Nudging is a powerful tool that can influence both personal and community-oriented behaviours by subtly guiding decisions without restricting freedom of choice. This paper explores how nudges can be applied across various contexts to promote personal well-being and collective sustainability, including domains such as personal health, financial security, public safety, and pro-environmental actions (“green nudges”). Examples include default enrolment in retirement savings plans, which encourages individuals to save for the future without mandating participation, or default organ donor registration, where individuals are automatically registered as donors unless they opt out—an approach that significantly increases donor rates. In the context of public safety, interventions such as real-time speed limit feedback are forms of visual cues that help reduce hazardous driving and increase road safety. On a community level, green nudging strategies, such as default enrolment in renewable energy programs, eco-labelling, and the promotion of sustainable transportation, become significant in reducing environmental impacts and fostering sustainability as a common good. This, therefore, exemplifies how nudges can align self-serving behaviours, such as the safety of an individual, with community-serving actions that benefit society in general. The paper concludes by emphasizing the critical role of behavioural public policy in enabling these choices, while also addressing key limitations, criticisms, and alternative approaches.
This paper examines the challenges behavioural public policy faces in reconciling its interventions with liberal principles, as illustrated by Adam Oliver’s concept of “budging.” While “nudging,” a prominent application, aims to steer individuals towards better choices using subtle “choice architecture” tweaks, it has been criticized for its paternalism and potential for manipulation. As a purportedly non-paternalistic alternative, Adam Oliver proposed “budging,” which shifts the focus from the individual to regulating third parties (especially market actors) that exploit known cognitive biases for profit. Oliver argues budging aligns with John Stuart Mill’s harm principle by preventing harm caused by others, specifically “behavioural externalities,” without dictating personal choices. This paper critically evaluates budging’s claim to non-paternalistic legitimacy within a Millian liberal framework, incorporating insights from Feinberg and Raz. It argues that budging often fails to escape paternalism, frequently becoming a form of ‘crypto-paternalism’: interventions justified with the non-paternalistic rationale of preventing third-party harm that nevertheless have the primary effect of steering an individual’s self-regarding choices. The core issue lies in the entanglement of regulating third-party exploitation (externalities) and influencing individual choices potentially affected by biases (internalities). Regulating exploitative practices inevitably steers individuals away from choices deemed suboptimal, which can be interpreted both paternalistically and non-paternalistically. The paper explores challenges related to defining exploitation versus legitimate catering, the difficulty in isolating non-paternalistic justifications, and the potential overlap with existing regulations. Ultimately, it concludes that while budging offers valuable insights, it struggles to cleanly separate itself from paternalism and requires further refinement to be fully compatible with robust liberal principles.
Over the years, the justification for nudging has been challenged on many levels, one of which regards ethical concerns. If nudges instrumentally exploit human biases, it might seem impossible to justify their implementation in liberal democracies. However, instead of disagreeing on nudging, some disagree on its moral premises. First, within the normative framework of political liberalism, the possibility of exploiting biases is conceivable based on the assumptions of compatibilism and Kantian constructivism: nudging would not infringe upon autonomy more than everyday external influences and a nudge can be overwritten by practical reason. Second, a two-way justification for exploiting biases at the public level in liberal democracies is proposed. Focusing on liberalism and the principle of avoiding harm to others, nudging could be a complementary intervention to coercive laws that are already justified from a public perspective to improve their efficiency. Focusing on democratic aspects and the majority’s will, nudging could be a per se type of intervention to reduce the gap between intentions and actions. These two strategies have never been presented as part of a unified view before, and this eschews the criticisms of violating people’s autonomy, technocratic turns, and slippery slopes, without requiring token transparency. Future research from various disciplines could benefit from this new categorization.
Despite well-documented inequalities in access to early childcare services for underprivileged populations, the cognitive and behavioral factors contributing to these disparities have been largely overlooked in existing frameworks. This article addresses this gap by integrating insights from behavioral economics and other behavioral sciences into the analysis of unequal access. First, we expand existing theoretical models by incorporating cognitive and behavioral factors, such as information gaps and decision-making heuristics, alongside structural barriers. Second, we evaluate the empirical relevance of this integration through a PRISMA mixed-methods systematic review of the literature. Our findings, supported by effect sizes, cross-validated impact scores, and p-curve analyses, indicate that cognitive and behavioral factors significantly contribute to access inequalities. We argue that public policies must go beyond structural solutions by redesigning the choice architecture and implementing interventions to support informed decision-making and reduce friction costs. Failure to integrate these behavioral insights risks perpetuating unequal access to high-quality childcare services.
