Eric Johnson on The Elements of Choice

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to mind different things, you get very different answers. Welcome to the one you feed throughout time. Great tinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back

and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Eric Johnson, the director of the Center for Decision Sciences, Columbia Business School at

Columbia University. His research examines the interface between behavioral decision research, economics and the decisions made by consumers, managers and their implications for public policy, markets, and marketing. Today, Eric and Eric discuss his book The Elements of Choice, Why the Way We Decide Matters? Hi, Eric, Welcome to the show. Eric, So glad to be with you. Yeah, I am really

excited to have you on. We're going to be discussing your book, The Elements of Choice, Why the Way We Decide Matters, which is a topic I am deeply interested in. But before we get into that, let's start like we always do with the parable. There's a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild in the sand life. There are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf,

which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and thinks about it for a second, looks up at their grandparents and says, well, which one wins? And the grandparents says, the one you feed, So I'd love to know how that parable applies to you in your life and in the work that you do. Well. It's a great parable because I think it shows the

power of feeding well. I think of attending to one side or the other, and so we have inner dialogues all the time, and we also make choices, and those choices aren't independent. That is, I don't make choice one. It doesn't affect choice to I get up in the morning. I decide what to eat, and I decide what exercise or not, and those choices are linked. They come into habits. And the other thing it strikes me is that in terms of what I care about, I care about how

I pose decisions to other people. And that's a choice to feed one wolf or the other. I can either do something that isn't their best interest, or I can do something that's not in their best interest. And that's sort of an external version of which wolf you feed. And you and I were talking before the show that your work on choice architecture, and we'll talk more about what that is in a minute. Really, you might apply

to listeners in three different ways. One would be, you know, how do we structure our lives to make the best choices for ourselves, how do we know how choice architecture works so we're not manipulated by others? And then finally, how do we, as you just said, structure the choices we offer others like our children? And so I think we may work our way through those three angles. But first let's talk about the fact that we think we are making choices completely based on what we want or

what we think is best. But in reality, we are being influenced in a number of ways with every decision we make or choice we make. So let me share an example. Yeah that maybe make it a little bit more concrete. You go to Amazon and you think your job is to find the right toaster, but somebody in Amazon has made a bunch of decisions that could influence you. So,

for example, do I order the toasters alphabetically. I'm not going to spend all day looking at all two toasters, so once that of the top of list, they're going to be more likely to be chosen. What information do I provide? Do I sort them perhaps by ranking or by price? Somebody, and I call that person designer has been there before you and made lots of decisions. The same thing is true of websites. Like Netflix or people when I asked my where do you want to go

to dinner to night? Whether I know it or not, I'm making a set of decisions. What when I think of his tools that will influence her. They might be accidental, they might be haphazard. I might not know I'm doing it, but they will have an influence. Yeah, and I think you know, we're aware of it in things like a toaster, or at least more of us are aware of it. Right, we realize that Amazon is I mean, at this point

they basically say here's the one you should buy. Amazon's choice. Right, it's even completely explicit at this point in that way. But talk a little bit more about how the sorts of things might influence you asking your wife about dinner, like what are some things that you might put into that that would influence that choice of hers? So there are a bunch of decisions I'm making, even if they're automatic.

So one tool I mentioned earlier as order, So you would think that first is always better, But imagine it's a kind of long list. I give her half a dozen restaurants. By the time she gets to restaurant five, she's forgotten about restaurant. What yeah, so it actually is am I letting her remember turns out memories really important for trying to understand how choice design or choice architecture works. Another thing, of course, I can decide what act meets

to talk about. I can talk about it being very romantic, or it's near the movie theater we're going to, or that her favorite dishes served there, or I could not. I can decide not to talk about the dishes that are there that is going to have an influence on her choice. So there are many more, but that's a good example, and I could even include my opinion or not. Yea. Let's start with the term choice architecture. What does that term mean. It reflects the notion that somebody constructs a

place you make choices. That's the person I call the designer, and us who are making choices let's call the chooser. It's a little bit easier to keep that distinction. And the designer essentially has made these decisions before we ever make the choice. Whether it's airplane cockpit or dating site or Amazon, somebody has made a set of decisions about things like help many options to present? Which options present? It's the person that does that design who's the choice

architecture or the diet designer. So what choice archcture is is how you pose the choices to people. I was struck by the idea that choice architecture is really important for everyone to learn because you said that these choices are being architected in a way even if the person doing it doesn't know that. And so we could use choice architecture for nefarious purposes, right, we drive people in the direction we want. We can also use it for

good purposes. Right, Let's get people to default into their retirement plan. Right, that's the commonly cited example. But that if somebody isn't conscious of the factors that go into that, they are still influencing choice. They're just not doing it consciously. Until two thousand and six, companies did not default people in your drying plans. That doesn't mean they weren't influencing them. They were lowering people's save Oh I wish, wish, wish

that had been in effect in nineteen ninety six. Wouldn't we all have been better off? My life would be so different, that's right. So somebody, haphazardly, without thinking, made you poor, Eric, I'm sorry to say. Yeah, So that's a great example. Right, they opted me out by default, and they may not have even known they were doing it.

