Is Your Life Designed Or Nudged?
I'm currently reading a fantastic book called Nudge by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein. The book primarily deals with behavioural economics and how we are being influenced in our decisions every day. For example, here is a passage from the Chicago Tribune about how grocery stores are architected in a way to make us buy:
“There’s a reason why produce and often the bakery are the first sections you hit,” Underhill explained. “First of all, the produce section tends to be lit theatrically, so that everything looks better in the store than it ever will when you get it home. Almost every supermarket knows that if they can get your saliva glands working, you will tend to buy more. So there’s a reason why the bakery is up front, or the flowers are up front.”
The dairy case is usually way in the back as a way to pull the shopper as deeply into the store as possible.
“The dairy section has both the highest number of … shoppers and historically has the highest conversion rate,” Underhill said. “There are very few people that go look at milk and not buy it.”
So on your way to getting the milk, you walk through the middle of the store — historically where the tougher-to-sell items are displayed — past jumbo olives and potato chips that you had no intention of buying. But seeing them on the shelves …"
This is not exclusive to grocery stores, of course. Most things around us are architected in a way that makes us want to buy, eat, sign up, call, email, etc... But what about larger decisions in life? While it is fairly simple to design for helping you to buy a loaf of bread, it is much harder to to design an architecture around helping you find a career, get married, decide where to live, etc... These are all major life changing decisions, that involve much more than just the transaction of a few dollars. They involve complex neural structures, an unlimited number of choices, and most of all, emotion.
Designing Your Life vs Being Nudged
We grow up around a core group of people. These people represent our "inner circle" and are considered "strong ties" in the social world. The reason they are so important to us is they know us better than anyone else. They know when we are happy, sad, upset, angry, weak or strong. Basically, they understand our emotions. While most of this can be positive, there can be some tradeoffs. Many people in your inner circle will also want to offer their advice when it comes to the major decisions in life that we mentioned above. Want to become a painter but your family & friends think you are nuts? You will definitely reconsider your choice, at least internally. Want to marry someone outside of your religion? This can cause massive rifts in families. Do you believe that more opportunity exists in New York even though your whole family was born and raised in Saskatoon? You may feel some guilt before moving.
These are examples of us being "nudged" in life. When external influences begin to sway our convictions, we are being led in a certain direction, to a certain objective. Go back to the grocery shopping. Did you intend to pick up those Oreo's in the middle of the store? Of course not, yet you probably will end up checking out with them in your cart. Why? The psychology of choice has led us to that decision, through external influences.
The challenge, then, is when do you listen and when do you ignore? Let's use career choice as an example. Many people will come across this scenario. They want to pursue a career in a field because they are passionate about it and know they can succeed. Yet everyone they knows tells them they are crazy and that they should go into a field that is "safe" and pays well. What do you think happens most of the time? Unless that person's internal conviction is super strong, they will probably listen to their external forces. After all, what do they know? They are just young with not much experience. These older, wiser adults must know what is best.
In many cases this may be true. The people advising you may have your best interest at heart and are simply trying to help you. But they are not you, and your life is totally unique. If you know in your gut that the career you want to go into is the path for you, go for it. But it is not always easy. To help deal with this problem, certain solutions, including Sokanu are being designed. They are trying to present something called choice architecture.
Choice Architecture
Many times in our lives we don't always want to rely on one source. That would be unwise in many cases. So when it comes to something like career choice, why do we only listen to our friends and family? Usually it is because we don't have anyone else to ask. But online solutions and offline groups are starting to provide an architecture that can help you make this choice. Sokanu is being built to provide a choice architecture when it comes to careers. We are going to try and help "nudge" you, not in the direction we best see fit, but in helping you find the direction you best see fit. This is the goal of architects of choice. They are supposed to help nudge you in a positive direction based on your likes, dislikes and actions. This way, there is no bias, and ultimately the decision still lies on the individual.
Some people know what they want to do from a very early age, and never waver from their decision. But those people are few and far between. For the rest of us, we need to decide whether we want to take control of designing our life or if we want to be nudged.