The present study investigated the mediating roles of alexithymia and emotional dysregulation in the relationship between attachment styles (secure, preoccupied, dismissing, fearful) and moral disengagement among young adult women. While existing research separately links insecure attachment with emotional difficulties and moral disengagement, integrated empirical analyses considering these relationships simultaneously remain scarce. Participants included 447 female young adults aged 19–25, assessed via validated instruments: attachment (Experiences in Close Relationships [ECR), alexithymia (Toronto Alexithymia Scale [TAS-20]), emotional dysregulation (Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale [DERS]), and moral disengagement (Moral Disengagement Scale [MDS]). Homogeneity Analysis (HOMALS) revealed distinct patterns associating secure attachment with lower levels of emotional difficulties and moral disengagement, while insecure attachment styles (preoccupied, dismissing, fearful) clustered with heightened emotional challenges and higher moral disengagement. Mediation analyses employing bootstrapped PROCESS macro confirmed significant indirect effects: secure attachment negatively predicted moral disengagement through both lower alexithymia and emotional dysregulation. Preoccupied attachment influenced moral disengagement primarily via emotional dysregulation, while dismissing attachment did so predominantly through alexithymia. Fearful attachment uniquely influenced moral disengagement through both alexithymia and emotional dysregulation. These findings provide novel insights by clearly delineating the emotional pathways through which attachment styles influence moral disengagement. Highlighting specific emotional mediators, our results extend existing literature by emphasizing the critical role of integrated emotional competencies in moral development among young adults. Practical implications suggest targeted interventions enhancing emotional skills to mitigate moral disengagement risks associated with insecure attachments.
The compatibility of nudges with moral action and reasoning has become a focal point in philosophical discourse. While some argue that nudges may inhibit genuine moral responsiveness, others advocate their use to promote morally desirable outcomes, particularly in other-regarding contexts. This paper assesses whether other-regarding nudges are compatible with, and could contribute to moral progress, as conceived by moral and political philosophers. We contend that other-regarding nudges can be compatible with moral progress when they facilitate and reinforce a morally desirable social norm or help overturn a morally undesirable social norm, specifically when they (1) induce improvements in moral behavior, while (2) not worsening the quality of our moral reasoning or our moral beliefs as they were prior to the intervention. For nudges to achieve this, they must be easy to resist, they should not obfuscate moral reasons for action, and they should help individuals in saving up limited cognitive bandwidth. Our account of the moral progressiveness of nudging has three key strengths: it aligns with less stringent views on moral worth, complements accounts of moral progress emphasizing the insufficiency of moral reasoning, and mitigates stability concerns by anchoring nudges in desirable social norms. By demonstrating how heuristics-triggering nudges can facilitate moral progress, we offer a framework that reconciles their practical effectiveness with the demands of moral philosophy.
The work develops an analysis of Sunstein’s libertarian paternalism and his critique of Mill’s Harm Principle. It compares three standpoints: (A) the antipaternalism of Mill’s Harm Principle, (B) Sunstein’s libertarian paternalism, and (C) the nonlibertarian paternalism typically exemplified by legal prohibitions. The work claims that, with some qualifications, (B) is compatible with (A), since libertarian paternalism does not generate the obligations or prohibitions that the Harm Principle disqualifies. At the same time, the work points out some problems and ambiguities that affect Sunstein’s arguments, notably the creation of duties for the purpose of nudging (e.g. duties on producers to benefit consumers) and the extension of nudges to conduct that is legally obligatory (e.g. paying taxes).
This study explores the role of norm nudging in shaping the health-related decisions of college students, focusing on the interaction between institutional sources and message types. We investigate how the alignment between the messenger (institution) and the message can amplify or diminish the salience of information, by introducing the concept of the Institutional Discounting Effect (IDE) to describe the reduced effectiveness of messages that are overly aligned with institutional values. In three studies, we aimed to increase undergraduates' propensity to donate blood and decrease their intentions to consume alcohol by examining two institutional sources (NGOs and the University) and two types of messages: prosocial norms and informational messages typical of NGOs, and descriptive social norms. Our results reveal that NGOs are more effective in conveying social norms than their traditional prosocial and informational messaging strategies. In contrast, universities excel at communicating prosocial and ethical messages rather than using social norms. These findings underscore the crucial need to carefully match messenger and message to maximize communication effectiveness and avoid the IDE.