That just that, of course, that was how it's done. Yeah, it's so fascinating to read your book and really realize how often we're influenced by things that we are not aware of being influenced by. And the interesting thing is that you say that even when we present people with this information, we tend to default to going, well, that probably affects Bob and Sue, but me, that's not going

to affect me. Say more about that. Right, So defaults are great example because it's this thing that's sort of the poster child for choice design, choice architecture, and simply let's make it clear to everybody. It's essentially is an option pre selected. Now, to go back to the retirement example, the option of zero was pre selected unless I made an active choice. I used to get zero as my percent of savings. Okay, So that's what we mean by default.

And what's interesting is that you can actually do studies where you default people. Let's say you change your savings to three percent or six percent. You asked them were you affected by that? And they'll say I wasn't. Other people might be, but I wasn't when in fact we look at the data and we realize that we're influenced. Now, you might ask why that's the case, or people willfully being stupid, and I think no, I think we're so busy making the decision, we're not paying attention to how

the decision is framed or how it's posed. So we're too busy trying to make a good choice as it's presented and not thinking about how it was designed, how it was presented. Yeah, a lot of what we talked about on this show, I think is about making things that are happening unconsciously a little bit more conscious, right, going off autopilot and considering things and considering our lives and making better choices. So the choice architecture could be

really influential in lots of areas. So what are some ways that we as people who want to live let's say healthier for now, healthier lives might become choice architects that would give us a better chance of achieving that. So I think it's a great example, and there are Let me just keep it simple and say, there are foods you want to eat when you're thinking about it, and foods you don't want to eat when you're not

thinking about it. And it's clear that if I keep the foods I want to eat in front of me and the foods they don't want to eat, I might still have them, but they're on the top shelf behind a closed door. That's a very simple self choice architecture. The things that will come to mind. Let say, g I'm hungry might be fruit or granolivar and not my own personal weakness. Chips. Yeah, I carefully take the bags

of chips that I have in the house. After I have a few, I put them in a small bowl, wrap them up tight, the little clip on them, and hide them. Put them back in the drawer, put them in one of those safes that you set the time limit on and it doesn't open for another twenty four hours. I'm not that extreme, but that would be the idea. It's like the old, the old piece of financial advice of taking your credit cards and freezing them in a

jar of ice that you have. Before you can use them, you have to melt them down and hopefully I'll put them in the right wave. That's a bad idea in the case of chips. Are producer Chris you'd actually probably have to eliminate all chips in the city of Columbus. Just get rid of them all is about the only way we're going to stop his chip consumption. I didn't understand. Sorry, sorry Chris, to give you advice. That's a great example,

I tell you. The other thing that and working with coaching clients that has made this so difficult is door dash. It used to be like, just don't keep unhealthy foods in your house, and you're safe, right, not safe, but you've got to make effort. You gotta get up, you gotta go, get in your car, you gotta drive to the store. Now you just open your phone, click a couple of buttons and McDonald shows up at your door. It's a disaster, that's right, And it goes to show

how really important small costs are as barriers. Having to go out to get something keeps you from getting it. But you know, free clicks and you're in. That's so easy. You do it right, right. We could think, though, even in terms of this, that you might favorite certain things in an app that you want to choose, you know, favorite the restaurants you want to order from, if that's what you're doing, or put them on the first page

versus putting them ten pages back on your phone. And so let's now move to talking about what some of the elements of choice architecture are. Let's talk about what sludge is. It's a great word. I just like to say, it's sludge, and uh, what is it? So sludge I think is due to someone named Richard Taylor, who happened to win a Nobel Prize, and he's a clever wordsmith. In fact, I think he came up with a phrase choice architecture. By the way, he wrote a famous book

called Nudge, which is about changing people's behavior. And so what is bad nudging? Sludge? It even rhymes. But sludge is choice architecture that is meant to hurt people. I was gonna say, help them do the wrong thing, which is but another way of saying that it hurts them. So let me give you one example, which actually also is called a computer science dark patterns, which is almost a better phrase, another great one. What that means is I subscribe to New York Times because I think it's good.

I do that by one click and turns out they've already filled out the form for me. It's very easy when it comes time to unsubscribe because I've decided I don't read it. I can't do that on the web. I have to pick up the phone. I have to dial a number, and they actually asked me things like are you sure, and they put me on hold. The costs of pupping a subscription versus declining a subscription are asymmetric.

In fact, computer science they sometimes call this the roach motel because customers come in and they can't check out the hotel California. Yes, would be another. So that's sludge and dark patterns. Let's talk about what plausible path means excellent. I mean when we make a decision, there's a lot of information. So for your concern So from going in a supermarket, there are literally tens of thousands of options.

I'm only going to consider some of those, and so what determines which Once I look at one example I like a lot is a friend of mine who worked at Cornell Vile Hospital. She was a medical informatist that as she designs the systems that doctors use to prescribe drugs, what's called the electronic health records. And it turns out doctors could prescribe two kinds of drugs. One are generics, which are typically cheaper, and the other brand name drugs. Now, chemically,

these are in most cases identical. It's exactly the same pill, the same outcomes. But about nine doctors we're prescribing the brand name drugs. Just to give you two facts about this which I think are intra the first is that generics are five times cheaper than brand name drugs. So I take a pill called Allegra, let's say cost a dollar. The generic, which is called effexofenadine hydrochloride, is twenty cents.

