The One You Feed - Eric Johnson on The Elements of Choice

Episode Date: May 31, 2022

Eric Johnson is the Director of the Center for Decision Sciences, Columbia Business School at Columbia University.  His research examines the interface between behavior decision research economics and the decisions made by consumers, managers, and their implications for public policy, markets, and marketing.   In this episode, Eric and Eric Johnson discuss his book, The Elements of Choice: Why the Way We Decide Matters Get Text Messages from Eric that will remind and encourage you to help stay on track with what you’re learning from the weeks’ episodes released on Tuesdays and Fridays.  To sign up for these FREE text message reminders, go to oneyoufeed.net/text. But wait – there’s more! The episode is not quite over!! We continue the conversation and you can access this exclusive content right in your podcast player feed. Head over to our Patreon page and pledge to donate just $10 a month. It’s that simple and we’ll give you good stuff as a thank you! Eric Johnson and I Discuss The Elements of Choice and… His book,  The Elements of Choice: Why the Way We Decide Matters How are choices are influenced Choice architecture is how choices are structured for people How we often don’t realize we are affected by choice architecture “Sludge” is bad nudging or dark patterns of choices A plausible path is making a better choice easier to make How the order of options can affect our decisions The role of memory when it comes to making decisions Screening and how it’s used in choice architecture Default options and how they may affect decisions Eric Johnson links: Eric’s Website Twitter When you purchase products and/or services from the sponsors of this episode, you help support The One You Feed.  Your support is greatly appreciated, thank you! If you enjoyed this conversation with Eric Johnson, you might also enjoy these other episodes: How to Change Anyone’s Mind with Jonah Berger Mimetic Desires in Everyday Life with Luke BurgisSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Of all that we offer as part of the Spiritual Habits Program, there's one thing we do that, time and time again, we get feedback saying it was one of people's very favorite parts of the whole experience. It's the daily text message reminders. It's super simple, but super impactful when it comes to reminding and encouraging people to incorporate the things they're learning into their life. So now we've decided to offer this to all of you. During each week, I will be texting brief reminders to help you stay on track with what you're learning from the episodes that we release on Tuesdays and Fridays. These short text message reminders will be directly from me to you,

and they will periodically prompt you to pause for a second and become more present and mindful, to pull you out of autopilot and encourage you to engage with the week's podcast topics in a bite-sized short and simple manner and maybe most of all they will be reminders that you're part of this listener community and that there are like-minded people all over this world receiving the same text message working on feeding their good wolf in the same way as you are reminders that i'm right there with you doing the same So if you'd like to sign up for these free text message reminders and bits of encouragement from me, go to oneyoufeed.net slash text. Live to people say they're going to live to 85. The die by people think they're going to die by 75. Same question, but just because labels bring to mind different

things, you get very different answers. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers 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. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you?

We have the answer. Go to reallyknowreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really Know Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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. Hey, 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 a parable. There's a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild and they say, in 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 and looks up at their grandparent and says, well, which one wins? And the grandparent 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 what 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 two. I get up in the morning, I decide what to eat, and I decide what to exercise or not. And those choices are linked. They come into habits. And the other thing that 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 to the other. I can either do something that is in 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 know, 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 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 at 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 290 toasters. So ones that are at the top of the list are 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'll 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 ask my wife, where do you want to go to dinner tonight? Whether I know it or not, I'm making a set of decisions, what we might think of as 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 is 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 one. Yeah.

So it actually is, am I letting her remember? Turns out memory is really important if you're trying to understand how choice design or choice architecture works. Another thing, of course, I can decide what attributes 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 are 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. Yep. Yep. 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 a dating site, or Amazon, somebody has made a set of decisions about things like how many options to present, which options to present. It's the person that does that design who's the choice architect or the designer. So what choice architecture 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. Yeah. Until 2006, companies did not default people into retirement plans. That doesn't mean they weren't influencing them. They were lowering people's savings. Oh, I wish, wish, wish that had been in effect in 1996.

