​Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness
Richard H. Thaler and Cass S. Sunstein
ISBN:  978-0-300-12223-7
                                              
APA Style Citation
Thaler, R. and Sunstein, C (2008).  Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness.  New York:  Penguin Group.

​Book Description
Richard H. Thaler and Cass S. Sunstein were both professors of Economics at the University of Chicago at the time of the publication of Nudge.  Sunstein went on the work at the White House as the Administer of Information and Regulatory Affairs while Thaler remains at University of Chicago.  The authors use Nudge to pose the idea of Libertarian Paternalism, which they describe as a type of choice architecture.  They combine the fields of Economics and Psychology to describe how anyone from cafeteria workers to governmental agencies can present choices in such a way to help guide (nudge) people towards better choices while still giving them complete control over those same choices.
 
Thaler and Sunstein begin with a cafeteria manager who realized students purchase more of items presented close to the beginning of the cafeteria line.  If desserts were presented first, students ate more desserts, if fruit was presented first, students ate more fruit. The manager could use this knowledge to make more profit for herself, but Thaler and Sunstein suggest that the paternalism component of libertarian paternalism should provoke her to arrange the healthiest food items first to encourage students to eat as healthy as possible.  Students are not forced to choose the first items presented and the manager has not limited the student’s choices, but she found that the arrangement of food items changed the sales of items by up to 25%.  Hopefully this finding will be used by others to encourage students to make healthy decisions regarding their food selections.
 
Thaler and Sunstein recognize that many people will oppose this type of paternalism because it does exert some control over people’s choices and may not always be used in ways that are in the best interests of the average American.  They counter by indicating that libertarian paternalism is only intended to look out for the best interests of as many people as possible.  They explain the difference between “econs” who would always look at the world objectively without emotion to make the best decisions for themselves and their families and “humans” who are impacted by emotions and busy lives and as a result do not always make the best choices for themselves or their families. Because most of us are “humans”, they argue, libertarian paternalism becomes a helpful necessity.
 
In many cases libertarian paternalism attempts to encourage humans to make good financial choices.  Thaler and Sunstein describe how their University retirement system had individuals opt in each year even if they had been in the system the prior year.  Many employees did not think about retirement during the year and forgot to opt in for the upcoming year during the open period.  They then had to wait until the following year to opt in again.  By speaking with school administrators (none of whom had remembered to opt in) they were able to change the default to remain in the system and only to opt out if they wanted to make a change to their retirement contributions.  With this type of choice architecture, far more people participated in the retirement plan at the University.  They recommend the same type of programs for new hires who will be automatically entered into a savings system unless they decide to take action and opt out.  The idea is that people know they should be saving for retirement but often do not get around to actually taking the action necessary to get started.  The State of Illinois has created a default program to become an organ donor and saw a dramatic increase in those donating, presumably saving thousands of lives each year.
 
Thaler and Sunstein credit Daniel Kahneman for his work with biases and heuristics in which people use a rule of thumb based on prior experiencing or knowledge to make decisions, which often turn out to be erroneous.  They use an example of an anchoring heuristic in which people attempt to guess the population of the city of Milwaukee.  It is unlikely that people know this answer outright so they will use their own frames or reference to determine the best response.  If someone from Chicago were asked the question, they might know that Milwaukee is the largest city in Wisconsin but not as big as Chicago, so they may say about a million since Chicago has about 3 million and it is perhaps about 1/3rd the size.  People from Green Bay Wisconsin might estimate that Milwaukee is about three times as large as Green Bay causing them to guess around 300,000.  The actual population is about 580,000 but the anchoring bias of each person’s hometown caused them to guess either too high or too low.  Thaler and Sunstein explain how these and other heuristics such as the availability and representiveness heuristics can lead to overconfidence in any types of choices and decisions.
 
Some of the most important decisions we make in our lives are often the result of little thought or effort.  Most people never change the accounts in their retirement savings or their prescription drug plan even as their lives or health change.  Thaler and Sunstein examined individuals on Medicare and found that most people would have been better served by a different plan, but the people either found the change too complicated or had not given much thought to making a change because they “had health insurance” even if it was not doing them much good.  The libertarian paternalism model would create a system in which those running the system would examine each person’s health and prescription needs for the past few months to determine the best plan.  This would become their default plan and at least would be correct until their health needs changed.
 