Now the cause of that cost difference, it turns out it's not only good for hospitals for people to do the generic, but for people who can't afford drugs, the generic is essentially life saving. Instead of cutting the pill in half, or skipping every other day, or other ways of scrimping, they actually can afford the generics and comply

what doctors called take your medicine. And what's interesting about that is it's actually a case where you want, from both the hospital s perspective and the patient's pubspective to get people to subscribe generics. Now, it turns out when she looked carefully at what doctors are doing. It's because they remember the name of the brand name, you know, Allegra, and partly because when it came on the market that

was advertised. They got pens with the name Allegra on it, the supprision pads at Allegra, and long story short, they couldn't remember the name. And I've had to practice it to be able to say effects affinity and hydrochloride. Very impressive. Well, it's taken a lot of practice. But what's true is that she changed the system. So when I typed a Leegra I type A l L, it auto populated fects affinity and hydrochloride. It did the memory for the doctor.

And so rather than go through some compendium to find out what the right name of the drug is, or say hey Harry or hey Beatrice, what's the name of the generic, the computer did that for them, so instead of considering all the possible information, it just pops up. And it turns out doctors actually prescribe as written. They don't change back to the brand name, so it wasn't really a preference. It was something they did because it

was easy. There's even one click to say prescribe is written and almost nobody does that, and that doubled from about percentage of prescriptions that were written for generic drugs. Small change in the interface, big change in behavior. It's an amazing how little changes make such a difference, and we truly underestimate them. We think, well, no, it shouldn't

affect me that much. The example I've used on this show countless times is playing the guitar, Like, the difference between my guitar on a stand and in the case is ridiculous. Like, every time I think about this, I'm like, am I really that lazy? That opening the guitar case, which takes two and a half seconds deters me from doing it. It's, in my experience absolutely true that if things are out, I'm going to do it more likely.

And having it out does something else as well. Not only does it make it easier, which clearly does, but it also reminds you. It serves as a reminder, so memories are really important role. That's sort of the other way that designers work their magic, you know, One is by changing the information you look at. So having something right in front of you makes it easier to look

at another food example. Turns out a friend of mine did some studies in the nineties, and it's delightful actually interviewing him, and he took the same ground meat and called it either fat or a seven percent lean. Now, if you add those up, that's all the ground baby can be lean or fat, and so it's exactly the

same meat, just with two different labels. And people who were shown the lean would pay more for it and thought it tasted worse than if they saw the fat, which they thought was juicier, tasted better, but they didn't want it as much, at least at the time. And what he argues and has evidence for, is that people think about different things with fat, they think about how juicy it is, how tasty it is. With leaning, they think of it building muscle, and it's exact same meat.

And he actually would cook it up in the lab and have people taste it, and the fat would taste better to people. And it's not because it's any difference, because what they think about as a consume it is different. So your guitar cases not just making it easier, it's also reminding you that you could be playing music now. Thank you, Now I feel better about myself. Let's talk more about memory, though, because it is an important part of all this. And you say that what we say

we prefer depends upon what we recall. So the phrase that I like is assembled preferences that often we go into a situation not knowing exactly what it is we want in a restaurant, um, since you're talking about food a lot today. In a restaurant, I may have three or four things I think about eating, and I have many goals. I want to be thin, I want to have delicious tasting food, and sometimes those are in conflict. So one of the way the choice architicial works is

fairly simple. It brings to mind one goal or the other. So the Hamburg example deliciousness versus health. Things like order of options can change what it is we want. Because you can see one option first, it brings to mind a whole set of things. Let's say I saw the healthy option first, wouldn't be there. So by constructing or assembling our goals, we're deciding what to choose, and that's gonna be determined by the choice architecture. Let me give

you an example that I'd rather like. It turns out that I can ask you how long you're going to live to or I can ask you what you will die by. Now, clearly those are gonna be the same question, right, you should name the same year in each case. And what happens if I say what you will you live to? You think about your aunt Harriet, who lived in two. You think about the fact that you were running earlier

in the week. You think about the fact that modern medicine is actually doing amazing things, and there are so many new treatments that you'll be fine. If I say die by, the same person will think of different things. We'll think of Uncle Ernest who died at fifty five massive heart attack. We'll think about the fact they smoked for a couple of years in college. They might think about the fact they're slightly overweight. The same person is

going to assemble very different facts about themselves. And when we then ask people when we live to versus when you'll die by, this is about a tenure difference. Live to people say they're going to live to eighty five, they die by people for they're gonna die by se same question. But just because labels bring to mind different things, you get very different answers. There's a cognitive bias called the recency biased. Does this is this sort of a

similar idea in some ways. Well, recencly is usually applied to memory to say that you're going to remember the last thing that you saw and yep. So let me give an example of how important choice arteger can be. If I give you a menu with ten things on it and it's written, you'll probably show a primacy bias. You'll stop too soon, you'll actually order one of the things that's first on the list. Well, let's take that same menu given to Eric the waiter, who's going to

read it to you. Now, when I read it to you, just like we talked about earlier, I'm going to forget the first five things on that list, and something towards the end will be remembered. That's when you get a recency bias. So it just shows you it's a place where the plause will pass. Say I stopped too soon if it's written, but if it's given to you early, I'm gonna only remember the last things. And it turns out to understand the effective order, you have to understand

which of those two things is going on. Right, you talk about depending on how we're sort of prompted, then different things come forward. You say this means our preferences are not always stable and fixed, but rather improvised, constructed haphazardly from a large set of relevant memories. And I love that idea of the fluidity of things being improvised constructed haphazardly. Maybe not the haphazard part, but I like the concept that things are not stable and fixed we