Wouldn't we all have been better off? My life would be so different. That's right. So somebody haphazardly, without thinking thinking made you poor, Eric, I'm sorry to say. Yeah. So there's a great example, right? They opted me out by default. Right. And they may not have even known they were doing it. They just, that was the status quo. 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 a 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 3% or 6%. You ask 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 case or people willfully being stupid. And I think, no, I think we're so busy 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 I don't want to eat, I might still have them, but they're on a top shelf behind a closed door. That's a very simple self-choice architecture. The things that will come to mind when I say, gee, I'm hungry, might be fruit or granola bar

and not my own personal weakness, chips. 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, tighten 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 24 hours. I'm not that extreme, but that would be the idea. It's like the old piece of financial advice of taking your credit cards and freezing them in a jar of ice so that you'd have, before you can use them, you have to melt them down and hopefully not put them in the microwave. That's a bad idea. In the case of chips, our 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 understand. Sorry, Chris, to give you advice. That's a great example. I tell you the other thing that in 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 got to get up, you got to go get in your car, you got to drive to the store. Now you just open your phone, click a couple of buttons and McDonald's 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, three 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 10 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 what is it? So sludge, I think, is due to someone named Richard Thaler, who happened to win a Nobel Prize. And he's a clever wordsmith. In fact, I think he came up with the 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 going to say help them do the wrong thing, but another way of saying that it hurts them. I was going to say help them do the wrong thing, 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. That's another great one. What that means is I subscribe to the 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 different number. And they actually ask me things like, are you sure? And they put me on hold. The costs of upping a subscription versus declining a subscription are asymmetric. In fact, in computer science, they sometimes call this the roach motel because customers come in and they can't check out. Or the Hotel California, I guess, would be another. Yes. 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 if I'm 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 ones I look at? One example I like a lot is a friend of mine who worked at Cornell Vial Hospital. She was a medical informatist. That is, 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 are brand name drugs. Now, chemically, these are in most cases identical. It's exactly the same pill, the same outcomes. But about 90% of doctors were prescribing the brand name drugs. Just to give you two facts about this, which I think are interesting. The first is that generics are five times cheaper than brand name drugs. So I take a pill called Allegra, let's say it cost a dollar. The generic, which is called fexofenadine hydrochloride, is 20 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 with what doctors call 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 perspective to get people to describe 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, Allegra. And partly because when it came on the market, that was advertised. They got pens with

the name Allegra on it. The supervision pad said Allegra. And long story short, they couldn't remember the name. And I've had to practice it to be able to say it, afexofenadine hydrochloride. Very impressive. Yeah. Well, it's taken a lot of practice. But what's true is that she changed the system. So, when I typed Allegra, I typed A-L-L, it auto-populated fexafenidine 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 90% of the 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 as written, and almost nobody does that. And that doubled from about 46% to 90% percentage of prescriptions that were written for generic drugs. Small change in the interface, big change in behavior.

It's 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 a 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 it clearly does, but it also reminds you. It serves as a reminder. So memory is a really important role. That's sort of the other way that designers work their magic. 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

1980s. It was delightful actually interviewing him. And he took the same ground meat and called it either 30% fat or 7% lean. Now, if you add those up, that's all that ground beef 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 lean, they think of it building muscle. And it's the exact same meat. And he actually would cook it up in the lab and have people taste it. And the 30% fat

would taste better to people. And it's not because it's any different. It's because what they think about as they consume it is different. So your guitar case is not just making it easier. It's also reminding you that you could be playing music now. Ah, 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, since we'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 ways that choice architecture works is fairly simple. It brings to mind one goal or the other. So the hamburger example, deliciousness versus health. Things like order of options can change what it is we want because if you 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 going to be determined by the choice architecture.

Let me give you an example that I rather like. It turns out that I can ask you how long you're going to live to, or I can ask you what year you'll die by. Now, clearly those are going to be the same question, right? You should name the same year in each case. Clearly, those are going to be the same question, right? You should name the same year in each case. And what happens if I say what year will you live to?

You think about your Aunt Harriet who lived in 102. You think about the fact that you weren't 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. They'll think of Uncle Ernest who died at 55 of a massive heart attack. They'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 will you live to versus when you'll die by, this is about a 10-year difference.

Live to people say they're going to live to 85. The die by people think they're going to die by 75. Same question, but just because labels bring to mind different things, you get very different answers. There's a cognitive bias called the recency bias. Is this sort of a similar idea in some ways? Well, recency is usually applied to memory to say that you're going to remember the last thing that you saw. And so let me give you an example of how important choice architecture can be. If I give you a menu with 10 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, give it 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 toward the end will be remembered. That's when you get a recency bias. So it just shows you it's a place where the plausible paths say, I stopped too soon if it's written. But if it's given to you orally, I'm going to only remember the last things. And it turns out to understand the effect of order, you have to understand which of those two things is going on. 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 LA 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. Certain ones all of a sudden became sort of out for me. I was like, well, I am not going to put Bramble Berry Crisp with chocolate.

