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Wow. As a former social scientist with an axe to grind this hits hard. I like to provide that HN community with some context as to what this means. There are

by a_simm 4y ago

Wow. As a former social scientist with an axe to grind this hits hard. I like to provide that HN community with some context as to what this means. There are some 300 “research” departments in each of the major social sciences: psychology, sociology, economics and anthropology. If you believe what they say, about half of their mission is teaching and the other half is research. That’s a lot, tens of billions of dollars. The nudge findings were among the few to not only reach the level of public knowledge but, more importantly, directly influence on public policy. To use the one I most familiar with: the so called default for defined contribution retirement plans, eg 401k. These government regs assumed, for good reason, that maximizing contributions was in the public interest. Based on the nudge findings, after much debate and effort, they were updated to dictate that the max options forms was pre selected in the brief it would cause more individuals would opt for that as opposed to contributing zero. So far so good, right? In fact nudge has become a canonical example in introductory public policy courses as to how their research can in some sense make things better. This meta-analytic finding turns on the authors’ method for measuring publication bias. Because I accept that, I must believe that this entire body of research, probably the signal behavioral economics work, is essentially worthless! Thus, all that effort has not only been wasted but the credibility of social science in general is damaged. Adding this to the well/known gamesmanship in peer review, debate over tenure and etc. means it’s past time to reform a large chunk of academia.

