychopathy, and narcissism. Oxytocin also promotes 'tribal' behaviour, combining trust and empathy with the in-group with suspicion and rejection of outsiders.
Oxytocin increases trust in humans (Michael Kosfeld et al., Nature, 2005) • Trust pervades human societies. Trust is indispensable in friendship, love, families and organizations, and plays a key role in economic exchange and politics. In the absence of trust among trading partners, market transactions break down. In the absence of trust in a country's institutions and leaders, political legitimacy breaks down. • Much recent evidence indicates that trust contributes to economic, political and social success. Little is known, however, about the biological basis of trust among humans.
Oxytocin increases trust in humans (Michael Kosfeld et al., Nature, 2005) • Here they show that intranasal administration of oxytocin, a neuropeptide that plays a key role in social attachment and affiliation in non-human mammals, causes a substantial increase in trust among humans, thereby greatly increasing the benefits from social interactions. • They also show that the effect of oxytocin on trust is not due to a general increase in the readiness to bear risks. On the contrary, oxytocin specifically affects an individual's willingness to accept social risks arising through interpersonal interactions. These results concur with animal research suggesting an essential role for oxytocin as a biological basis of pro-social approach behavior.
Everything is a hormone thing?Oxytocin modulates amygdala function • Amygdala responses to fear-inducing visual stimuli were significantly reduced in oxytocin compared to placebo group.
Synthetic Oxytocin Intranasal Spray Anti-shyness spray HJ Kim (APCTP)
Important issues to understand • What is nudge and are its potential applications? • Please name the examples of nudge (fun theory, organ donation, ATM etc.). • What are the philosophical issues of nudge in the perspective of Libertarian Paternalism? • What is the role of oxytocin in human behaviors? • How do we modulate human behavior using oxytocin?