Conformity also plays a role in the decisions we make.  By following what everyone else does, we assume what everyone else does must indicate the best restaurant or the best concert often without giving much thought to what we believe.  We can see this evidenced by watching people who eat together match how much they eat to the others they are with.  In another study, college roommates often study as much as one another.   People recycle more if they are informed that most others do the same and pay their taxes if their tax bill indicates that a high percentage of people also pay their taxes.  Energy bills have taken this lead and now often compare each bill payer to their neighbors along with a smiley or frowny face to indicate their level of efficiency.  Thaler and Sunstein cite the work of Solomon Asch who tested whether individuals would conform to the perception of line length falsely reported by confederates.  Asch found that participants would often go along with a clearly incorrect response if they majority of others in the group did.  Asch also found that once a person committed to a response in writing, they were more likely to stand by that response.  Campaign officials have replicated this by demonstrating that if people sign a pledge card regarding their intention to vote, they are far more likely to follow through.  This method has also worked with blood drives and commitments to healthy eating. 
 
Even human factors psychology plays a role in the design of products that can keep people safe and help them interact with products in a healthier fashion such as stove tops that clearly indicate which on/off knob goes with which burner.
 
Thaler and Sunstein believe that we need nudges most when the choices we are faced with are complex or ambiguous.  Credit card statements do not use nudge tactics and often wind up a poor option for people because the anchoring heuristic is the minimum balance on the payment slip without any indication of how much one will pay in the long run if they only pay the minimum payment.  By including this information, Thaler and Sunstein suggest that credit card debt could be substantially decreased.  They are convinced that by implementing paternalistic libertarianism, people can do good and do well.
 
Other Related Resources
Nudge Blog:  For sharing ideas about Libertarian Paternalism
http://nudges.org
 
Forbes:  What it Really Means to Nudge
http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterubel/2015/02/20/q-a-with-richard-thaler-on-what-it-really-means-to-be-a-nudge/
 
The Observer:  Has Push Come to Shove for a Fashionable Theory?
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/jun/01/nudge-economics-freakonomics-daniel-kahneman-debunked
 
The Economist:  The Limits of Nudging
http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2015/07/behavioural-economics
 
Nudge Theory Explanation: Business Balls
http://www.businessballs.com/nudge-theory.htm
 
Psychological Figures and Concepts
Solomon Asch
Muzafer Sherif
Availability Heuristic
Anchoring Heuristic
Commoner’s Dilemma
Conformity
Elimination by aspects
Framing
Human Factors Psychology
Incentives
Loss Aversion
Mere-Exposure Effect
Overconfidence
Peripheral Route to Persuasion
Positive
Priming
Representativeness Heuristic
Self-Serving Bias

​A Tour of the Senses:  How Your Brain Interprets the World
Author:  John M. Henshaw
ISBN: 13:  978-1-4214-0436-3
 
APA Style Citation
Henshaw, John M. (2014). A Tour of the Senses:  How Your Brain Interprets the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

​​Book Description
Often, one of the most difficult units in an introductory psychology course is sensation and perception.  A Tour of the Senses provides an excellent source of supplemental materials to accompany this portion of the psychology curriculum.  This highly engaging book offers detailed explanations of difficult concepts, interesting stories, current and historical research, and simple classroom appropriate demonstrations for each of the senses. The author, John M. Henshaw is a department chair and professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Tulsa.  Because A Tour of the Senses is written by an engineering professor, it provides excellent insight into the field of human factors psychology.  The book is divided into three main parts:  Stimulus, Sensation, and Perception and covers all of the various senses in exceptional detail. 
 
Stimulus
The section on stimuli is divided into electromagnetic stimuli, chemical stimuli, mechanical stimuli, and the overall science of sensation.  In each of these sections, the author provides explanations of the various types of stimuli that reach our sensory receptors.  There are also many interesting accounts of how stimuli are received and perceived differently by other species as well as remarkable cases of humans using senses typically associated with other organisms.  The wide range of animal senses, which differ from human senses in both type and range of ability is examined in the book.  Detailed accounts of the unique abilities of certain organisms such as echolocating bats, ultraviolet radiation sensing honeybees, and snakes that can detect heat waves would all be interesting topics for discussion at the beginning of the sensation unit.  The most unusual animal sense discussed is that of the narwhal, a type of whale with a long, slender, conical shaped tusk reaching up to 9 feet in length.  Although there have been many theories throughout history as to the purpose of this unique appendage (icebreaking, fishing, weapon), the actual answer is even more bizarre.  The tusk is, in fact, the left front tooth of the animal.  The tusk tooth, which is covered with nerve endings, is a sense organ likely capable of detecting changes in the saltiness, temperature changes and pressure changes in the water.  
The opening section details the remarkable story of Ben Underwood, a blind young man who taught himself to see using echolocation.  There are many short videos on Ben’s case available online (see additional resources). There are also exceptional descriptions of difficult concepts such as additive and subtractive color mixing and the just noticeable difference.  An interesting aspect of this section is the detailed attention the author gives to the stimuli responsible for senses such as olfaction, gustation, vestibular, proprioception, which unlike vision and audition are often not given much attention in introductory psychology textbooks. 
 