xyzzy123 4y ago
In the example you cited I don't think that's a nudge? Or is it? I ask because I am sure that changing defaults DEFINITELY works, especially if the user does not have a strong existing preference. You're not really changing user behaviour most of the time, you're changing the outcome of what they're trying to do, which is to reduce their cognitive load by ignoring as much as they possibly can.
- JusticeJuice 4y ago
  Nudges are often imagined as just how choices are presented, but yes the default option is considered part of nudge theory. As also is social proof ("Your friends picked this choice"). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nudge_theory#Types_of_nudges https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nudge_theory#Types_of_nudges
  - clairity 4y ago
    also, the question is how much structural elements influence outcomes (not merely decisions), not whether they do or not. that’s the extra complexity of a social system built atop a biological system built atop a chemical environment built atop a physical one. we’re complicated. physics is nigh child’s play in comparison.
- mikkergp 4y ago
  Some other poster posted that they must have a pretty specific definition of nudge, because it defies credulity that defaults don’t change outcome if only because half the time I don’t read the defaults or know where to find them. I mean I just found out two weeks ago you could change the hacker news banner color. Are you telling me I’m in a statistically insignia can’t minority of hacker news users? Also how many settings are there in the average application, you can’t tell me most users go through all of those settings to get exactly what they want.
  - xyzzy123 4y ago
    If defaults don't work then Google wasted 15 billion dollars last year paying Apple to be in the search bar... I guess there must be further detail in the paper and I will have to read it to understand the nuance.
    - Gustomaximus 4y ago
      Also fair to recognise google also pays Apple to not make or promote a competitor that may offer far more competition. Id say this is a large part of the reason Gmail, Android and Chrome exist.
    - pessimizer 4y ago
      Or Google is using the search bar as a pretense for paying Apple for something else.
      - greggsy 4y ago
        Suggesting that there is a corporate or government conspiracy without actually saying what it might actually be is the worst type of conspiracy.
        pessimizer 4y ago
        That's not a conspiracy. When two companies, or countries, or individuals have business dealings on many different levels, a lot of things can be negotiated at the same time.
- adamisom 4y ago
  Yeah, I am also confused by the statement that nudges theory doesn’t replicate and I’m afraid that statement won’t replicate haha, or rather, there are basic, indisputable findings with mindboggling effect size that countries with different defaults for organ donors have different donation rates. Now, you can say all day long that those aren’t causal studies, but there is just no way that confounding factors like different cultures explain it, because cultures just aren’t sufficiently different, or rather cultures that are otherwise pretty similar have vastly different donation rates. A lot of the replication crisis imo is just realizing that landmark studies were underpowered. That is, they don’t prove what they meant to prove, but that is very different from whether the effect exists i.e. an effect may exist yet be hard to prove and social scientists are rarely rigorous in study design, from training and from inherent difficulty.
- _8j50 4y ago
  401k is a good example, I have had it for my whole career but if there was a form at any point asking me how much of my pay I want to contribute I would have said 0 because I prefer cash at hand than cash some day and all the b.s. health insurance is already taking a lot. But 401k doesn't bother me enough to change the default so I leave it be as some kind of rainy day fund. I didn't like paying the penalty to withdraw it, unless I turn 65, it will always be worth significantly less than it says on paper, I am not even convinced it is beating inflation. My point is, because people don't change the default it does not mean they have accepted it or like it, that is an incorrect conclusion. Food is another example, I like cheese sometimes but when there is an option for it I take it out of the food most times but I won't go out of my way to ask for its removal otherwise, this has a real health impact.
  - mikeiz404 4y ago
    If you’re worried about beating inflation, have a long time horizon, and don’t mind some risk you might looking into investing in total market index funds. An index fund for the S&P 500 has averaged ~10% returns when looking back 30 years [1]. If you’re just concerned about inflation, don’t like risk, and don’t mind locking you money up for a little bit Treasury Inflation Protected Securities [2] are also a thing. Their returns are tied to the Fed’s measurement of inflation (CPI). 1: https://www.fool.com/investing/how-to-invest/index-funds/average-return/ https://www.fool.com/investing/how-to-invest/index-funds/ave... 2: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/tips.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/tips.asp
    - jimmydorry 4y ago
      To add to the above, here's a graph of inflation adjusted S&P 500 [1]. [1] https://www.multpl.com/inflation-adjusted-s-p-500 https://www.multpl.com/inflation-adjusted-s-p-500
  - LegitShady 4y ago
    I max out contribution because my employer matches - instant 100% return. If I didn't have that I'm not sure I'd do it.
- kristianc 4y ago
  This seems to be the standard response to anything that seeks to debunk nudge. Any time you say ‘This example of a nudge doesn’t work / isn’t replicable / isn’t actually socially helpful’ someone will say ‘Ah but that’s not really nudge tactics.’
  - mcswell 4y ago
    No true Scotsman.
    - harry8 4y ago
      Also the other way will come up in these kinds of "arguments" without doubt. "How can these horrible critics say nudges don't work? Have they never been nudged with a loaded revolver? Can they not imagine that working?" Leaving those of us who don't follow the controversy closely in the field and are interested in what has actually been found out and understood about the world with some degree of confidence across many fields of study, leaves us scratching our heads unable to see through the viewing window for all the mud getting flung.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
