‘Nudging’ Goes to College

Classical economics went wrong at its first turn, say Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler. Man is not homo economicus, the rationally calculating actor that the dismal scientists from Adam Smith down through Milton Friedman supposed our species to be. No, we are emotionally driven, contextually influenced, socially conditioned: Humans, not Econs.
Sunstein and Thaler famously lay out their Human vs. Econ divide in Nudge, their 2008 bestseller that popularized a new sub-discipline, behavioral economics. Behavioral economists recognize that people make hasty decisions for non-rational reasons, relying on rules of thumb, heuristics, and past experiences that bias their judgment and prevent them from maximizing their gains. “Unlike Econs,” say Sunstein and Thaler, “Humans predictably err.” And if you can predict what errors they will make, you can wall off temptations and set Humans up to succeed.


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