A day in the life of a nudge

You’re not sure why. But after work, even though you had your dinner ready and waiting for you at home, you went rogue. And now you’re travelling home with your laptop bag in one hand, picking at fries from the takeaway packet with the other.

Yup. You got nudged. If it’s any consolation we are all susceptible to it, most likely every day. Some nudges are good ones; they help us save, exercise and choose healthier food when grocery shopping (think everything to do with the global Vitality wellness programme). But some nudges are a bit more sinister, eyeing you from the shadows and waiting to pounce on you during that vulnerable moment (think 2-for-1 Black Friday specials when you don’t even need the one).

And then, along comes the sludge, the newest kid on the behavioural block.

At the 5th annual Behavioral Science Policy Association (BSPA) conference held in New York in June 2019, keynote speaker and co-author of “Nudge” Professor Cass Sunstein spent some time defining the terms “nudge” and “sludge”. And Sunstein is certainly qualified to do so. After all, he’s responsible for bringing the original terms, in the context of behavioural economics, to life — alongside Nobel Prize for Economics winner, Professor Richard Thaler.

According to Sunstein, nudges work in various ways to lead an individual towards a desired outcome. And, depending on how they’re used, in what context, by whom, and to what effect, nudges can be used for both good and bad. With “sludge” being a new addition to the behavioural science lexicon, Sunstein provides a useful taxonomy of these terms. These are summarised in the table below taken from a preliminary draft of one of his latest publications, Sludge Audits (2019: 7).

Sludge is excessive friction — to slow down or even stop a behaviour or action entirely. Think about the last time you needed to apply for a passport, or went through a Visa application. Most of these experiences end up being sludgy — immense paperwork, queuing and costly, both in terms of your time and money. Because of how we’re wired as humans, with our behavioural biases and the mental shortcuts we are so used to taking, sludge can result in harmful effects, such as us not being bothered to complete a process or avoiding it altogether. So, if you’re a government hoping to collect your citizens’ taxes efficiently or an NPO hoping to encourage charity donations, you want to avoid sludge pitfalls wherever possible. As Sunstein points out, sludge works in the same way as coercion — it creates walls and barriers to an end goal.

Meet the Ds: Dutiful, Dark, Deliberate, Dreadful

To categorise acts of nudge encouragement and nudge/sludge discouragement, we have personified three types of nudges and the always-pejorative sludge, with some examples of how each work.

First up we have Dutiful Nudges, the good guys. They want you to eat healthily, recycle, be responsible citizens, exercise, and look after your money. They want the best for the people they come into contact with. Making us better makes them happy. And they offer all kinds of things to encourage this better behaviour — discounts, cash backs, free gifts, making things fun, giving you bragging rights, etc. As long as it’s in your best interests, they’ll offer you the world. In their attempt to save yours.

Our favourite Dutiful Nudge example is the global Vitality wellness programme, and more specifically, their Apple Watch benefit. Vitality members around the world can sign up to the benefit and get a new Apple Watch, free of charge. Members ‘pay back’ the watch fees by exercising and earning fitness points each week. If they don’t earn the points, a pre-defined amount is debited from their bank account, perhaps the strongest real-life application of loss aversion out there. And the results have been incredible. A behavioural change study by independent research institute Rand Europe showed that Vitality incentives combined with the Apple Watch resulted in sustained improvements in physical activity levels. The study reported an average increase of 34% in activity levels for participants using the benefit, compared to those who weren’t. In simple terms, this meant nearly a week of extra activity per month, which Vitality estimates translates into an extra two years of life.

That shopping spree with the massive sales? The jumbo muffin with upsized latte? The auto-ticked travel insurance you didn’t need? Going for after-work drinks instead of to the gym? You do all that because of Dark Nudges whispering in your ear, with the allure of ease, discounts and compelling treats — making you feel exclusive and special, if you even notice them at all. Dark Nudges aren’t always malicious, they really believe they’re offering you things you want and need, they just don’t think about the long-term effects of what they’re encouraging you to do. They don’t think, “She’s already in debt so we shouldn’t offer her more credit”, they think “She’s a great customer of ours, let’s offer her more disposable income so she can keep spending — and let’s make the process very easy for her to navigate”. Dark Nudges don’t put you first.