JusticeJuice 4y ago
> Thus, all that effort has not only been wasted but the credibility of social science in general is damaged. I don't think that's entirely true If anything this just highlights how complex behavioural science really is, as they're dealing with surprisingly complex humans and their surprisingly complex lives. Behavioural science is a young field.
- mcswell 4y ago
  "Behavioural science is a young field." As was chemistry up until, say, Robert Boyle.
mikkergp 4y ago
How does a meta analysis of something like this avoid, I don’t know what it would be called but like regression to the mean. A “nudge” isn’t a singular thing, it’s a very diverse process requiring a competent administrator. My gut would say when you averaged all those out, you’d see no effect because your experimenting, some work some don’t work, some backfire. It seems like you’d have to do a meta analysis on a specific nudge, not on groups of nudges.
- svnt 4y ago
  They aren’t summing effects. An effect is not cancelled by an inverse effect or as you put it, backfire. The methodology should (I haven’t investigated theirs in detail) not be susceptible to this, and I doubt a mean of effects would make it through peer review for reasons including the ones you’ve mentioned.
  - mikkergp 4y ago
    Where are they getting an effect size of .08 if not by mathing a bunch of other effect sizes.
pid_0 4y ago
No offense, but the research in social sciences has very little credibility. From the reproduction crisis to the blatant inability to research things that go against what the professors want, it’s just untrustworthy. Academia needs to fix itself.
kingkawn 4y ago
Does academic social science research have credibility to damage?
pm_me_your_quan 4y ago
Except that's not what the study says. Quoting a comment below, "The linked study (and the Merten's study it's built ontop of) classifies defaults as "structural" interventions. In the linked meta-analysis, after stripping out estimates of publication basis, structural interventions have the most "robust" evidence left (95% CI of 0.00-0.43)"
mikkergp 4y ago
> This meta-analytic finding turns on the authors’ method for measuring publication bias. Because I accept that, I must believe that this entire body of research, probably the signal behavioral economics work, is essentially worthless! This is a pretty short article, how are you confident of such a broad conclusion? What makes you that confident that this meta-analysis is decisive?
xhkkffbf 4y ago
Hah. Reform academia. Good one. When people have tenure, they'll be there teaching their version of this stuff for a long time and it's all but impossible to reform them without shutting down the departments. In many schools, these social science departments are a favorite for the weaker students who don't really do so well with math. They're usually filled with athletes. They love to absorb pop psych results like Amy Cuddy's Power Pose and so they don't want to listen to anyone question their results with lots of meta analysis. They want some basic ideas from class in between lots of time on the playing field. I'm afraid that their demands will far outweigh any desire to force the fields to search for absolute truth.
curiousllama 4y ago
> This meta-analytic finding turns on the authors’ method for measuring publication bias. Because I accept that, I must believe that this entire body of research, probably the signal behavioral economics work, is essentially worthless! I strongly disagree with this statement, even as someone who believes “nudge” effects are wildly overblown. It means “these studies failed to find evidence” - NOT that there is nothing to find. The distinction is important because, as it turns out, the policies that the research influenced did work, in many cases. 401k contributions did go up, in many cases. More people became organ donors. More Europeans got stronger privacy protections. “The power of defaults” is such a cliche because, in many cases, it works. The problem with these studies is overstating the effect - not spewing worthless BS.
- glitchc 4y ago
  Changing the defaults is not the same as nudging. There is a logical error in your thinking here.
- turns0ut 4y ago
  People born in Germany speak German. That we need to “create” the idea of a “nudge effect” when it’s clear people take on commonly encountered social behaviors is bizarre. Cognitive experience is a for loop with memory; for time spent in situation X, memory forms at rate Y. Social science solved. Social science derives all it’s conclusions by studying the same old physical world as physical science. It’s restatement of science customized to cultural tradition. It’s cultural tradition to over hype our specialness selling books and big ideas, when the math is the same everywhere. Creating cultural objects of obvious math is a commodity now.
- a_simm 4y ago
  I defend and elucidate. Worthlessness I would define here relative to the amounts of public and of policy attention the nudge findings have received vs net value add modified by these results. Perhaps due to the PR efforts of leading researchers, it was much more than “set defaults intelligently.” The interpretations were more like: we can use social science to shape peoples’ behavior at the margins. Further these marginal changes would cumulate to substantive and lasting societal improvement. On reflection, it seems to me that the value of this paper stems from its attempt to measure or quantify publication bias. In this case, the bias was positive in the direction of with studies confirming nudge effects. Taking that a step further implies that the actual net nudge effects across published and unpublished studies were statistically and therefore substantively insignificant. Hence the use of the term worthless, i.e. non-findings. To say that it is costless to implement a nudge scheme in the behavioral economics sense is simply untrue. In the retirement case it required a lengthy ethical and legal debate; some study and political argument as to the best outcome, which is in part a redistributive question, hard costs associated with revision or development of messages and other materials, etc. Worse I believe is the damage done from attention and action predicated on now seemingly faulty social science. What could’ve been done instead and what will happen in the next time a social scientist claims an ‘easy’ way to make things better are costs.
