Nudges

Thaler and Sunstein’s “nudge” (1) has spawned a revolution in behavioral science research. Despite its popularity, the “nudge approach” has been criticized for having a “limited evidence base” (e.g., ref. 2). Mertens et al. (3) seek to address that limitation with a timely and comprehensive metaanalysis. Mertens et al.’s headline finding is that “choice architecture [nudging] is an effective and widely applicable behavior change tool” (p. 8). We propose their finding of “moderate publication bias” (p. 1) is the real headline; when this publication bias is appropriately corrected for, no evidence for the effectiveness of nudges remains (Fig. 1).

It’s almost easy to assume that humans are reasonably rational creatures until you see a Black Friday video of stampeding people tussling over televisions. Even then, we can feel like it’s a bit of an us versus them situation. We’d never behave like that, surely!? Don’t get too smug just yet—the tendency to climb over your own grandmother to get to a bargain is kind of baked in to human behavior.

Social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are rife with misinformation that can easily go viral. One study looked at millions of tweets and found that a handful of steps could be taken to slow the spread of false information on Twitter.

An eight-week intervention with the smartphone application induced physical activity of moderate intensity through intrinsic motivation enhancement. We suggest that the motivation enhancement application could be an efficient option for maintaining and promoting psychosocial health behavior. This smartphone application can be applied to any other disease that needs behavioral change. Through the application, a broader spectrum of the population, regardless of time, space, and human resources, can benefit from community health services.

When Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) had been first launched a couple of decade in the past, many greater schooling professionals considered this new arrival as a gimmick. However, within the wake of the worldwide pandemic, many establishments and instructors had been pressured to modify their in-person programs to on-line codecs in a single day. This firsthand expertise taught many people that on-line studying is feasible. What is much less clear is how one can do it successfully.

The use of taxes to compel people to make healthier choices has a long history with tobacco and alcohol, which are taxed by nearly every country in the world. “There’s decades of work now on tobacco, hundreds of studies from around the world, showing that if you raise prices you induce adults to quit smoking and prevent kids from taking it up,” says Frank Chaloupka, an economist at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Research has linked higher cigarette taxes to reduced mortality from throat and lung cancer and other respiratory diseases, Chaloupka and two coauthors wrote earlier this year in the Annual Review of Public Health. Other studies have linked higher taxes to lower rates of hospitalization for heart failure and lessened severity of childhood asthma.

The paradox of choice is a phenomenon where an abundance of options can counterintuitively lead to less happiness, less satisfaction, and hamper the ability to make a decision. 

Consumers use a variety of factors to inform their purchase decisions. One of the most all-encompassing models of purchase intention involves attitudes toward the brand and cultural norms as the biggest influencers over brand choice. This is called the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) and it underpins much of the thinking about purchases from a marketing perspective. Later models expanded on this one by adding a more nuanced view of purchase intentions, for instance, the Theory of Planned Behavior. Below, you see an image depicting TRA. However, attitudes in this model refer to attitudes toward the behavior rather than attitudes toward the brand. Later models built on TRA included attitude toward the brand as a major factor impacting purchase intentions. And, that’s our topic for today; how attitudes toward the brand impact purchases and how to improve consumer attitudes toward the brand.

A group of researchers led by St. Michael's Hospital of Unity Health Toronto recruited a total of 786 patients across nine primary care sites in Ontario who reported cost-related non-adherence to medications. Most of the study participants were recruited from St. Michael's Department of Family and Community Medicine and others were recruited from three rural sites. Participants were randomized into two groups - half received free medications via mail, the other half had their usual access to medications.

There are several factors to consider when determining if insulin is the right treatment option for a patient with type 2 diabetes. And once a patient is prescribed insulin therapy, it’s just as important to consider the factors that might lead to nonadherence. That’s why Dr. Charles Turck speaks with Dr. Javier Morales about those factors and how we can improve our patients’ adherence to their insulin regimens.

Small interventions like altering application forms, using interactive calculators and using infographics can influence people to develop savings habits and to put money away for a rainy day, new research has suggested.