think of preferences that way. I was in l A this last weekend and we went to an ice cream place and they had lots of great choices. But it was so interesting to me because I could sort of see, you know, having been reading your book and thinking about this stuff, I could sort of see how like you could get three flavors if I picked one, then all of a sudden, the other ones that I was going to choose were very related to the one that I had already decided on. Right, certain ones all of a

sudden became so of out for me. I was like, well, I am not going to put brambleberry crisp with chocolate. In my mind, those two don't go together. So it's this idea that you know our preferences. I might say, well, I like chocolate ice cream. I prefer that, But it's gonna be modified in context of where I am, who I'm around, other things that are presented to me. So how do we know what we really want? How do

you think about that question? It's really tough, and I think a challenge to people who study choices is knowing when someone's making a good choice. So one way of doing it is are people consistent? So I take you to the gelato place, because will be thirty six different nice gelato's there, and you know, I sort them one way and you pick the brambleberry cream, and I sort me another way and you picked the bambleberry cream. Then I think you have a real preference, but sort them differently.

Now you're choosing chocolate or the hazel nut. Then I think your choice is actually going to be pretty flexible, that it's actually not that strong preference. And it's interesting you may experience both of those choices being strong preferences and not be aware that the order of the ice creams change your choice, like it if it's consistent. Another way is we can say, let me move to a place because I don't want to be as judgmental as you might be with ice creams. But let's say you're

you're buying a credit card. Some credit cards are worse than others on every dimension. We want to make sure you don't buy the really bad credit card. So that's another way we can tell whether it's a good choice or not. Finally, for the sake of studies and I think to understand choice architecture, I can give you a goal. Let's say I was telling you buy the credit card that's best for this kind of person, someone who never carries a balance, that always pays off and spends a

lot monts lots of points. Then I can know what the right credit card would be for you. I think if it's a little bit like a flight simulator that is in flight similar, I can say, Okay, you get to land in Charles de gaul Airport. Now you get to land in Portland, Oregon, or Portland, Maine. You know, if you can land in all those places, the cockpit is a good But if you start crashing in places,

then I know it's not such a good one. I want a way of presenting you choices that's going to let you find the right thing for you, no matter what it is you're looking for. You talked earlier about something that is so foundational to a choice, but we don't often think about which is. We're often presented with competing goals. So if we're talking about the meat, right, do I want to be healthier or do I want the delicious taste? These two are both goals that I have.

I actually have both goals. I want delicious flavor and I want to be healthy. How do we go about thinking through those two and balancing or prioritizing those two, and how do we watch for choice architecture that may push us one way or the other. So it's exactly the case where there's conflict that I think choice archer

has the biggest impact. That is, if I know, look, I know I don't like liver, sorry, um, And no one choice architecture is going to make me eat liver, even if I put it first on the list in defaulting list, I choke. If someone gives me a sea Urchin wrote booney as a sushi, choice circuit won't work there. But where I'm deciding, you know, they want the yellowtail or the tuna, or do I want you know, vanilla ice cream or pistachio, Where it's close, that's when choice

arctor is going to have an influence. The second thing that I think is really important to think about is it's great if you can resolve those ahead of time before you get to the choice architecture, or look at the choice over time and see which of those is really important to you. So if chorcharch diaractor is changing

your choice, it's an indicator. It tells you you must be doing something wrong that you really haven't resolved the struggle, so you don't have clarity going in and you are at that point doing what you said, which is you're sort of haphazardly improvising. And in those moments you're most at the mercy of choice architecture. You're being consistent. Yeah, and the choice arch chancers determing your choice. And I'm not going to tell you it's a cure, but helps

if you know what you want. So if you're thinking about going to college, to use one example, and you're deciding whether I want to go away or you know, stay home, you know it's one decision you should have to think about that goal independent of the schools. My niece is making these choices now, and you know, if her friend is going to um a different school, so she's not going to see the friend or the friend is staying home. That's not really relevant because the friends

on the point. She needs to think hard in the abstractor about that trade off, what's going to make her happier, or at the very least, like you said, recognize that the friend is influencing and determine whether being close to my friend is what I want to prioritize. You talk about Ben Franklin in the book, and you know, Ben Franklin is known for many things, but one of which is the pro and con list. But you say that the way that that information is given to most of

us is only partially what Ben Franklin taught us. You know, for years I've seen that list. You know, you're supposed to write down all the pros, then all the cons. And whenever you see that quote, there's usually dot dot dot and ellipse and then it says then you count them up. Now it turns out I was reading that and said, what is that dot dot dot? What is censored if you will, by the people who quote that, And turns up Ben Franklin understood the role of memory.

He said, the things that come to mind on one occasion will be different than others. So he suggested you walk away and then come back to the list and write down other things that come to mind after you've written the list first. And I think that's actually very good advice. And so, you know, one thing that about memory is when you're thinking about why you want to go away to school, it's hard to think about reason

why you'd want to stay. And so actually, after I've stopped thinking about why I want to go away to school, I'll start to be able to think about the reasons I would want to stay it. Actually, it turns out there is a phenomena called inhibition that means if I think about one thing, it's harder to think about other things. And really, what the thing that choice starchers can do is exploit inhibition. That is, I will end up saying why do you want to go away? Why do you

want to go away? Why do you want to spend the money on this fancy piece of jewelry whatever it is. And it turns out that if you take a breather and maybe even think about what else you can do with the money, or if you're going away to school, if I stay at home my local community college, what else could I do with those thousands of dollars I'm not spending on private college. You know, you might come to very different decisions. So what Briend frankly anticipated is