runarberg 4y ago
I left psychology around the time that nudging was gaining traction and I haven’t really been following it. But it seems to have a couple of red flags: First of the definition: > A nudge is a function of (condition I) any attempt at influencing people’s judgment, choice or behavior in a predictable way (condition a) that is motivated because of cognitive boundaries, biases, routines, and habits in individual and social decision-making posing barriers for people to perform rationally in their own self-declared interests, and which (condition b) works by making use of those boundaries, biases, routines, and habits as integral parts of such attempts. I find this definition overly permissive and overlay reliant on unnecessary cognitive terms (like judgement and choice; which can be shortened to behavior) or economic terms (like rationality and self interest). As a fan of behaviorism this feels like an attempt to introduce epicycle into a theory that doesn’t need it. This effect—if it exists—can probably be adequately explained with good old classical conditioning and conditional reinforcements. This is the first red flag. That is not to say we can’t look for specific cognitive functions which makes some reinforcement contingencies more effective then others, but nudge feels a bit too general to actually be of any use in a model. It in fact reminds me of Albert Bandura’s theory of self-efficacy, a theory that seems to have reach a dead-end at this point. The second red flag is the economic presuppositions. When I skim through the literature it feels like they are creating a band-aid on the thoroughly debunked notion of Homo economicus (the believe that human individuals always behave in a rational way optimized for their own self interest). So instead of recognizing the fact human behavior is more complicated, what they try to do is invent a new term to counter-act the instances where biases are “preventing” such a behavior pattern. I find such an effort to be doomed to fail, as—despite the persistence of economists—rational behavior means a different thing for each individual, and there is no “patch” for what economists call “biases”.
rmatt2000 4y ago
> ... the credibility of social science in general is damaged. Umm, I have some news for you.
t_mann 4y ago
Yes, nudging is an extremely well established concept, all the way from theory to policy - there's a Nobel (memorial) prize for the theory, and the UK government explicitly established a 'nudge unit' (the Behavioural Insights Team) to turn it into policy.
- salawat 4y ago
  Manipulation and deceit works? And the Government is all in on it? Imagine that.
anigbrowl 4y ago
'Social sciences as Sorcery' indeed.
TameAntelope 4y ago
Isn't this just one specific analysis using a very narrow definition of "nudge", one that doesn't even begin to encompass the work being done at those "300 "research" departments"? Further, isn't this using the same data from the original meta analysis that did find "of small to medium size" effect[0]? Why would this, alone, undo decades of research and clear, bright-line conclusions such as the ones cited in my sibling comments? In other words, why is this letter the final word on the topic of "nudge", to you, and not the original meta-analysis? Sounds like you think everyone should pack it up and go home, all because of one letter using an alternative set of definitions and analysis. Just seems like an overreaction on your part, especially given how vocal and... you-sounding (for lack of a better term) the "anti-nudge" crowd often is. To take a wider view, a comment like yours is a more malicious form of nerd-sniping[1], especially on HN. Claim to have relevant credentials, voice a contrarian-but-popular-here opinion, and make a wild conclusion to give those reading it a feeling of "inside baseball." [0] https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2107346118#sec-3 https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2107346118#sec-3 [1] https://xkcd.com/356/ https://xkcd.com/356/
- pizzathyme 4y ago
  I agree, I have worked at 5 separate tech companies and have conducted hundreds of statistically significant experiments, changing what people select by default. These methods have been effective at helping hundreds of millions of people improve choices. It’s common practice, think: pricing on Amazon, default tips on Uber, default purchase price in a video game, etc. I don’t see how this would make me reinterpret all those successful results. Maybe I don’t understand what this is saying.
  - ad8e 4y ago
    One interpretation is that it is very hard to extract value from the nudge literature. When reading research articles, one must estimate and adjust for biases. This adjustment shifts the p-values by unclear amounts. So a positive result may just be a fluke. As for your own AB tests, you have seen the processes that go into them and do not need to adjust for unknown biases. So when they demonstrate a nudge effect, you can believe it.
fatherzine 4y ago
"credibility of social science"
b112 4y ago
Adding this to the well/known gamesmanship in peer review, debate over tenure and etc. means it’s past time to reform a large chunk of academia. But we are reforming, right? Merit based learning is over, and so really, what's it matter?
jrochkind1 4y ago
> Based on the nudge findings, after much debate and effort, they were updated to dictate that the max options forms was pre selected in the brief it would cause more individuals would opt for that as opposed to contributing zero. I would be shocked if that wasn't true though. Is there any evidence it's not true in that specific case, that pre-selecting the max options causes more individuals to opt for that? Have individuals opting for that indeed gone up since this was done?
raxxorraxor 4y ago
I think the worst offense of the social sciences recently is their quest to correct bias and with that the creation of idiots that believes themselves to be able to do that. Because now you have said idiots running around screaming how terrible that bias is completely neglecting the fact that everyone is subjected to it.

