Nudge: Resisting Temptation

Resisting Temptation
Chapter 2

"At O'Hare Airport in Chicago, two food vendors compete. One sells fruit, yogurt, and healthy foods. The other sells Cinnabons, that have a whooping 730 calories and 24 grams of fat. Care to guess which of the two stores always has the longer line?"- Page 53 of 'Nudge.'



  Chapter 2 of Nudge starts out with an example of temptation. Thaler (one of the two authors of Nudge) was hosting a party. He put out a bowl of cashews and people ate some. Thinking about the main course, Thaler puts away the bowl of cashews so the people wouldn't be full. In the way of economics, it doesn't matter if you have extra or more options, because you could always turn them down. When Thaler put the bowl of cashews down, the people could choose to eat them (or not), eat more, or finish the bowl. If they finished the bowl, it would wreck their appetite. So firstly they ate some cashews, than it just kicks in that they eat more and more until the bowl is empty. What makes them want to eat more or do they want to eat more? This is called 'dynamically inconsistent.' A good example that you could think up yourself would be that you want to do something but you don't, it fails. Lets say its a nice Friday morning, you feel like taking a walk, go fishing, or do something productive. As time passes by you didn't do what you planned, in fact, you didn't even take a shower yet! That's our lazy side, but how does this relate to the bowl of cashew situation. Before the bowl of cashews were placed, no one asked for it or even thought about it. But when it was placed they ate a bit but planned to eat the main course of food. Without thinking they just kept eating and eating the cashews. This is dynamically inconsistent, you're not following your plan. This chapter covers another two main things:

- The 'planner' which is influenced by your reflective system of thinking (mentioned in the previous chapter).
- The 'doer' which is influenced by your much needed automatic system (also mentioned in the previous chapter).

 These two parts of your mind or brain are in a conflict. Which one is stronger for you?

 Mindless Choosing is the fact of auto-drive, functioning all by itself without your awareness. This happens to almost everyone. A good example would probably be at a movie theater or cinema. When you buy popcorn, you just keep eating and eating un-knowingly. The same thing goes with stale popcorn. A study that the chapter explains showed that a bunch of students at a theater ate a load of popcorn which was mistakingly stale. The students noticed and felt it, but for some reason they kept eating, thinking that it was just normal. Such is an example of mindless choosing.

 Self-Control Strategies are things that you are in total control of but just don't stop. The doer is telling you to continue. Most people use an alarm clock to wake themselves up, the planner would get up and turn the alarm off, ready for the day. Whilst the doer would hit the alarm clock on snooze and continue sleeping. Its hard to change doers (take Homer Simpson for example, could you change him?). Enterprise and business firms help us out in this, fortunately! There are many type of alarm clocks designed to help doers wake up, an example of this is 'clocky,' a smart alarm clock. Here is a short description of clocky from the label:

" Clocky is an alarm clock that runs away and hides if you don't get out of the bed in time."

 So basically, Clocky runs away after you click the snooze in order tog et your doer side to wake up. Pretty smart. Though I won't go through this in detail, smokers and smoking are an example of self-control strategies. The smoker knows its bad to smoke but continues, research in America show that most smokers know the harmful effect of smoking. Two thirds (2/3) of the smokers want to quit and have tried but can't, this puts a signal to your mind that you can't quit, even though you can.

  Mental Accounting is a funny thing to see in life. An example would come in money, economically in theory, money is freely exchangeable or fungible, it comes with no labels or tags. So why do some people act like it does? Most families keep savings in jars or bottles, labeling them. For example one could be electric bills, utilities, house appliances, or food. The house appliance jar could be empty and the family would be in misery, thinking that they have no money for house appliances when they could easily take money from the food jar. They think, mentally, that the money is specific for something when it is totally not. The chapter describes gamblers at a casino, one of the gamblers win a large sum of money. In the terms for gamblers, this is called 'House money.' The casino is referred to the 'House.' Being so, the lucky winning gambler thinks its okay to bet with the houses money because he won it, when actually its totally his and he could keep it for life. But he finds no loss in using the won house money. Well, too bad, he has been nudged.

The genius 'Clocky,' by Nanda Home Creators.