an inhibition and the role of memory. And so I was actually really pleased to find that quote was when it's complete, actually very good advice about choice architecture. Yeah, that idea of giving ourselves time and more context to make a decision is so important. I generally have a rule of anything over say about a hundred dollars, like I will not buy it at the moment that I think I want it, you know, I'll make myself go away usually overnight, or leave the store, you know, and

all those things. I mean, that simple thing saves me a ton of money on stuff I really don't need. And then there are times that I leave and after twenty four hours, I'm like, I still really want to go get that thing. That Okay, you know, I've I've had a little more time to contemplate it. And every decision to buy something is implicitly and I teach marketing, so forgive me, but every decision to buy something is

a decision not to buy something else. And so thinking about what you would do with the money instead helps you think about what economists called opportunity costs. What are the other things you could do with the money? Doesn't prevent it from buying it, but it makes it a better acknowledgment of the trade offs you're making. So buying a car that is a gas guzzler means I'm not going to be doing something else, like, you know, spending

money on a bike or a vacation. Yeah. I think that speaks to this idea of context, and I often think that we make decisions out of context or we don't consider all the context. So an example might be somebody who just always said yes. Somebody be like, hey, do you want to do this? They'd be like yes, and hey, would you be on the board of this Yes. In the moment, all they thought about is do I want to do this thing or not that they're asking me.

But then when that same person would later have to start looking at their life, they'd be like, why on earth did I add another thing? It's because in the moment, all they were thinking about was whether do I want to do this one thing? Oh? Yes, this one thing sounds good, But the context of the larger hole was completely lost. If you ask them what they're doing that day. They have a long list of things. There's too much to do. You ask them, do they want to be

on this board? They say, well, that would be nice. I didn't get to meet If there's nice things about that, they're not thinking about out the fact they're giving up time with their kids or hobbies or spouse. With time, it's actually even harder to think about the other things that we do because when we think about the future, we don't think about the fact that we're gonna be as busy in three weeks as we are today because those things don't come to mind. It's called by some

friends slack. We always think we'll have more slack in the future, and the reality is we don't. Just like with money, with our allocation of time, we neglect the opportunity costs of agreeing to do things in the future. Is there anything that you can think of that might be general rules of thumb that we might use that would help us make better choices. I think there's a simple one that's coming out of our conversation. We just think about what are the alternative uses of the resource?

So if you're buying something, what else could you do? With the money, and how would you feel about giving that up? Or time? What else could you do with the time? So you know, I get an invitation or any chapter or write a book, and I said, oh, that sounds like fun. What I don't think about is the fact that that means I'm not going to go on a hike on Thursday, or in three weeks from now, I'm not gonna be able to take a long evening

off to watch the music. So I think the general principle is to actually make your memory work to come up with those things that's harder to generate. We have a theory called careery theory that's all about this, because when I'm thinking about writing that chapter or buying that nice new phone, it's very hard for me to think about the other uses of money or time are. So

I think that would be the general principle. And I've had friends who have come back to me after reading our research and say, you know, my clothing budget just went down by half because I simply asked myself, what else can I buy with this money? And these are some of the best dressed people I know. I don't want to try and make them worst dressed, but I think I've saved them some money. That's a great general idea, which is consider the alternatives, right, consider what else you

would do with the time or the money. That concept of slack is a really interesting one too, thinking we're gonna have more time in the future. Boy do I fall prey to that one, because I just look at my week and I'll be like, all right, I'm just gonna kick that to next week, assuming that next week is somehow going to be better, And like you said, more often than not, it really isn't. I'm always busy. I remember this in software project management, you know, it's

just the first few years of my career. You know, the people in charge would be like, we just gotta get over this hump and then it'll be easier. And I just after a couple of years that I was like, Nope, no, it won't. It simply won't. We're always going to have deadlines that feel unattainable. It's always gonna be this way. We actually built in that term slack. You know, as a project manager, I learned to start going, all right, you know what my people said, it's going to take

a week. I'm gonna budget two weeks just because I know that we need that slack, And the nice thing is there are going to be times that are more or less busy. I'm in the middle of a very busy semester. I know come May I'll have more time, but it's not that I'm going to have infinite time. In fact, I know that be a little bit more time, But then, you know a nasty little thing. I have to catch up with everything I'm not doing now, yep, yep, So there'll be lots of things that fill up that time.

I think when I schedule my week, by the way, one of things I try and do is is allocate, not just I'm going to write this paper and the meet with the student and say I'll do that sometime later this week, actually try and schedule how long it's going to take. By allocating the time, I end up being a little bit less ambitious and probably hopefully a little a little bit less stressed out. I agree, I try and do something similar and then just put my to do list away, like, don't even think about it,

it's not happening in this window. Another corollary of this idea is I often think to myself, am I ever going to want to do this thing right, because there's a tendency to think, oh, I'll feel more like doing it tomorrow, right. And I asked myself like, am I ever going to feel like it? And if the answer is no, I try and do it as quickly as possible. I just try and be like, look, it's something I'm never gonna want to do, I'm always going to do doing it the sooner I do it, the less time

I have to dread it. I think that's nice advice. We talked about it a little bit. But let's talk about screening. First, what is it? How is it used in choice architecture? And then to make it a three part question, how might we use it in making better choices for ourselves? And when not to use it is the other component, so four part question. Yes, So my wife reads the New York Times Vale's column, and you know this is a habit on Sunday. It used to be the paper. Now it's her iPad. You'll say who

married whom? And as a result, I started looking just to see what she's looking at. And it started that they about maybe eight years ago, the New York Times started mentioning what dating services people met on Wow, and there are lots of them, and they're very different and um. One of the things that's true is one of the ways they differ is how many dates they show you

at a time. There's a dating service and it's called Coffee meets Bagel that was started by three sisters and they want to build a website for women, and they made the decision to only show you one person a day. Now they show you a few more, but it's still a very limited list. Compare that to other sites like Tinder. Tinder, of course, shows you an infinite number of possible dates.