The objective of this article is to examine a specific form of competence attrition, borrowing, as heuristic solutions to a problem of partial loss of pre-existing organizational competences. In linguistics, language attrition is a recurring phenomenon that consists of the loss of proficiency in one’s native language due to interaction with and learning of a new language. Language attrition involves both systematic errors in the native language and alternative solutions offered by interaction with newly acquired language skills. Recently, a theory of competence attrition has been proposed as an extension of this phenomenon to organizational competences. The purpose of this article is to discuss how forms of competence attrition in organizations can be considered an adaptive solution, discussing the specific form of borrowing. After delving into the topic of borrowing, a case study of a company in the sneakers industry is proposed. The case highlights how resorting to borrowing represents a bias in standard skills that can be viewed positively by the organization as an adaptive solution that can be successful under specific conditions. Implications for both researchers and managers are formulated.
This paper interrogates philosophically the notion of moral injury, a syndrome that has ethics built into its definition: moral injury is not only a trauma associated with psychological suffering and cognitive disruption; it is also a process of moral degradation and loss of ethical competency. I argue that the enactivist approach to cognition, especially the “patternist” and interactionist version informed by phenomenology and virtue ethics that Shaun Gallagher advocates may be helpful to correctly construe moral injury in terms of moral character deterioration and disruption of practical wisdom. Standard approaches to moral injury in psychiatry and clinical psychology are unable to account for the distinctively normative features of character deterioration because of their rationalist, reductionist, and internalist assumptions. On the contrary, enactivism offers an integrative understanding of mental life as a process of participatory sense-making and value construction that encompasses multiple, emergent levels beyond the naturalistic dimension of biopsychological processes to include, importantly the pre-reflective/embodied dimension (habitual moral dispositions, such as virtues), the phenomenological/existential dimension (conscious experience and moral sense-making), and the intersubjective/relational dimension (relating to socio-cultural and symbolic norms, involving groups and institutions). By incorporating all these factors, the integrative perspective advocated by enactivism is better positioned to describe the inherently ethical dimension of human experience and account for the double-nature of moral injury, a syndrome that, by its own definition, requires both a descriptive (clinical) and a normative (value-laden) account. For these reasons, enactivism promotes a more comprehensive and efficacious approach to diagnosis, therapy, prevention, and social intervention.
Human values are a key component in understanding individuals’ choices. One such decision involves defining the criteria that should guide healthcare prioritization. The recent public health crisis (COVID-19) has underscored the insufficiency of healthcare resources in meeting growing demand. Preferences for allocating health resources are are deeply intertwined with ethical and moral judgments rooted in personal and societal values. Therefore, effective healthcare prioritization policies must consider the values of the population they serve. Drawing on Schwartz’s theory of basic human values, the present study aimed to identify the predominant human values among 1,148 Portuguese participants and examine their association withrespondents’ sociodemographic characteristics and their influence on support for three healthcare rationing approaches. A cluster analysis based on the higher-order dimensions of Schwartz’s value model identified four distinct groups: social focus, growth focus, strong social and personal focus, and weak social and personal focus. While egalitarianism emerged as the most widely accepted principle of justice in allocating scarce healthcare resources, participants with a strong social and personal focus prefered utilitarian and equity-based criteria more. Furthermore, positive associations were observed between utilitarian and equity approaches to healthcare rationing. Incorporating societalvalues into resource allocation decisions can can help establish priorities and guide more effective healthcare planning strategies.
Heuristic research has developed along three major traditions: heuristics-as-biases, fast-and-frugal tools, and simple rules. While each has contributed substantially, they remain theoretically fragmented, offering limited insight into how heuristics change over time, across contexts, or between levels of analysis. This conceptual article addresses that gap by introducing the Heuristic Spectrum—a novel framework that conceptualizes heuristics not as fixed types, but as positionally fluid cognitive logics. Heuristics are mapped across four core dimensions: cognitive effort, intentionality, domain specificity, and goal alignment. Shift from one logic to another is theorized not as a categorical transformation but as a movement along this spectrum, shaped by mechanisms such as feedback and performance monitoring, socialization and knowledge transfer, codification and institutionalization, and contextual pressures and scaling demands. This dynamic, multidimensional framework advances Simon’s vision of bounded rationality as adaptive behavior under constraint. By enabling comparisons, the framework bridges paradigmatic divides and offers practical tools for the design, evaluation, and evolution of heuristics in strategy, AI, and public policy.
Framing effects play a central role in the debate regarding human rationality. They violate the normative principle of description invariance, which states that merely redescribing options or outcomes in equivalent ways should not affect judgments or decisions. Description invariance is considered by many decision researchers to be “normatively unassailable”, and violations are widely regarded as demonstrations of systematic irrationality. This article develops an alternative perspective on invariance violations, applying Funder’s (1987) distinction between “errors” and “mistakes”. Description invariance implicitly assumes that (1) rational preferences must be complete and (2) frames do not convey choice-relevant information. We argue that both assumptions often do not hold. When they fail, framing effects in the laboratory are not “errors”, and they do not provide evidence for “mistakes” in natural environments. Furthermore, recent findings suggest that participants often do not regard different responses to different frames as unreasonable, and presenting them with arguments for and against description invariance has little effect on their views. Finally, we argue that similar lessons generalize to other coherence norms, such as procedure invariance and independence of irrelevant alternatives.