In my mind, those two don't go together. So it's this idea that our preferences, I might say, well, I like chocolate ice cream. I prefer that. might say, well, I like chocolate ice cream. I prefer that. But it's going to 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 there'll be 36 different nice gelatos there. And I sort them one way, and you pick the bramble berry cream. I sort them

another way, and you pick the bramble berry cream. Then I think you have a real preference. But I sort them differently. Now you're choosing chocolate or the hazelnut, then I think your choice is actually going to be pretty flexible, that it's actually not that strong of a preference. And it's interesting, you may experience both of those choices as being strong preferences and not be aware that the order of the ice creams change your choice, like 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 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 wants lots of points. Then I can know what the right credit card would be for you. I think of it a little bit like a flight simulator. That is, in flight simulator, I could say, okay, you get to land in Charles de Gaulle Airport now or 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 one. But if you start crashing in places, then I know it's

not such a good one. I want a way of presenting your choices that's going to let you find the right thing for you, no matter what it is you're looking for. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal?

The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you, and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Brian

Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really No Really.

Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You talked earlier about something that is so foundational to 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 architecture has the biggest impact. That is, if I know, look, I know I don't like liver, sorry. And no one on choice architecture is going to make me eat liver. Even if I put it first on the list and default it? Even if I put it first on the list. I choke if someone gives me a sea urchin roe uni as a sushi. Choice architecture 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 architecture 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 choice architecture 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 inconsistent. And the choice architecture is determining your choice. And I'm not going to tell you it's a cure, but it 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 stay home, it's one decision. You should have to think about that goal independent of the schools. My niece is making these choices now. And if a friend is going to 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 friend's not the point. She needs to think hard in the abstract 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 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, I, for years, have seen that list. You know, you're supposed to write down all the pros and all the cons. And whenever you see that quote, there's usually dot, dot, dot, an 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 it turns out Ben Franklin understood the rule 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 about memory is when you're thinking about why you want to go away to school, it's hard to think about reasons 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. And actually, it turns out there's a phenomenon called inhibition. That means if I think about one thing, it's harder to think about other things. And really, one thing that choice searchers 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 could do with the money, or if you're going away to school, if I stayed home, my local community college, what else could I do with those thousands of dollars I'm not spending on a private college? You know, you might come to a very different decision. So what Brent Franklin anticipated is 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 $100. 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, on 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 24 hours, I'm like, I still really want to go get that thing that, okay, you know, 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 call opportunity cost.

What are the other things you could do with the money? It doesn't prevent you from buying it, but it makes it a better acknowledgement 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 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 whole 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 think we'd get to meet people. There's some nice things about that.

They're not thinking about 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 we would do because when we think about the future, time, it's actually even harder to think about the other things we would do because when we think about the future, we don't think about the fact that we're going to 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, which is 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 I get an invitation to write a chapter or write a book. And I say, 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 going to be able to take a long evening off to watch some 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 query 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've 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 worse 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 going to have more time in the future. Boy, do I fall prey to that one because I just, I'll look at my week and I'll be like, all right, I'm just going to kick that to that one. Because I just look at my week and I'll be like, all right, I'm just going to 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 got to get over this hump. And then it'll be

easier. And I just after a couple 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 going to 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 going to 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 there'll 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. So there'll be lots of things that 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 the things I try and do is allocate, not just, I'm going to write this paper and then meet with this student and say, I'll do that sometime later this week. I actually try and schedule how long it's going to take. And by allocating the time, I end up being a little bit less ambitious and probably, hopefully 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 ask 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 going to want to do. I'm always going to dread 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. Okay. Four-part question.

Yes. So my wife reads the New York Times Values column. And this is a habit. On Sunday, it used to be the paper. Now it's her iPad. She'll say, who married whom? And as a result, I started looking just to see what she's looking at. And it started that the, 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 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 the Urban Dictionary has a line about Tinder thumb, which is the pain you feel after scrolling too much. And the annui is the phrase they use of realizing no one's exactly right. Now, there's something else that goes on that really illustrates this idea of screening. If I see one person a 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 taller than they are in heels. Yep. So they use height. And if you're one inch too short, you're going to lose perhaps the right person. You're solely not going to make the kind of trade-off we're talking about.

So screening, you know, has an advantage. It 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 height. So you end up basically picking people on a 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 vowels, I noticed the people who had used 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 and height. I might actually be screening on height and George Clooney is one inch below my criteria. Now, he might be for many people a perfect balance between height. So, maybe I'll put up with it by having to wear one inch shorter heels if I were a woman. Basically, you can eliminate things and particularly if they're negatively correlated. negatively correlated. So, the interesting thing about lying about your height, it means when you're actually choosing on height, you're probably picking people who are less honest. The people who lie the most are the people you pick. The cute sort of dad joke I have in the book is these are people who don't measure up, literally. You're picking people who are not as tall as they say they will and actually misrepresent their height the most. Probably

not a good recipe for finding Miz or Mr. Ray. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk

gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today.