And there's even in um. The Urban Dictionary has a line about Tinder thumb, which is the pain you feel after scrolling too much, and and the onui is the phrase they use of realizing no one's exactly right now. There's something up that goes on that. It really illustrates this idea of screening. If I see one person day, I'm going to read about them, not just look at the picture. I'm going to read about their hobbies, movies, what they're looking for. I'm going to consider lots about

the person. However, on Tinder, I've been told that people tend to look at one attribute you know, they sort of say who's most attractive, or it turns out people have researched this. Many women look for men who are told than they are in heels, so they use height, and if you're one inch too short, you're gonna lose perhaps the right person. You're so not going to make

the kind of trade off we're talking about. Screening, you know, as an advantage lets you go through lots of options quickly, but it also can lead you astray because you end up deleting people who would be perfect. So one of the things that I think screening can do is actually prevent you from picking somebody in the dating context that

actually would be perfect for you. And you overweight whatever thing it is you're using to screen, So height turns out to be very important, even though I've been told that many men lie about their heights. So you end up basically picking people in our criteria that is actually not that important. And more importantly, you end up doing it even though it's not very predictive because people misrepresent themselves.

So when I started looking at these columns and vows, I noticed that people who would use coffee meets bagel tend to be more different from each other. They often end up being interesting couples, couples that you wouldn't expect to be together. And I think that's because instead of just looking for somebody who meets one criterion, they actually thought about the person as a whole. That's really interesting

to think about what we're screening for. And I think it gets back to this idea we've been talking a little bit about about deciding what's kind of important, right, because then you are screening based to some degree on what's important. In the same section that you're talking about screening, you talk about screening might well eliminate options that are good balances between two important but negatively related attributes. Can you say more about that piece? Yeah, So, I mean,

let's go back to the dating example on height. I might actually be screening on height and George Clooney is one inch below my criteria. How he might be from many people a perfect balance between height. So maybe I'll put up with it having to wear one inch shorter heels if I were a woman. Basically, you can eliminate things, and particularly for negatively correly. So the interesting about lying about your height it means when you're actually choosing on height,

you're probably picking people are less honest. The people why the most are the people you pick acute sort of dad okay. Have in the book is these are people who don't measure up. Literally, you're picking people who are not as well as they say they well and actually misferb their hight the most. Probably not a good recipe

for finding misser. Mr. Wright. There was a study near the end of the book that you talked about that I've heard of, and it's the old study that says, once upon a time, people at a movie theater were flashed images of say, coke at one second, and by doing that, subliminally, all of a sudden, coke sales went up. And the idea is that they're happening faster than your conscious brain can read them, but your subconscious brain is internalizing them. And that's a study that I mean, I've

heard it. It's a pretty well known study, but apparently it's not what we thought it was. Well. One of the nice things about writing a book is you get to do research. And it turns out the theater is

not very far from where I live. It's infortunately, and I didn't go to it, but it is a small theater and in fact it's a small theater that in some accounts didn't even have a concession stand that the consultant who wrote that study up actually never did the study, and it turns out it was basically a gimmick to get clients. Now there's an important point here that I think is true. Whenever you look at this wonderful world and what we call behavioral science, you know, it's become

very influential. There are lots of people who are writing about it, and it's gratifying. At the same time, we know that not every study replicates that. You can do the same study and it doesn't work. So one of the challenges in writing a book actually is trying to separate the studies that you think people might have gotten lucky or god forbid, even been dishonest, versus a phenomena that happens time after time for time that you literally

can take it to the bank. So, for example, defaults, when we look at that it's pretty strong, you get a strong not always, I mean there's a big range of default effects sizes. Sometimes it will be sometimes it will be two, but usually get a default effect in the correct direction. Other things not so much so. Writing a book is actually a challenge because you want to tell the cute story, the equivalent of the flashing coke story, but you wanted to stand for a bunch of evidence.

After all, that's how science works, and so I want the stories to be rememberable. But the one thing we learned from the Coke study, the siblinal advertising study, is that people are really worried about being influenced without their awareness, and that actually caused congressional investigations were based on that study.

The FEC made it illegal to broadcast subliminal messages over television and fact, it turns out you can't do what the technology doesn't allow with screens don't refresh quickly enough. But it had huge consequences, and I think one of the things that I would urge everyone listening to think about is is that just one study or there are a bunch of them that actually show that that may be a bit of a hairy detail, but I think it's really an important lesson. You don't take us a

pill because it's been found in one study. Yep. And it is hard as a consumer or a lay person to know what's real and what's not, particularly the way that science journalism works, right, A lot of science journalism takes what's most, the most exciting findings they can or the most you know, headline were the studies and puts them out and then you know who has time to go in and research them? I mean most people don't.

