Experiencing Default Nudges: Autonomy, Manipulation, and Choice-Satisfaction as Judged by People Themselves

Abstract

Critiques of nudging suggest that nudges infringe on decision makers’ autonomy. Yet, little empirical research has explored whether people who are subjected to nudges agree. In three online between-group experiments (N = 2083), we subject participants to different choice architectures and measure their experiences of autonomy, choice-satisfaction, perceived threat to freedom of choice, and objection to the choice architecture. Participants who received an opt-out nudge made more prosocial choices but did not report more negative choice experiences compared to participants in opt-in default or active choice conditions. This was predominantly the case even when the presence of the nudge was made transparent to participants, and when choice stakes were increased. Our results suggest that defaults are less manipulative and autonomy-infringing than sometimes feared. Policy-makers should include measures of choice experiences when testing out new nudges.

Are Default Nudges Deemed Fairer When They Are More Transparent? People's Judgments Depend on the Circumstances of the Evaluation

“…Regardless of being disclosed or not, participants in the nudge conditions were about twice as likely to donate their bonus endowment to charity compared to participants in the opt-in default condition. This finding supports the general conclusion of previous studies on disclosing default nudges, that increased transparency has no, or a very small, diminishing effect on behavior (Bruns et al, 2018;Loewenstein et al, 2015;Michaelsen, et al, 2020;Steffel et al, 2016;Wachner et al, 2020). Study 3 contributes to this literature by evidencing the same finding using demonstrably attentive participants, in a high-powered experiment, and with a monetary choice.…”

“…Hagman et al, 2015;Jung & Mellers, 2016;Yan & Yates, 2019). Likewise, we corroborate that default nudges can be disclosed to decision makers without losing their effectiveness (Bruns et al, 2018;Loewenstein et al, 2015;Michaelsen, et al, 2020;Steffel et al, 2016;Wachner et al, 2020). However, upon closer inspection, an important difference emerges in that transparency is demonstrated to not be an unambiguous asset for a nudge.…”

“…For instance, in a hypothetical apartment acquisition scenario, Steffel, Williams, and Pogacar (2016) showed that participants perceived being nudged towards pro-environmental amenity choices to be fair (vs. unfair). In an actual (as opposed to hypothetical) charity donation choice, Michaelsen, Johansson and Hedesström (2020) found decidedly low objection ratings to the choice format (mean ratings 2.6 on a 9-point scale), even though participants were nudged to give away money. In this study, participants subjected to the opt-out default (i.e., the nudge) and those subjected to an opt-in default (i.e., defaulted to keeping the money for oneself) gave virtually indistinguishable ratings of how much they objected the intervention.…”

“…Apart from perceptions of fairness, we also look at how transparency affects participants' choice of whether or not to donate. In an equivalence test, we formally test whether the effect on choice can be considered statistically negligible, as suggested by previous research (Bruns et al, 2018;Loewenstein et al, 2015;Michaelsen, et al, 2020;Steffel et al, 2016;Wachner et al, 2020). The preregistration of this study, along with analysis code, stimulus material and data can be found through https://osf.io/fa9xv.…”

“…Increasing the transparency of a nudge also seems to have no or negligible negative effects on people's experiences and perceptions of the nudge. For instance, experience-based studies have found that making a default nudge transparent entailed no or minor increase in perceived threat to freedom of choice (Michaelsen et al, 2020) and experienced autonomy (Michaelsen et al, 2020;Wachner et al, 2020). Paunov et al (2019) further showed that making a default nudge transparent can lead to lower feelings of being deceived.…”