{"id":10396,"date":"2008-12-16T22:16:29","date_gmt":"2008-12-17T03:16:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/?p=10396"},"modified":"2011-08-05T14:53:14","modified_gmt":"2011-08-05T18:53:14","slug":"we-need-our-traditional-pre-holiday-nudge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/2008\/12\/16\/we-need-our-traditional-pre-holiday-nudge\/","title":{"rendered":"we need our traditional pre-holiday nudge<\/i>"},"content":{"rendered":"

M<\/strong><\/em>aybe Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler<\/a> can help . . . \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

married a decade
\nshe hides
\nthe mistletoe<\/p>\n

\n

setting up the creche \u2013 \"\"
\nthe Baby\u2019s name
\nuttered over and over<\/p>\n

\u201ceasy to assemble\u201d
\nI put it back and
\ngrab a teddybear<\/p>\n

\n

\n

\n

\n

nine days \u2019til Christmas \u2013
\nthe tree and the cat
\nboth shedding<\/p>\n

…. from the “not quite the holiday” sequence at dagosan’s haiku diary<\/em><\/a> (Dec. 6, 2007)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a> ..\u00a0I<\/strong><\/em>n a week, I’ve got to head home for Christmas with the Family of Origin.\u00a0 Like every other year of my adult life, pre-Christmas Scrooge Syndrome has paralyzed me (e.g.<\/em>, 2007<\/a> and 2005<\/a>). Neither the flesh nor the spirit seems willing to work through that ever-growing Holiday To Do List.<\/p>\n

I was about to despair, until I saw an article in the new Harvard Law Bulletin<\/em><\/a>: “Intelligent Design: Cass Sunstein shows how ‘choice architecture’ can help people make better decisions” (Fall 2008).\u00a0 It reminded me that I’ve been meaning since last April<\/em> to read Sunstein and Thaler’s much-praised<\/a> book “Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness<\/a><\/em>” (Yale Univ. Press 2008).\u00a0 A lifetime of Mama G’s “catholic maternalism” hasn’t helped me get my Holiday Act together, but surely the “libertarian paternalism” extolled in Nudge<\/em> can lead me out of my annual Yuletime wheel-spinning and teeth-grinding.<\/p>\n

wrapping and
\npacking \u2013
\nshe pastes on a smile<\/p>\n

…. by grinchosan<\/em><\/p>\n

Thaler and Sunstein seem to have me in mind when trying to understand how human beings make choices — and how to “nudge” them into making the best choices (for themselves and society) by better structuring the context in which our choices are made.\u00a0 According to HLB<\/em>:, S&T’s “choice architecture . . . acknowledge[s] that many people will take whatever option requires the least effort.”<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> . . . \u201cHuman beings will often consider required choice to be a nuisance or worse, and would much prefer to have a good default,\u201d they write. \u201cAnd, these tendencies toward doing nothing will be reinforced if the default option comes with some implicit or explicit suggestion that it represents the normal or even the recommended course of action.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Naturally, I was hoping they’d already have a relevant Holiday Nudge<\/em> to get me working on that To Do List right now<\/em>.\u00a0 But, a quick search at their Nudge<\/em> weblog<\/a> turned up nothing specific <\/em>for turning on (much less sustaining or modeling) holiday spirit — no “holiday decision tree” for working past my punchbowl procrastination and finding seasonal renewal and inspiration.<\/p>\n

\"\" I did find a link at their weblog to a dozen sample nudges<\/a> from the book, and I’m planning to read them before heading to bed tonight.\u00a0 If I sleep on it, I’ll surely wake up as converted as the post-visitation Scrooge.<\/p>\n

Just in case that doesn’t work, I picked up a copy of Nudge<\/a><\/em> from the Library today.\u00a0 It’s almost 300 pages.\u00a0 If it takes me a couple days to read and absorb Nudge<\/em> — and construct my own Holiday Choice Architecture — I’ll surely have time to get that To Do List done. Buy those cards and write them on Thursday.\u00a0 Start shopping Friday afternoon, and wrapping on Saturday.\u00a0 Get together with my best Schenectady-area Friends on Sunday and Monday.\u00a0 A bit of panic-packing on Tuesday. And, . . .<\/p>\n

By the way, how late is the Post Office open on December 23rd?\u00a0 And, does Santa have a Default Position?<\/p>\n

update<\/strong><\/em> (Dec. 17, 2008; 11:30 PM): Thanks to the Nudge Blog<\/em> for soliciting<\/a> suggestions and solutions in response to our plea for help.\u00a0 It remains to be seen whether the Nudge experts and their disciples can solve our chronic Christmas crisis.\u00a0 As of this update, they’ve only attracted an additional To Do List<\/a> for me.\u00a0 Hmmm.<\/p>\n

afterwords<\/strong><\/em> (Dec. 31, 2008):\u00a0 As we wrote on December 22, a maternal nudge<\/a> got us on the road to a happy holiday.\u00a0\u00a0 And, see this post<\/a> for a Boxing Day de-briefing.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n
\n

first doubts
\nsanta sounds
\nlike Uncle Al<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

\u2026\u2026 by dagosan<\/em><\/a>; photo by Mama G. (1952; larger haiga here<\/a>)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Maybe Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler can help . . . married a decade she hides the mistletoe setting up the creche \u2013 the Baby\u2019s name uttered over and over \u201ceasy to assemble\u201d I put it back and grab a teddybear nine days \u2019til Christmas \u2013 the tree and the cat both shedding …. from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":94,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[555,1414],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-haiku-or-senryu","category-qs-quickies"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kP1R-2HG","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/94"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10396"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10396\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12087,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10396\/revisions\/12087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}