And so even as someone like me who has read hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of these books and does this in a professional semi way, I still am like, well, I don't know. And then you get into questions of how many times does it need to be replicated, how many people actually is in a study before becomes valid. But that one of subliminal just amazes me that the guy just completely made it up. We can feel fairly certain he would mark six ft three on any dating site, right,

he's at least that tall. That's right, That's right, he's at least that tall. Is there any data to show this subliminal advertising ability? Has there been any studies that show that we can actually be influenced in that way? So I think we need to step back and say, are there influences of our behavior that we're not aware of? That's very different than the notion of flashing coke on the screen will change what you buy, right, right, I'm

asking about the latter. I think the former. We've this entire conversation has been about the former, that there are influences on our behavior that we are not aware of, you know, the order things are presented in and the defaults and all that. I'm just kind of curious that subliminal thing I have to assume other people than try to do it and couldn't replicate it. Yeah, I think the best answer is it's mixed. If there's an effect,

it's very small. And if you look at the numbers, and one of the things I think is a good guide is if the numbers look too good to be true, they probably are. So if you see a very small effect that changes choices by that's probably not right. I mean defaults. We've been very lucky that we've had some great examples, and that's partly because of the context, the

way it's posed. So the thing about organ donation, so probably the thing I'm most known for his studies, we did where you basically we looked at countries where you were a donor for organs upon your death by default. So for example, that's what happens in Austria, and Germany, you're not a donor and you have to change actively. Now in those studies we get about a fifty or sixty per cent difference. Now, there are two things that

are key to that recipe. One thing is that you don't like thinking about what happens to your body after you've died, So people don't like to make that choice, so they get it over with quickly. The second thing is you only make that choice once typically at all. De faults work particularly well when you're not making the choice often. So what we've done is research that say how big are default to fix someone? Do they happen? And there's a recipe for getting a big default effect.

On one part of that recipe, it has to be much easier to pick the default. Another thing is it has to be something you don't make decisions very frequently, So defaults will be very big for some things but not for others. So the way science works is it shows that hopefully you have an effect and you understand when it's gonna be big, like in the case of organ donation and small. Let's say like in the case

of which box you check for Amazon shipping. By the way, we'll say the other thing about organ donation, just to be clear, is that's about an agreeing to be a donor. That's not the end of the process. Often your family has to make a decision afterwards, and that can make things much more complicated. As I talk about, Yeah, I've always wondered about that. I feel like I hear that a lot about families deciding. I'm like, but I thought

I decided when I renew my driver's license. Yes you did, but for habit, for reasons of not wanting to be in litigation. Almost every hospital in most countries, your family is asked. Notice your family being asked is also a choice architecture. That is, whoever is doing the asking is a designer. And it turns out there are a very big difference in Spain, which is sort of a boaster child for huge amounts of organ donation. That's very good.

Part of the thing is they have a doctor who's trained in how to ask you the question, do the asking. So it's not just the driver's license question, but it's actually what happens afterwards that's important. You talk in the book about subject that has become increasingly near and dear to my heart, which is the choices we make around end of life, share a little bit about what you've

seen in choice architecture in this area. So this is a place where, if you believe what I've just told you, you'd expect a big default effect because it's something you don't want to think about. I mean, is one of the reasons people don't have end of life statements. Just came from my annual zsical today and you do you have an end of life statement? And I said, and I felt very embarrassed because the last time I did that was many years ago, and the answer is not

very pleasant. And so researchers and this is actually I'm sorry, it's a little bit of a depressing story, but it's a real study. They took over a hundred people who were terminal cancer patients and they gave them two different end of life statements. Let's keep it simple and say there are procedures that are life prolonging and those that

are for comfort care. And that well, they did for that set either the life prolonging which are ones that actually are very invasive and often unpleasant, or comfort care, which means you won't feel pain, but you may die sooner. And of those hundred plus people, there was a huge effect. I'm going to roughly say, pick the comfort care when the life extension was the default, six when the comfort care was the default. So there's a very big preference difference.

That's because we've conflicting goals that we haven't thought about this much. Now, what's interesting about the point of assembling preferences? They then, being good scientists, said, look, you're in a study. You've randomly decided which set of faults you've got. Now do you want to change? And I think only three people change their mind that after having constructed or having assembled their preferences in the study, they didn't want to

revisit the decision. And so that's a good example. Someone is making decisions about what the fault should be, and most of the u s it's actually the life extension. And whoever's doing that wittingly or unwittingly, haphascidly perhaps is actually deciding for people what kind of care they'll have at the end of life. Yeah, I'm a big proponent of being able to make more choices about how your

life ends, and that one default. Think of how much potential money and suffering that one unthought about default could be the follow on that you said there, which I find fascinating is that only a couple of people changed. And I'm wondering if this is just a topic where people are like, I do not want to think about this again, or do you think it's become as we really don't want to believe that we've been influenced, and we want to believe that our choices came from us.