by a_simm 4y ago

xyzzy123 4y ago

In the example you cited I don't think that's a nudge? Or is it? I ask because I am sure that changing defaults DEFINITELY works, especially if the user does not have a strong existing preference. You're not really changing user behaviour most of the time, you're changing the outcome of what they're trying to do, which is to reduce their cognitive load by ignoring as much as they possibly can.

JusticeJuice 4y ago
Nudges are often imagined as just how choices are presented, but yes the default option is considered part of nudge theory. As also is social proof ("Your friends picked this choice"). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nudge_theory#Types_of_nudges https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nudge_theory#Types_of_nudges
- clairity 4y ago
  also, the question is how much structural elements influence outcomes (not merely decisions), not whether they do or not. that’s the extra complexity of a social system built atop a biological system built atop a chemical environment built atop a physical one. we’re complicated. physics is nigh child’s play in comparison.
mikkergp 4y ago
Some other poster posted that they must have a pretty specific definition of nudge, because it defies credulity that defaults don’t change outcome if only because half the time I don’t read the defaults or know where to find them. I mean I just found out two weeks ago you could change the hacker news banner color. Are you telling me I’m in a statistically insignia can’t minority of hacker news users? Also how many settings are there in the average application, you can’t tell me most users go through all of those settings to get exactly what they want.
- xyzzy123 4y ago
  If defaults don't work then Google wasted 15 billion dollars last year paying Apple to be in the search bar... I guess there must be further detail in the paper and I will have to read it to understand the nuance.
  - Gustomaximus 4y ago
    Also fair to recognise google also pays Apple to not make or promote a competitor that may offer far more competition. Id say this is a large part of the reason Gmail, Android and Chrome exist.
  - pessimizer 4y ago
    Or Google is using the search bar as a pretense for paying Apple for something else.
    - greggsy 4y ago
      Suggesting that there is a corporate or government conspiracy without actually saying what it might actually be is the worst type of conspiracy.
      - pessimizer 4y ago
        That's not a conspiracy. When two companies, or countries, or individuals have business dealings on many different levels, a lot of things can be negotiated at the same time.
adamisom 4y ago
Yeah, I am also confused by the statement that nudges theory doesn’t replicate and I’m afraid that statement won’t replicate haha, or rather, there are basic, indisputable findings with mindboggling effect size that countries with different defaults for organ donors have different donation rates. Now, you can say all day long that those aren’t causal studies, but there is just no way that confounding factors like different cultures explain it, because cultures just aren’t sufficiently different, or rather cultures that are otherwise pretty similar have vastly different donation rates. A lot of the replication crisis imo is just realizing that landmark studies were underpowered. That is, they don’t prove what they meant to prove, but that is very different from whether the effect exists i.e. an effect may exist yet be hard to prove and social scientists are rarely rigorous in study design, from training and from inherent difficulty.
_8j50 4y ago
401k is a good example, I have had it for my whole career but if there was a form at any point asking me how much of my pay I want to contribute I would have said 0 because I prefer cash at hand than cash some day and all the b.s. health insurance is already taking a lot. But 401k doesn't bother me enough to change the default so I leave it be as some kind of rainy day fund. I didn't like paying the penalty to withdraw it, unless I turn 65, it will always be worth significantly less than it says on paper, I am not even convinced it is beating inflation. My point is, because people don't change the default it does not mean they have accepted it or like it, that is an incorrect conclusion. Food is another example, I like cheese sometimes but when there is an option for it I take it out of the food most times but I won't go out of my way to ask for its removal otherwise, this has a real health impact.
- mikeiz404 4y ago
  If you’re worried about beating inflation, have a long time horizon, and don’t mind some risk you might looking into investing in total market index funds. An index fund for the S&P 500 has averaged ~10% returns when looking back 30 years [1]. If you’re just concerned about inflation, don’t like risk, and don’t mind locking you money up for a little bit Treasury Inflation Protected Securities [2] are also a thing. Their returns are tied to the Fed’s measurement of inflation (CPI). 1: https://www.fool.com/investing/how-to-invest/index-funds/average-return/ https://www.fool.com/investing/how-to-invest/index-funds/ave... 2: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/tips.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/tips.asp
  - jimmydorry 4y ago
    To add to the above, here's a graph of inflation adjusted S&P 500 [1]. [1] https://www.multpl.com/inflation-adjusted-s-p-500 https://www.multpl.com/inflation-adjusted-s-p-500
- LegitShady 4y ago
  I max out contribution because my employer matches - instant 100% return. If I didn't have that I'm not sure I'd do it.
kristianc 4y ago
This seems to be the standard response to anything that seeks to debunk nudge. Any time you say ‘This example of a nudge doesn’t work / isn’t replicable / isn’t actually socially helpful’ someone will say ‘Ah but that’s not really nudge tactics.’
- mcswell 4y ago
  No true Scotsman.
  - harry8 4y ago
    Also the other way will come up in these kinds of "arguments" without doubt. "How can these horrible critics say nudges don't work? Have they never been nudged with a loaded revolver? Can they not imagine that working?" Leaving those of us who don't follow the controversy closely in the field and are interested in what has actually been found out and understood about the world with some degree of confidence across many fields of study, leaves us scratching our heads unable to see through the viewing window for all the mud getting flung.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]

