Defaults: Padding the Path of Least Resistance

Defaults: Padding the Path of Least Resistance

Many people take the option that requires the least effort. Inertia, status quo bias, and the “yeah, whatever” heuristic all contribute. All these forces imply that if, for a given choice, there is a default option—an option that will prevail if the chooser does nothing—then we can usually expect a large number of people to end up with that option, whether or not it is good for them. And as we have also stressed, these behavioral tendencies toward doing nothing will be reinforced if the default option comes with some implicit or explicit suggestion that it represents the normal or the recommended course of action.

Defaults are ubiquitous and powerful. They are also unavoidable in the sense that for any node of a choice architecture system, there must be an associated rule that determines what happens to the decision maker if she does nothing. Usually the answer is that if I do nothing, nothing changes; whatever is happening continues to happen. But not always. Some dangerous machines, such as chain saws and lawn mowers, are designed with “dead man switches,” so once you are no longer gripping the machine, it stops. When you leave your computer alone for a while when taking a call, nothing is likely to happen until you have talked long enough to trigger the computer to lock itself and display the screen saver. Of course, you can choose how long it takes before your screen saver comes on, but implementing that choice takes some action. Your computer probably came with a default time lag and a default screen saver. Chances are good that those are the settings you still have.

Choice architects, including the people who arrange cafeteria choices, have many opportunities to choose defaults, and they can do so in ways that are self-serving or welfare enhancing. This is true in both the public and private sectors. In 1938, Germany held an election in which voters were asked, “Do you approve of the reunification of Austria with the German Reich accomplished on 13 March 1938 and do you vote for the list of our Führer, Adolf Hitler?” As shown in Figure 5.2, the option “ya” was more than gently nudged.4 Similarly, in the private sector, firms often can and do choose defaults that are either well-meaning guesses about what their customers would prefer or self-serving grabs of privacy data or money. They might, for example, automatically enroll people in programs that are not at all in their customers’ interests. Such practices are part of the sludge discussed in Chapter 8 of the book. We are not naive optimists about the intentions of choice architects in any sector. Whenever Thaler is asked to sign a copy of Nudge, he signs it “Nudge for good!” This is meant as a plea, not an expectation.

Figure 5.2. German election ballot, 1938

We should reiterate that defaults are not always sticky, and we will see examples of that later. For example, people will be more likely to override the default if the outcome is obviously bad and the cost of opting out is low. When most cars are started, the default setting for the sound system is to play the previous source at the volume setting last used. That works well enough if the car has only one driver, but a parent whose normal choice is a news station at a low volume will quickly change the volume, source, or both if the last user was a teenager who listens to hip-hop at high volume. In fact, the two drivers are likely to adopt the habit of immediately changing the music as soon as they enter the car (the same way that they alter the position of the driver’s seat and mirrors if they are very different heights). Some cars can restore a driver’s seat and mirror settings when a key identifies the driver; similar personalization can reduce the effort of restoring other preferences.

There is a broader lesson here. If people know their preferences, and know that they dislike the outcome that is embedded in the default, they will probably change it. Here’s a simple demonstration. A change in the default thermostat setting had the expected effect on employees at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). During winter, a 1°C decrease in the default caused a significant reduction in the average setting. But when choice architects reduced the default setting by 2°C, the reduction in the average setting was actually smaller. The reason? A lot of employees thought that it was too cold, and promptly returned the setting to the one that they preferred. The general rule appears to be that even Humans will reject a default if it makes them really uncomfortable.5

We have emphasized that default rules are inevitable—that private institutions and the legal system cannot avoid choosing them. In some cases, though not all, there is an important qualification to this claim. The choice architect can force the choosers to make their own choice! This approach has various names, including “required choice,” “mandated choice,” and “active choosing.” 6 In setting up a new app, for example, required choice would be implemented by leaving all the possible options unchecked and requiring that at every opportunity, people select one of the options before being allowed to proceed to the next step. Government forms often have this characteristic. For benefits programs in the United States, you might be asked to answer a bunch of questions, and if you leave an answer blank, you might not be allowed to go on to the next page.

Active choosing is not uncommon. In many contracts, some issues are considered so important, and so easily overlooked, that people are required explicitly to consent that they have agreed to the specified terms, because we do not want them to make such decisions inadvertently or mindlessly. Active choosing can interrupt inertia and make a preference explicit, though requiring an answer does not guarantee that the chooser has considered it carefully. You can think of requirements of explicit consent as a behaviorally informed policy, one that reflects an effort to protect people not only against their own inattention but also against manipulation. (In fact many such policies can be understood to reflect an emerging legal right: the right not to be manipulated.) Active choosing can require people to indicate consent; whether that consent is informed also depends on what they understand and how the choice is presented. When the University of Chicago reopened its buildings in the fall of 2020 following the COVID-19 shutdown, both students and employees were required to complete a “COVID attestation” that said they were familiar with all the rules and agreed to follow them.

There is a kind of intermediate option: prompted choice. If you are buying some product online, you might be prompted to buy some ancillary service, too (such as insurance). With prompted choice, you are not required to choose at all; you can simply ignore the prompt and click “next screen.” To work, prompted choice has to have a default (to establish what happens if you disregard the prompt). In one particularly charged issue, organ donation, prompted choice offers an alternative to both automatic enrollment and a required decision. In a sense, it is softer and less intrusive than required choice, which really forces people to say what they want.

We believe that required choice, favored by many who like freedom, is often the best way to go. But consider two objections to that approach. First, Humans will often consider required choice to be a nuisance or worse, and would much prefer to have a good default. In the software example, it is really helpful to know what the recommended settings are. Most users do not want to have to read an incomprehensible manual to determine which arcane setting to select. When choice is complicated and difficult, people might greatly appreciate a sensible default. It is hardly clear that they should be forced to choose.

Second, required choosing is often more appropriate for simple yes-or-no decisions than it is for more complex choices. At a restaurant, the default option is to take the dish as the chef usually prepares it, with the option to ask that certain ingredients be added or removed. In the extreme, required choosing would imply that the diner has to give the chef the recipe for every dish she orders! When choices are highly complex, required choosing may not be a good idea; it might not even be feasible. The book’s discussion of the Swedish pension system in Chapter 10 illustrates problems that can arise when people are strongly urged to choose for themselves.