I'm asking you to speculate here, of course. Yeah. There's a third, slightly more nuanced version of that, which is, you know, I've made that decision once I thought about what I want. Yeah, I don't want to revisit that decision. Yeah, it's related to both of those things. Yeah, but I think you know, once I formed a preference, if I

remember it, why we visit it? Yep. And I think that is so important to everything we're talking about today, which is sometimes that obstinacy about preferences can be really problematic because those preferences were made under very specific circumstances, and we're influenced by things that we are completely unaware they were influenced by. And so I think the more often we ask ourselves questions about what's really important what

really matters to me. The more clear will be in the less will be influenced by either current choice architecture or choice architecture that influences in the past that we weren't aware of. But it's so hard once a preference gets established. So let me give you a little speculative hint of how you might detect choice architecture. You go to most websites and they actually will allow you to sort the options. So a very famous study, in my mind, took people and gave them wine lists. This was in

a store that was actually run. It turns out a duke with their NBA's and the list was either ordered by price or by quality. As you might guess, if it was sorted by price, people chose cheaper wines. Was sorted by quality, they would choose more expensive, better tasting wines. That's a case where choice sartor is influencing. People didn't think they were affected. Now imagine you go to the websites and you can actually click the sort. You can sort by price or served by quality. If you do

that and you pick the same wine, you're fine. But if you look at that and you say, you know, I'd like the expensive Bordeaux in one site, or like the five buck truck in the other site. You know you're being influenced by the choice architecture. YEP, I know about myself. I feel like I'm very influenced by choice architecture.

Like I've often said, like I don't want to watch commercials on TV, mainly because they're annoying and they're loud, but I also just recognize that I think they influenced me in ways that I'm just not aware of, or sometimes I am aware of, you know, you know, I

think I'm somewhat easily influenced by that. So this book has been really interesting in getting me to think about even that very thing right there, Like you know what am I sorting on a recent example, as we as a podcast have had to make a decision about it's a good decision, but about what podcast network we want to be part of, and so we were fortunate enough to get a variety of offers and they were all

good in different ways. What was helpful was we had decided ahead of time what our priority for the year was, and knowing that allowed me to look at each of those offers through that lens and look at them through that lens one became very clear, like that's the right

one based on that lens. Now that's not the only lens to look at, but we had done the work ahead of time to think about what's our most important thing this year, and thus only we're able to evaluate decisions through that lens, right, And I would call that lens base. He's saying, what's the most important attributes and what are you willing to give up to get that?

Or at what point would you switch? And I think that's wise advice, and it's trying to do that away from any specific choice, any specific representation, any specific design that makes it a better way of making decisions. You tell a story near the end of the book about a magician. Can you relate this? I think it's fascinating, maybe as a way of us getting near wrapping up here. Turns out i've seen him live. His name is Darren Brown.

He's a British mentalist and if you don't know magic, are very impressed because he actually manages to pick the card that somebody uses. Now, it turns out I went with a friend of mine and she is a member of the Brotherhood of Magicians. Turn is out there as a society of professional magicians, and she was very unimpressed because she knew how the trick was done. So in general, I think if we know how choice architecture works, we tend to be less sensitive to it. So let me

tell you about this trick. I didn't believe it was done this way until I started doing it in class. What Darren Brown does He walks in and says, I want you to pick a card, Imagine it, don't tell me what it is, and then he does a set of things to make you think about the card. He says, imagine the card as a screen. He holds up his fingers and it looks not quite like a screen untilted, so it's actually looks a little bit like a diamond. And then he says, imagine right and vivid in your mind.

And what is more vivid? Black? Red, and the numbers are in the corner. And with his hands he draws a squiggle which happens to look like the number three, And by doing that, he's making more available to you

red diamonds and three. And in class you can actually there are people who have done the video of that little demonstration with hand gestures and without the hand gestures and terms in class, I just have people look at one or the other, and they're much more like to have the three of diamonds when they see the gestures and the vividness prompt. Now, what's interesting about that is that means that Darren Brown is not a mind reader

as much as he is a mind writer. He's having you think about certain things that you wouldn't have thought about otherwise. And I was totally aghast at this trick worked as well as it did. It's actually, uh lovely demonstration of how accessibility, what we comes to mind influences our choices. Now, how often do your students figure out how they were influenced because they've assumed they've learned a fair amount about choice, architecture, you're you're putting them through this.

Are they able to see what was going on? More often? What makes all the difference in the world is whether they show them both films or just the one film. If they see the one and they see the difference as they go, oh, of course, but even I've seen that one of the scruggles they have some hint and the research let's look at this. They ask people, were you influenced by anything? And people will have guesses, but those guesses aren't related to the actual choice of the

three of diamonds. I think you need to see both and then once you see the comparison, you go, ah, that's what did it. And in life, we don't go to a lot of different websites, they have a lot of defaults. We're not told how choice architecture, how designers work, so it's a lot harder than you'd like it to be to actually understand the influences of choice architecture. They're also just a nice way of doing it, which is look at different choice architectures and see if you make

the same choice as we talked about earlier. Yeah, I love that idea of a mind writer instead of a mind reader, because you know, the more you learn about a lot of this stuff, you realize so much of that is going on the way that you know we're influenced in a certain direction, or the way we're led via a series of questions to certain conclusion. Jans, thank

you so much for coming on. You and I are going to talk for a couple of minutes in the post show conversation because we did not get to the one area that we wanted to talk about, which is how we might present better choices to the people in our lives. So we'll talk for a couple of minutes

in the post show conversation about that. Listeners, if you would like to get access to the post show conversation as well as some ad free episodes and a special episode I do each week called Teaching Song and a poem that I love and get the joy of supporting the show, you can go to one you Feed dot net slash join. Thank you again, Eric so much for coming on. It's been a real pleasure to have you. It's been fun to do the Eric Show. I've enjoyed

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