Sensation
The large section on sensation focuses on how the different sensory organs in humans and other animals have evolved to take in information from the environment.  The process of transduction for each of the sense is discussed in detail, including how the information travels from the sense organs as an electrical signal to various areas of the brain responsible for perception.  The vision section provides a simple demo for illustrating the limited range of the fovea that each student could do individually.  Students should place a quarter over the words on a page so that they can read the lettering above George Washington’s head.  Have students focus on the quarter and without moving their eyes attempt to read the words on either side of the coin.  Typically, it is difficult to identify more than a word or two on either side of the coin due to the limited range of foveal vision.  Although they will be aware of words, they will not be able to read them if they are truly focusing on the quarter. 
 
The importance of visual acuity in relationship to professional athletics is discussed, highlighting how much this sense is responsible for success at the highest levels.  In golf, where athletes can enjoy a much longer career span, declines in vision often lead to the end of a career.  Many top golfers such as Tiger Woods and Vijay Singh have had laser eye surgery to increase their visual acuity to twenty-fifteen or better to improve their putting ability.  In other sports such as baseball, tennis, and football exceptional vision is often one of the aspects that separate the best in the sport from others. In recent years, more and more top athletes have begun incorporating eye exercises to train the muscles that control eye movement. 
 
The chemical senses are explored in great detail and also include various disorders related to problems with smell and taste.  The taste section includes demos and detailed information about supertasters, sensory interaction, and the history of the search for an effective sugar substitute. Anosmia or the complete absence of smell is likely present in 2 million Americans.  The loss of smell that occurs as part of the aging process is called Presbyosmia.  Some individuals experience an overly sensitive sense of smell (hyperosmia) and others with parosmia sense as unpleasant what many others perceive to be pleasing scents.  The use of dogs and other animals whose sense of smell is greater than humans is explored in terms of how animals have been successfully trained to find explosives, bodies, and drugs. Dogs have been trained to complete “dog-scent lineups” which may be used in court.
 
The book refers to audition, touch, pain, temperature, balance, and bodily awareness (kinesthesis) as mechanical senses because these are generally activated by the energy of motion or kinetic energy.  Audition, on the other hand, involves the transduction of vibrating (motion) air molecules, balance and body position are connected to the movement of the head and body, and the sense of touch typically involves the movement of one surface over another.  The most detailed section relates to hearing, and the book examines the structure of the inner ear from an engineering perspective.  There are also excellent explanations for various types of hearing loss and solutions designed to assist individuals with these disabilities.  As in other areas of the book, examples of animals with exceptional sensory abilities are examined to find ways to engineer artificial senses for human use. Research regarding touch and pressure sensation has led to advances in robotics including surgical applications.
The vestibular sense is especially quick at interpreting the position of the head.  If you shake your head from side to side while reading this text, you are still easily able to focus on the words and read the material due to what is called the vestibular-ocular reflex.  The vestibular-ocular reflex is a sophisticated coordination between the vestibular sense and the muscles that position the eyes.  If you keep your head and eyes stationary and move the book from side to side, however, you will not be able to read the text as well. Just as there are hearing and vision tests given by doctors, there are also tests for the vestibular sense.  Doctors examine patients for balance related problems by using the “rapid head impulse test” explained in the book.  One of the most interesting sections is how sensory illusions can impact pilots.  As a result of these common illusions, pilots must trust their instruments because their perception has been disrupted by errors in vestibular perception.  Problems with proprioception are rare but also possible. Without proprioception, no movement can ever be automatic, and even simple actions such as sitting up, walking, or holding a cup become incredibly difficult.
 
Perception
The final section of the book details how perception occurs in the brain including various examples of perception problems due to problems in the brain as opposed to problems in sensory organs.  There are methods for enhancing or replacing human sense organs and sending information directly to the brain.  One of the first perceptual issues discussed is the problem with recognizing faces. Some people are exceptionally good at remembering faces, and other have little or no ability in this area.  Those who are very skilled at facial recognition are sometimes referred to as super-recognizers.   On the lower end of the curve is a condition called prosopagnosia or “face blindness” in which individuals have difficulty recognizing faces including friends, family, or even their own face.  Prosopagnosia may be present from birth or acquired as a result of damage to the area of the brain that specializes in facial recognition. Individuals with face blindness may need to use the less sensitive object recognition systems in the brain.  Face blindness is estimated to impact approximately 2% of the population with more than 6 million individuals experiencing dramatic impairment.  Also, some individuals suffer from an even less well-understood condition called phonagnosia, which is essentially the sound equivalent of face blindness.  For example, these individuals can identify general features of a voice on the phone (e.g. gender, age, pitch, accent) and can understand what is being said, but do not recognize the person who is speaking even if it is a close friend or family member.  Phonagnosia involves a perceptual problem specifically related to damage in the areas of the brain responsible for processing voice recognition of familiar people.

