The Amazing World of 'Nudging'
When I was five years old, my mother used to give me a glass of milk every day. I hated drinking it. My mother knew that I liked sweet things so she would show me a spoonful of sugar and then put it in the milk saying "finish the milk and you can get the sugar". I would hurriedly drink the milk to be rewarded with sugar and I still remember it tasted really nice. Little did I know that mum was using some advanced techniques in Behavioural Economics and Marketing. I say advanced because in 2017 the Nobel prize for Economics was given to Richard Thaler, a professor at the Colombia University, for his work in behavioural economics around a concept called 'nudging'. Nudging refers to subtle changes in the environment allowing people to take decisions in their larger self interest. The key thing here is that people are not forced to take a certain decision; rather the choice sets are designed to 'nudge' them towards the best decision. Now a child may n