How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really No Really, sir. God bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really No Really.

Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition signed Jason Bobblehead. It's called Really No Really and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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

three hundredth of a 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. 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 of 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. Right. 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 effect sizes. Sometimes it will be 90%. Sometimes it will be 2%. But you 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 want it to stand for a bunch of evidence. You know, after all, that's how science works. And so, I want the stories to be memorable.

But the one thing we learned from the Coke study, the subliminal 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 FCC made it illegal to broadcast subliminal messages over television. In fact, it turns out you can't do it. The technology doesn't allow it. The 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 are there a bunch of them that actually show that? And that may be a bit of a hairy detail, but I think it's really an important lesson. You don't take a pill because it's been found in one study.

Yep. And it is hard as a consumer or a layperson 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 worthy studies and puts them out. And then, you know, who has time to go in and research them? I mean, most people don't. has time to go in and research them. I mean, most people don't. And so even as someone like me, who's 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 it 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 foot three on any dating site, right? I think 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 i have to assume other people then tried 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 okay 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 80%, 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 is 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. In Germany, you're not a donor and you have to change actively. Now, in those studies, we get about a 50% or 60% 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, if at all. Defaults work particularly well when you're not making

the choice often. So what we've done is research that say, how big are default effects and when do they happen? And there's a recipe for getting a big default effect. And one part of that recipe 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 going to 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 agreeing to be a donor. That's not the end of the process. That's about 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 your family is asked. Notice your family being asked is also a choice architecture. That is, whoever's doing the asking is a designer. And it turns out there are very big differences. Spain, which is sort of the poster child for huge amounts of organ donation, it'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 a 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, one of the reasons people don't have end of life statements, I just came from my annual physical today. And, you know, 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, you know, do you have an end of life statement? And I sit 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 all 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 100-plus people, there was a huge effect. I'm going to roughly say 30% picked the comfort care when the life extension was the default, 60% when the comfort care was the default. So there's a very big preference difference. That's because we've conflicting goals and 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 were in a study. You randomly decided which set of defaults you got. Now do you want to change?

And I think only three people changed 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. In most of the U.S, it's actually life extension. And whoever's doing that, wittingly or unwittingly, haphazardly 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 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 because 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've thought about what I want. I don't want to revisit that decision. It's related to both of those things. But I think, you know, once I formed a preference, if I remember it, why revisit 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 were 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 we'll be and the less we'll be influenced by either current choice architecture or choice architecture that influenced us 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, at Duke with their MBAs. 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. If it was sorted by quality, they would choose more expensive, better tasting wines. That's a case where choice architecture 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 sort 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 I like the five buck truck in the other site, you know, you're being influenced by the choice architecture. Yeah. 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 influence 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, getting me to think about even that very thing right there.

Like, what am I sorting on? A recent example is 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 thusly, we're able to evaluate decisions through that lens. Right. And I would call that lens basically saying, what's the most important attributes? Yeah. 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, you're 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's a member of the

Brotherhood of Magicians. It turns out there's 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. It's tilted. So it's actually looks a little bit like a diamond.

Then he says, imagine bright and vivid in your mind. And what is more vivid, black or 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've done the video of that little demonstration with the hand gestures and without the hand gestures. And it turns out in class, I just have people look at one or the other, and they're much more likely 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 that this trick worked as well as it did. It's actually a lovely demonstration of how accessibility, what 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 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 I show them both films or just the one film. If they see the one and they see the differences, they go, oh, of course. But even

though I've seen that one of the squiggles, they have some hint. And the research, it'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 that have a lot of different 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. Yeah.

There's 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. 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, you know, via a series of questions to certain conclusions. Thank you so much for coming on. You and I are going to talk for a couple 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 minutes in the post-show conversation about that. 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 oneufeed.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 talking to you. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a monthly donation to support the One You Feed podcast. When you join our membership community with this monthly pledge, you get lots of exclusive members-only benefits. It's our way of saying thank you for your support. Now, we are so grateful for the members of our community. We wouldn't be able to do what we do without their support, and we don't take a single dollar for granted. To learn more, make a donation at any level, and become a member of the One You

Feed community, go to oneyoufeed.net slash join. The One You Feed podcast would like to sincerely thank our sponsors for supporting the show. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really No Really podcast.

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