In current behavioral debate, fake news is often treated as a static entity—finite in nature, potentially subject to fact-checking, and lacking evolutionary characteristics. We aim to bridge existing domains of behavioral research on fake news by introducing an evolutionary model based on three fundamental mechanisms: variation (what users generate), selection (what users pay attention to), and retention (what users share). This model accounts for the dynamic transformation of non-fake content into fake news, and vice versa.
Simple rules are not only for strategy, they are also for the self. This paper identifies a novel class of simple rules: self-change heuristics. Drawing on a study of 63 senior managers, we reveal how leaders create and apply these heuristics not to address external business problems, but to transform themselves, often shifting from command-and-control to trust, delegation, and empowerment. We discovered that managers use self-change heuristics to unlearn old mindsets and behaviors, to break detrimental habits, and to undo aspects of their identity which they consider inadequate. Symmetrically, they use self-change heuristics to relearn new mindsets and behaviors, to form beneficial habits, and to work on their new identities. We advance a conceptual model that integrates these processes, extending the well-documented role of simple rules from strategy and decision-making to the underexplored domain of personal transformation.
Casino blackjack players learn a simple heuristic that helps them decide when to take additional cards, the most common blackjack decision. The heuristic assumes that all upcoming cards will be 10-value cards, even though that assumption is true fewer than one in three times. The heuristic results in systematic error, but it is also adaptive: it is easier to learn than the optimal strategy, the cost of using it is trivial, and its use is associated with better expected returns. The heuristic helps explain inconsistent previous findings about blackjack likelihood judgments and decision biases. The research relies on mixed methods including qualitative data from 1.5 years of ethnographic fieldwork as a blackjack dealer and player, and quantitative data from interviews with players about how they play each blackjack hand. The heuristic is used as a case to support several theoretical contentions: (a) despite established precedent, gambling is not a good domain-general metaphor for decision making under risk or uncertainty; (b) even in a small-world domain where outcome likelihoods can be calculated and monetary outcomes are unambiguous, using subjective probability to infer expected value may be both uncommon and non-normative; and (c) a focus on narrow, domain- and culture-specific heuristics and biases—despite their limited scope—offers valuable lessons about how, and how well, people make decisions.
This study investigates how behavioural insights are incorporated by policy-makers when designing policy measures. We conducted 81 in-depth interviews with both behavioural insights experts from governments, public administration, public organizations and universities, as well as with policy-makers in Austria interested in applying behavioural insights to their work. Our analysis highlights potential benefits of applying behavioural insights to public policy and discusses ethical considerations, practical challenges and broader hurdles within the public sector, limitations of the approach and methodological concerns. For each of these challenges, we present potential solutions to facilitate the effective integration of behavioural interventions and randomized controlled trials into public policy-making.
This paper discusses the autonomy effects of nudges and boosts. In doing so it distinguishes the three understandings of autonomy that have been mentioned most often the literature on ethics and nudging: agency, freedom of choice, and self-constitution. It also takes the value of time autonomy into account. Time matters in the assessment of nudges and boosts because it is a limited and scarce individual resource and because autonomy in deciding how to spend time increases time quality and wellbeing.as an important scarce resource. The main messages of the paper are that the autonomy implications of nudges and boosts may differ depending on which understanding one is referring to, and that taking account of time autonomy influences the judgment of the implications of nudges and boosts for autonomy.
Algorithmic decision-making systems trained on massive data sets, or “assistive AI,” has the potential to remove biases and errors in traditional decision-making, according to some behavioral paternalists. Assistive AI’s democratization of expert advice represents as important and socially beneficial a technological advancement as the internet’s democratization of consensus knowledge. Like any other tool, assistive AI has limitations. I model individuals as theory-based decision-makers whose social systems are open-ended and evolve through time—like “hazy landscapes” with unclear horizons. I consider both traditional nudges and “hot nudges,” automated nudges programmed to learn how to effectively influence their targets by collecting personalized data. I demonstrate that in open-ended social systems “hot nudges” on “hazy landscapes” can exacerbate the knowledge deficits of traditional nudges and may have uniquely pernicious effects on advancing non-beneficial policies and suppressing the emergence of beneficial social institutions.