Some examples of Dark Nudges include online publications that automatically enrol you when you sign up for a trial period — subscribing you into a long-term plan that’s then hard to opt out of. Another example is an airline that pre-populates expensive add-ons during your booking process, prompting you to buy expensive trip extras like added insurance and baggage allowance when you’re booking online. In Professor Thaler’s words, these companies are nudging purely for their own profit and not in customers’ best interests.

Deliberate Nudges are slow, considered and methodical. They want you to stop, pause and think before proceeding. They’re the traffic light to your impulsive decisions. They won’t force you to do anything, they just present themselves as barriers when you’re making choices to ensure you’ve thought things through well enough. They’re the kind of quiet superhero that ‘innocently’ pushes a drinks trolley in front of the fleeing criminal. As Professors Thaler and Sunstein point out, Deliberate Nudges aren’t sludge — they are instead efforts to ensure that people do not act impulsively and are positioned as helpful barriers like waiting periods or cool-off periods.

One of the most impressive Deliberate Nudges has to be the waiting period laws in the US that delay the purchase of a firearm. This waiting period is only a few days, but in the states where it has been implemented, gun homicides have been reduced by around 17%. If this Deliberate Nudge was applied nation wide in America, just under 1000 gun deaths a year could be avoided(!), without imposing any restrictions on who has the right to own a gun.

And then, there are Dreadful Sludges. They never have good intentions and are a combination of roadblocks and quick sand, engulfing you in long and drawn out processes that ultimately put you off completing them. Or, at the very least, make the process you are trying to navigate unbearable. When Professor Sunstein described sludge in his BSPA keynote, he referenced “thick, soft, wet mud or a similar viscous mixture of liquid and solid components, the product of an industrial process.” Think ineffective queuing systems, government-mandated applications, and pages-long paperwork — either ill-thought out or with a “we-don’t-care” attitude.

In the US alone, in just one year, over 9 billion hours of paperwork burdens were imposed on the American people — unnecessary friction that reduced access to important licences, programmes and benefits.

Sludge often impacts the most vulnerable members of a society. An example where Dreadful Sludge has played a perilous part in the lives of low-income individuals is where parents wanted to sign their children up for free transportation and free school meal programmes, but the intensive application process proved to be too much of a burden. Another example looks at financial aid for college students and found that students applying for Federal Student Aid needed to navigate a long and complicated process and provide information that they didn’t always have access to (such as their parents’ tax returns). As a result, many students were forced to just give up.

Nudges and sludges can be Dutiful, Dark, Deliberate and Dreadful. And on any given day, we likely come into contact with multiple examples of all of them. It begs the question: When was the last time you were aware of being nudged or sludged? And perhaps worth more thought: Are you perhaps responsible for any bad nudging or sludging?

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Leigh Crymble is a doctoral student at Wits Business School in Johannesburg, South Africa. She is a Behavioural Linguist and the founder of BreadCrumbs — a Behavioural Linguistics firm that combines sociolinguistics, psychology, and behavioural science to create persuasive communication. BreadCrumbs is committed to responsible nudging with a core belief that compelling content is a powerful way to change behaviour.

References:

Handgun waiting periods reduce gun deaths. Michael Luca, Deepak Malhotra, Christopher Poliquin. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Nov 2017, 114 (46) 12162–12165.

The Power of Nudges, for Good and Bad. Richard H. Thaler. New York Times: The Upshot. Oct 2015.

Assessing the role of incentives in promoting physical activity. RAND Corporation. Nov 2018.

Sludge Audits. Cass Sunstein. Harvard Public Law. Working Paper 19–21. July 2019.