JusticeJuice 4y ago

> Thus, all that effort has not only been wasted but the credibility of social science in general is damaged. I don't think that's entirely true If anything this just highlights how complex behavioural science really is, as they're dealing with surprisingly complex humans and their surprisingly complex lives. Behavioural science is a young field.

mcswell 4y ago
"Behavioural science is a young field." As was chemistry up until, say, Robert Boyle.

mikkergp 4y ago

How does a meta analysis of something like this avoid, I don’t know what it would be called but like regression to the mean. A “nudge” isn’t a singular thing, it’s a very diverse process requiring a competent administrator. My gut would say when you averaged all those out, you’d see no effect because your experimenting, some work some don’t work, some backfire. It seems like you’d have to do a meta analysis on a specific nudge, not on groups of nudges.

svnt 4y ago
They aren’t summing effects. An effect is not cancelled by an inverse effect or as you put it, backfire. The methodology should (I haven’t investigated theirs in detail) not be susceptible to this, and I doubt a mean of effects would make it through peer review for reasons including the ones you’ve mentioned.
- mikkergp 4y ago
  Where are they getting an effect size of .08 if not by mathing a bunch of other effect sizes.

pid_0 4y ago

No offense, but the research in social sciences has very little credibility. From the reproduction crisis to the blatant inability to research things that go against what the professors want, it’s just untrustworthy. Academia needs to fix itself.

kingkawn 4y ago

Does academic social science research have credibility to damage?

pm_me_your_quan 4y ago

Except that's not what the study says. Quoting a comment below, "The linked study (and the Merten's study it's built ontop of) classifies defaults as "structural" interventions. In the linked meta-analysis, after stripping out estimates of publication basis, structural interventions have the most "robust" evidence left (95% CI of 0.00-0.43)"

mikkergp 4y ago

> This meta-analytic finding turns on the authors’ method for measuring publication bias. Because I accept that, I must believe that this entire body of research, probably the signal behavioral economics work, is essentially worthless! This is a pretty short article, how are you confident of such a broad conclusion? What makes you that confident that this meta-analysis is decisive?