Nudges are behavioral interventions that help us make better choices, like sticking to our diets. Sometimes, nudge theory is used in cunning ways to deter or slow down behavior change, resulting in sludges. Sludges emerge across contexts like cancelling subscriptions, filling out tedious forms, and the fine print. Designing sludges that harm consumers can often involve dark creativity.

Humanity has evolved in close connection to the spaces and landscapes we inhabit. The concept of "place" is an essential part of human experience. It's something our ancestors instinctively understood but which, in a screen-based world, is too easily forgotten.

Today, we will take a close look at the emergence of what is often called the twin epidemics of obesity and type 2 diabetes. This twin epidemic has been taking place all over the world over the last 30-40 years, and it is still getting worse. We will examine the changes in diet that have occurred during this same time frame in several different affected populations. We will see some patterns emerge of specific changes in the diets of these populations that have almost certainly played a major role in the massive changes in body weights and metabolic health.

The research, conducted by the University of Maine, University of Maine at Augusta, University of Vermont and Universite Laval in Quebec, Canada, attempted to understand how society can accomplish major, transformative social change, particularly the kind of social change necessary to tackle the growing problem of climate change.

The window of opportunity to take action to mitigate against severe climate change is right now, it won’t last. This isn’t a remote problem that someone else must fix. It’s one we all must embrace. This need for action should guide much of what we do in transport, where emissions are higher than for other sectors. That is the “upstream problem” that should drive every action “downstream” for surface, air and shipping transport. Targets and action should be led by the science.

Routledge contacted me, looking for new authors for their book series ‘The Psychology of Everything’. They asked me if I would be interested in writing the opus on video games, and since I’m quite passionate about cognitive psychology and games in general, I said yes! It was a great opportunity for me to explain to a broad audience how psychology is used to make games (i.e. human factors psychology and human-computer interaction), what having a ‘UX mindset’ is about (i.e. minding the experience that users will have), and what we currently know about the potential (positive or negative) impact of playing video games.

During disease outbreaks or pandemics, policy makers must convey information to the public for informative purposes (eg, morbidity or mortality rates). They must also motivate members of the public to cooperate with the guidelines, specifically by changing their usual behavior. Policy makers have traditionally adopted a didactic and formalistic stance by conveying dry, statistics-based health information to the public. They have not yet considered the alternative of providing health information in the form of narrative evidence, using stories that address both cognitive and emotional aspects.

Consider Andy, who is worried about contracting COVID-19. Unable to read all the articles he sees on it, he relies on trusted friends for tips. When one opines on Facebook that pandemic fears are overblown, Andy dismisses the idea at first. But then the hotel where he works closes its doors, and with his job at risk, Andy starts wondering how serious the threat from the new virus really is. No one he knows has died, after all.

Physical activity during midlife (ages 45-64) plays a major role in the prevention of chronic and serious medical conditions. Unfortunately, many midlife adults struggle to be physically active in the setting of low levels of psychological well-being and the management of multiple confluent sources of stress. Effective, scalable, midlife-specific interventions are needed to promote physical activity and prevent the development of chronic medical conditions.

Commercially available mobile and Internet technologies present a promising opportunity to feasibly conduct ecological momentary assessment (EMA). The purpose of this study was to describe a novel EMA protocol administered on middle-aged women's smartphones via text messaging and mobile Internet.

Participants with elevated SBP and DBP at baseline showed a mean decrease of 7.2 mmHg and 5.4 mmHg, respectively. Additionally, 70% and 72.5% of participants showed an improvement in systolic and diastolic BP at remeasurement. These improvements in BP are superior to those seen in other recent studies. The long-term sustainability and the efficacy of this and similar digital lifestyle interventions will need to be established in additional, larger studies.

The Minister of Canadian Heritage, Pablo Rodriguez, announced he will soon be holding a national summit on the recovery of the arts and culture sector. Among the topics of discussion will be the critical role for the cultural sector in the fight against climate change. That’s good news.