The author provides a detailed section differentiating between bottom-up and top-down processing including several examples and demonstrations.  Bottom-up processing occurs when the brain takes unfiltered signals received from sensory receptors and breaks them down into individual packets of information. Top-down processing, on the other hand, involves the process by which the brain applies meaning to the information it receives by using background knowledge and experience to interpret the information.  A part of top-down processing involves filling in missing pieces of information to create complete perceptions, which is referred to as perceptual completion.  There are also auditory examples of perceptual completion.
 
A Tour of the Senses is a fun, easy to read book that provides a great deal of background information on the area of sensation and perception. As an engineer, the author describes the human sensory perception system but also discusses exceptional sensory abilities in other animals and the technology involved in enhancing human sensory capabilities.  The book is an engaging combination of personal examples, unique stories, research, and practical applications for sensation and perception research. 
 
Other Related Resources
Video documentary about Ben Underwood, a blind teenager who taught himself to see using echolocation
Warning:  A few times during the video Ben Underwood is filmed inserting his glass eyes, which may be startling for some students. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiBeLoB6CKE
 
Testmybrain.org - Are You a Super Recognizer? Determine if you are exceptionally talented at recognizing faces. 
http://www.testmybrain.org/SupersRecruitment.html
 
Rippin’ the Rainbow a New One - NPR Radiolab podcast about color perception in humans and other animals.  The program answers the question of exactly what dogs can see in terms of color.
http://www.radiolab.org/story/211178-rip-rainbow/
 
Why Food Tastes Different on Planes - BBC article about why airplane food tastes different which is an excellent example of sensory interaction. 
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150112-why-in-flight-food-tastes-weird
 
The following links are to a two part 60 Minutes episode on face blindness. 
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/face-blindness-when-everyone-is-a-stranger-20-03-2012/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8cXus7SNQY
  
World Science Fair Presentation on Face Blindness:  Creation of a bell curve in the audience with ten images.  Images used, however, include many celebrities many students do not know (e.g. Fred Astaire, John F. Kennedy Jr., Audrey Hepburn).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7s6kQdyyxOE
 
Faceblind.org – Harvard website which provides detailed information on Prosopagnosia including several tests of face blindness.
http://www.faceblind.org/
 
Pride and a Daily Marathon –Video about Ian Waterman who suffers from a rare neurological problem that involves a complete loss of his kinesthetic sense.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNX_3OPVQTs
 
King of Fruits –Videos related to the Durian fruit, which is considered a delicacy in parts of Southeast Asia but is seen as repulsive by Western tastes. http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/malaysia_durian
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQj-hFfmYkQ
 
Absolute Threshold, Difference Threshold (JND), Weber’s Law https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVhiezByMSU
 
My Stroke of Insight - TED talk by Jill Bolte Taylor based on her book My Stroke of Insight referenced by the author in the section on neural plasticity.
http://www.ted.com/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight?language=en
 
The Science of Scent – TED talk by biophysicist Luca Turin referenced in the book. He is the subject of Chandler Burr's book The Emperor of Scent. He is currently working on developing an artificial nose.
https://www.ted.com/talks/luca_turin_on_the_science_of_scent

Video – Oliver Sacks on Face Blindness
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5bvnXYIQG8
 
Psychological Figures and Concepts
Pierre Paul Broca
Charles Darwin
Rene Descartes
Sigmund Freud
Joseph Francis Gall
Sir Francis Galton
Hermann von Helmholtz
William James
Carl Wernicke
Agnosia (Prosopagnosia, Phonagnosia)
Broca’s area
Cochlear implant
Color <ixing (Additive and Subtractive Color Mixing)
Color Blindness
Critical Period
CT, fMRI, MRI, PET
Echolocation
Facial Recognition
Genome
Gustation
Hearing
Just Noticeable Difference (JND)
Macular Degeneration
Myopia
Neural Plasticity
Olfaction
Pain
Parkinson’s Disease
Perception (Bottom-Up v. Top-Down)
Pheromones
Photoreceptors (Rods and Cones)
Presbyopia and Presbyosmia
Proprioception
Psychophysics
Supertaster
Synesthesia
Transduction
VestibularSsense
Visual Cortex
Wernicke’s Area