xhkkffbf 4y ago

Hah. Reform academia. Good one. When people have tenure, they'll be there teaching their version of this stuff for a long time and it's all but impossible to reform them without shutting down the departments. In many schools, these social science departments are a favorite for the weaker students who don't really do so well with math. They're usually filled with athletes. They love to absorb pop psych results like Amy Cuddy's Power Pose and so they don't want to listen to anyone question their results with lots of meta analysis. They want some basic ideas from class in between lots of time on the playing field. I'm afraid that their demands will far outweigh any desire to force the fields to search for absolute truth.

curiousllama 4y ago

> This meta-analytic finding turns on the authors’ method for measuring publication bias. Because I accept that, I must believe that this entire body of research, probably the signal behavioral economics work, is essentially worthless! I strongly disagree with this statement, even as someone who believes “nudge” effects are wildly overblown. It means “these studies failed to find evidence” - NOT that there is nothing to find. The distinction is important because, as it turns out, the policies that the research influenced did work, in many cases. 401k contributions did go up, in many cases. More people became organ donors. More Europeans got stronger privacy protections. “The power of defaults” is such a cliche because, in many cases, it works. The problem with these studies is overstating the effect - not spewing worthless BS.

glitchc 4y ago
Changing the defaults is not the same as nudging. There is a logical error in your thinking here.
turns0ut 4y ago
People born in Germany speak German. That we need to “create” the idea of a “nudge effect” when it’s clear people take on commonly encountered social behaviors is bizarre. Cognitive experience is a for loop with memory; for time spent in situation X, memory forms at rate Y. Social science solved. Social science derives all it’s conclusions by studying the same old physical world as physical science. It’s restatement of science customized to cultural tradition. It’s cultural tradition to over hype our specialness selling books and big ideas, when the math is the same everywhere. Creating cultural objects of obvious math is a commodity now.
a_simm 4y ago
I defend and elucidate. Worthlessness I would define here relative to the amounts of public and of policy attention the nudge findings have received vs net value add modified by these results. Perhaps due to the PR efforts of leading researchers, it was much more than “set defaults intelligently.” The interpretations were more like: we can use social science to shape peoples’ behavior at the margins. Further these marginal changes would cumulate to substantive and lasting societal improvement. On reflection, it seems to me that the value of this paper stems from its attempt to measure or quantify publication bias. In this case, the bias was positive in the direction of with studies confirming nudge effects. Taking that a step further implies that the actual net nudge effects across published and unpublished studies were statistically and therefore substantively insignificant. Hence the use of the term worthless, i.e. non-findings. To say that it is costless to implement a nudge scheme in the behavioral economics sense is simply untrue. In the retirement case it required a lengthy ethical and legal debate; some study and political argument as to the best outcome, which is in part a redistributive question, hard costs associated with revision or development of messages and other materials, etc. Worse I believe is the damage done from attention and action predicated on now seemingly faulty social science. What could’ve been done instead and what will happen in the next time a social scientist claims an ‘easy’ way to make things better are costs.

runarberg 4y ago

I left psychology around the time that nudging was gaining traction and I haven’t really been following it. But it seems to have a couple of red flags: First of the definition: > A nudge is a function of (condition I) any attempt at influencing people’s judgment, choice or behavior in a predictable way (condition a) that is motivated because of cognitive boundaries, biases, routines, and habits in individual and social decision-making posing barriers for people to perform rationally in their own self-declared interests, and which (condition b) works by making use of those boundaries, biases, routines, and habits as integral parts of such attempts. I find this definition overly permissive and overlay reliant on unnecessary cognitive terms (like judgement and choice; which can be shortened to behavior) or economic terms (like rationality and self interest). As a fan of behaviorism this feels like an attempt to introduce epicycle into a theory that doesn’t need it. This effect—if it exists—can probably be adequately explained with good old classical conditioning and conditional reinforcements. This is the first red flag. That is not to say we can’t look for specific cognitive functions which makes some reinforcement contingencies more effective then others, but nudge feels a bit too general to actually be of any use in a model. It in fact reminds me of Albert Bandura’s theory of self-efficacy, a theory that seems to have reach a dead-end at this point. The second red flag is the economic presuppositions. When I skim through the literature it feels like they are creating a band-aid on the thoroughly debunked notion of Homo economicus (the believe that human individuals always behave in a rational way optimized for their own self interest). So instead of recognizing the fact human behavior is more complicated, what they try to do is invent a new term to counter-act the instances where biases are “preventing” such a behavior pattern. I find such an effort to be doomed to fail, as—despite the persistence of economists—rational behavior means a different thing for each individual, and there is no “patch” for what economists call “biases”.

