Richard H. Thaler > Quotes

“Psychologists tell us that in order to learn from experience, two ingredients are necessary: frequent practice and immediate feedback.”
― Richard H Thaler, Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioural Economics

“A choice architect has the responsibility for organizing the context in which people make decisions.”
― Richard H. Thaler, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness

“The combination of loss aversion with mindless choosing implies that if an option is designated as the “default,” it will attract a large market share. Default options thus act as powerful nudges.”
― Richard H. Thaler, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness

“First, never underestimate the power of inertia. Second, that power can be harnessed.”
― Richard H. Thaler, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness

“people have a strong tendency to go along with the status quo or default option.”
― Richard H. Thaler, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness

“The purely economic man is indeed close to being a social moron. Economic theory has been much preoccupied with this rational fool.”
― Richard H. Thaler, Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioural Economics

“you want to nudge people into socially desirable behavior, do not, by any means, let them know that their current actions are better than the social norm.”
― Richard H. Thaler, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness

“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”
― Richard H. Thaler, Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics

“Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam. There the authorities have etched the image of a black housefly into each urinal. It seems that men usually do not pay much attention to where they aim, which can create a bit of a mess, but if they see a target, attention and therefore accuracy are much increased.”
― Richard H. Thaler, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness

“A nudge, as we will use the term, is any aspect of the choice architecture that alters people’s behavior in a predictable way without forbidding any options or significantly changing their economic incentives.”
― Richard H. Thaler, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness

“The first misconception is that it is possible to avoid influencing people’s choices.”
― Richard H. Thaler, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness

“What makes the bias particularly pernicious is that we all recognize this bias in others but not in ourselves.”
― Richard H. Thaler, Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics

“Libertarian paternalism is a relatively weak, soft, and nonintrusive type of paternalism because choices are not blocked, fenced off, or significantly burdened.”
― Richard H. Thaler, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness

“My only advice for reading the book is stop reading when it is no longer fun.”
― Richard H. Thaler, Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics

“The moral is that people are paying less attention to you than you believe.”
― Richard H. Thaler, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness

“Just as no building lacks an architecture, so no choice lacks a context.”
― Richard H. Thaler, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness

“If you want to encourage someone to do something, make it easy.”
― Richard Thaler

“The more choices you give people, the more help with decision making you need to provide.”
― Richard H. Thaler, Nudge: The Final Edition

“The ideal organizational environment encourages everyone to observe, collect data, and speak up.”
― Richard H. Thaler, Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics

“Worldly wisdom teaches that is it is better for reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally.”
― Richard H. Thaler, Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioural Economics

“An especially good way to gain weight is to have dinner with other people. On average, those who eat with one other person eat about 35 percent more than they do when they are alone; members of a group of four eat about 75 percent more; those in groups of seven or more eat 96 percent more.”
― Richard H. Thaler, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness

“People are unrealistically optimistic even when the stakes are high. About 50 percent of marriages end in divorce, and this is a statistic most people have heard. But around the time of the ceremony, almost all couples believe that there is approximately a zero percent chance that their marriage will end in divorce—even those who have already been divorced!10 (Second marriage, Samuel Johnson once quipped, “is the triumph of hope over experience.”)”
― Richard H. Thaler, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness

“Overconfidence is a powerful force.”
― Richard H. Thaler, Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics

“Of course, coaches are Humans. They tend to do things the way they have always been done, because those decisions will not be second-guessed by the boss. As Keynes noted, following the conventional wisdom keeps you from getting fired.”
― Richard H. Thaler, Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioural Economics

“Benefits Now—Costs Later We have seen that predictable problems arise when people must make decisions that test their capacity for self-control. Many choices in life, such as whether to wear a blue shirt or a white one, lack important self-control elements. Self-control issues are most likely to arise when choices and their consequences are separated in time. At one extreme are what might be called investment goods, such as exercise, flossing, and dieting. For these goods the costs are borne immediately, but the benefits are delayed. For investment goods, most people err on the side of doing too little. Although there are some exercise nuts and flossing freaks, it seems safe to say that not many people are resolving on New Year’s Eve to floss less next year and to stop using the exercise bike so much. At the other extreme are what might be called sinful goods: smoking, alcohol, and jumbo chocolate doughnuts are in this category. We get the pleasure now and suffer the consequences later. Again we can use the New Year’s resolution test: how many people vow to smoke more cigarettes, drink more martinis, or have more chocolate donuts in the morning next year? Both investment goods and sinful goods are prime candidates for nudges. Most (nonanorexic) people do not need any special encouragement to eat another brownie, but they could use some help exercising more.”
― Richard H. Thaler, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness

“So to put it simply, forcing people to choose is not always wise, and remaining neutral is not always possible.”
― Richard H. Thaler, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness

“Loss aversion helps produce inertia, meaning a strong desire to stick with your current holdings.”
― Richard H. Thaler, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness

“MBA students are not the only ones overconfident about their abilities. The “above average” effect is pervasive. Ninety percent of all drivers think they are above average behind the wheel,”
― Richard H. Thaler, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness

“The interview started. Hearing a friend tell an old story about you is not an exciting activity, and hearing someone praise you is always awkward. I picked up something to read and my attention drifted— until I heard Danny say: “Oh, the best thing about Thaler, what really makes him special, is that he is lazy.” What? Really? I would never deny being lazy, but did Danny think that my laziness was my single best quality? I started waving my hands and shaking my head madly but Danny continued, extolling the virtues of my sloth. To this day, Danny insists it was a high compliment. My laziness, he claims, means I only work on questions that are intriguing enough to overcome this default tendency of avoiding work. Only Danny could turn my laziness into an asset.”
― Richard H Thaler, Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioural Economics

“Many people have made money selling magic potions and Ponzi schemes, but few have gotten rich selling the advice, “Don’t buy that stuff.”
― Richard H. Thaler, Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics