Rating:
(110 reviews)
Author: Richard H. Thaler
ISBN : 0300122233
New from $17.00
Format: PDF, EPUB
Direct download links available Free Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness [Hardcover] for everyone book 4shared, mediafire, hotfile, and mirror link
Every day, we make decisions on topics ranging from personal investments to schools for our children to the meals we eat to the causes we champion. Unfortunately, we often choose poorly. The reason, the authors explain, is that, being human, we all are susceptible to various biases that can lead us to blunder. Our mistakes make us poorer and less healthy; we often make bad decisions involving education, personal finance, health care, mortgages and credit cards, the family, and even the planet itself.
Thaler and Sunstein invite us to enter an alternative world, one that takes our humanness as a given. They show that by knowing how people think, we can design choice environments that make it easier for people to choose what is best for themselves, their families, and their society. Using colorful examples from the most important aspects of life, Thaler and Sunstein demonstrate how thoughtful “choice architecture” can be established to nudge us in beneficial directions without restricting freedom of choice. Nudge offers a unique new take—from neither the left nor the right—on many hot-button issues, for individuals and governments alike. This is one of the most engaging and provocative books to come along in many years.
Download latest books on mediafire and other links compilation Free Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness [Hardcover]
- Hardcover: 293 pages
- Publisher: Yale University Press; 1 edition (April 8, 2008)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0300122233
- ISBN-13: 978-0300122237
- Product Dimensions: 1.2 x 6.4 x 9.2 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Free Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness
This book covers a lot of ground, and none of it is covered with any rigour or depth.
There are occasional interesting pieces of insight - for example, if you want people to reduce their energy usage, it may be enough to tell above-average users that they are in that category - below-average users, not so much, they may then use more energy - but you can counter this by a nice smiley emoticon next to where that fact is displayed (implying they're doing a great thing by using less energy) and their usage will stay low.
The problem is, to gain these nice pieces of insight, I had to dig through much much more content that was not covered well.
Here are some of the the things you'll find in this book
- A superficial review of psychology research concerning a few factors on how people make choices (For example, too many choices lead to overwhelm and bad decisions. Another example - people can be influenced to make a bad decision if others around them are making bad decisions).
- A explanation of how people can be helped to make good choices, for example with food, by where food is placed on store shelves (e.g. at eye level vs not).
- Many many pages of excruciating detail on why choices of medical insurance plans can be a complex and painful process. Ditto for how the complexity of investing can lead to bad investment choices. None of this is original.
Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein are both professors at the University of Chicago and where the Chicago school was once famous for the Milton Friedman doctrine of free markets (look where they've got us today!) Thaler and now his Law professor friend Cass Sunstein have swung the pendulum the other way.
Here in Nudge, they argue that totally free markets can lead to disasters precisely because human individuals are not actually very good decision-makers. As Behavioural Economists (Kahneman & Tversky Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases- who credited Thaler as being a key inspiration - and Dan Ariely, whose Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions has become a best seller) argue, we are riddled with little psychological tics in our decision-making processes. We buy things, then suffer remorse. We get confused by choices and often make no choice at all.
But where Ariely keeps his discourse in the world of the day to day, Thaler and Sunstein develop an argument that is political - and is bound to cause heated debate. What they argue is that, in the face of our decision-making weaknesses, Governments and Businesses can help "nudge" us in the right direction. The elephant in the room can be benign.
They call their viewpoint `libertarian paternalism' and what they argue is that it would be a good thing for some gentle nudging of the citizenry in the right direction.
-
Download Link 2