rmatt2000 4y ago

> ... the credibility of social science in general is damaged. Umm, I have some news for you.

t_mann 4y ago

Yes, nudging is an extremely well established concept, all the way from theory to policy - there's a Nobel (memorial) prize for the theory, and the UK government explicitly established a 'nudge unit' (the Behavioural Insights Team) to turn it into policy.

salawat 4y ago
Manipulation and deceit works? And the Government is all in on it? Imagine that.

anigbrowl 4y ago

'Social sciences as Sorcery' indeed.

TameAntelope 4y ago

Isn't this just one specific analysis using a very narrow definition of "nudge", one that doesn't even begin to encompass the work being done at those "300 "research" departments"? Further, isn't this using the same data from the original meta analysis that did find "of small to medium size" effect[0]? Why would this, alone, undo decades of research and clear, bright-line conclusions such as the ones cited in my sibling comments? In other words, why is this letter the final word on the topic of "nudge", to you, and not the original meta-analysis? Sounds like you think everyone should pack it up and go home, all because of one letter using an alternative set of definitions and analysis. Just seems like an overreaction on your part, especially given how vocal and... you-sounding (for lack of a better term) the "anti-nudge" crowd often is. To take a wider view, a comment like yours is a more malicious form of nerd-sniping[1], especially on HN. Claim to have relevant credentials, voice a contrarian-but-popular-here opinion, and make a wild conclusion to give those reading it a feeling of "inside baseball." [0] https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2107346118#sec-3 https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2107346118#sec-3 [1] https://xkcd.com/356/ https://xkcd.com/356/

pizzathyme 4y ago
I agree, I have worked at 5 separate tech companies and have conducted hundreds of statistically significant experiments, changing what people select by default. These methods have been effective at helping hundreds of millions of people improve choices. It’s common practice, think: pricing on Amazon, default tips on Uber, default purchase price in a video game, etc. I don’t see how this would make me reinterpret all those successful results. Maybe I don’t understand what this is saying.
- ad8e 4y ago
  One interpretation is that it is very hard to extract value from the nudge literature. When reading research articles, one must estimate and adjust for biases. This adjustment shifts the p-values by unclear amounts. So a positive result may just be a fluke. As for your own AB tests, you have seen the processes that go into them and do not need to adjust for unknown biases. So when they demonstrate a nudge effect, you can believe it.

fatherzine 4y ago

"credibility of social science"

b112 4y ago

Adding this to the well/known gamesmanship in peer review, debate over tenure and etc. means it’s past time to reform a large chunk of academia. But we are reforming, right? Merit based learning is over, and so really, what's it matter?

jrochkind1 4y ago

> Based on the nudge findings, after much debate and effort, they were updated to dictate that the max options forms was pre selected in the brief it would cause more individuals would opt for that as opposed to contributing zero. I would be shocked if that wasn't true though. Is there any evidence it's not true in that specific case, that pre-selecting the max options causes more individuals to opt for that? Have individuals opting for that indeed gone up since this was done?

raxxorraxor 4y ago

I think the worst offense of the social sciences recently is their quest to correct bias and with that the creation of idiots that believes themselves to be able to do that. Because now you have said idiots running around screaming how terrible that bias is completely neglecting the fact that everyone is subjected to it.