Nudging Your Way to a More Relaxed Lifestyle Unbelievable Tips to Help You Recharge

My partner and I often talk about Nudge Theory, because my partner hates how manipulative it is. I on the other hand wondered about its potential for self-care, through self-nudging to help you improve your quality of life. The result of my wondering is this article. I hope you enjoy it.

Nudge Theory is where you shape an environment so you can influence the likelihood that a specific option is chosen by others while maintaining the freedom of choice (Imperial College London; and (Thaler and Sunstein, 2009, as cited in Kosters and Van der Heijden, 2015). Ideally, the purpose of these nudges is to help influence people to make better decisions (The Conversation).

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One benign example is placing certain items at eye level in supermarkets so they’re selected more often than those at floor level (Arno and Thomas, 2016). This is often used to help people find items as branded products are more recognisable. For some, this means just grabbing the branded item, while for others, it means they know where to look for non-branded alternatives. Meaning your freedom to choose is still there. This is also why you have chocolate around the checkout area, as you’re more likely to be tempted to buy such items if you’re stuck queuing.

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Nudge Theory has the potential to get us to behave in ways that aren’t bad, just not always in our best interest. Like with the chocolate bars around the check-out. But even if Nudge Theory could only be used to help people make better choices, my partner would still hate it. However, I think Nudge Theory could be very useful if we use it as self-nudging because there’s always consent and awareness that Nude Theory is being used if we set it up to nudge ourselves to better decisions.

If we use Nudge Theory to alter our own decision environments to help empower ourselves to make our desired choices (Boosting) then no one is being manipulated without their consent. This makes self-nudging the more ethical version of Nudge Theory.

According to The Conversation, by the end of 2021, there was a lot of excitement about a comprehensive analysis of research done into Nudge Theory which confidently showed how effective it was. However, since then people have been talking about the general issues with Nudge Theory science. One such concern was that researchers overall rely on certain types of experiments. This suggests they’re cheery picking the experiments best likely to give the desired results.

Nudges To Help You Toward A Healthier Lifestyle I

There is also an inherent problem with all scientific research publications. For too long, research that fails to deliver the expected results rarely gets chosen for publication or is even submitted. This makes it impossible to find examples of experiments failing. This is often referred to as the “publication bias”. Thus, it’s hard to say with any certainty when any experiments that have failed might not have been published.

It’s this problem with research publication that makes me want to start a journal that’ll publish all the studies that fail to deliver on their hypotheses because this is a massive big problem for the sciences. Failing is an important part of science, and it should be published so we can learn. Please let me know if anyone has advice on how this can be done. I could call the journal “Unwanted Science Results”.

Nevertheless, studies such as Arno and Thomas‘s (2016) systematic review of 31 Nudge Theory studies have shown Nudge Theory’s effect. They conducted the study to determine whether Nudge Theory strategies are successful in changing adults’ dietary choices for healthier ones. They found a 15.3% increase in healthier dietary or nutritional choices. This might not seem like much, but it does prove the theory.

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Again, because of publication bias, it’s hard to know the true picture of Nudge Theory research. But it’s not all bad, because this takes the burden off of Nudge Theory being solely responsible for potential behavioural changes (The Conversation). In a real-world setting, there are a lot more variables that would need to be considered for starters. Humans are also very complex animals.

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An interesting example of Nudge Theory not leading to the desired result comes from Kosters and Van der Heijden (2015). They state that there are various studies that show people who were already engaging in desired behaviour voluntarily, who were then offered a reward to continue, had their willingness undermined as they considered the reward insufficient for their effort.

It’s probably a good thing Nudge Theory isn’t powerful as the claims were seeming to state, because of its George Orwell 1984 applications if it was.

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So what does that mean for us and applying Nudge Theory to improving our wellbeing through self-nudging? Well, there are many strategies that already exist that are being used by organisations already, which we can adopt so they become self-nudging.

For example, your dentist will likely send you an email or a text reminding you to book an appointment or you may get a reminder a few days before a doctor’s appointment to remind you you have one (Effectiviology). Another one that’s more relevant since the cost-of-living crisis is the availability of information about electricity usage. The aim is that you’ll use that information to change your energy habits.

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Now I don’t know about you, but I rely on such reminders to make a dentist appointment or to remember when my next of many medical appointments is. That’s because although doubt has been shed on the power of Nudge Theory, it can still have an effect. It’s just not changing an entire nation to do the right thing during covid powerful, which is what the UK government tried to do during covid. But it still has its place. And we can use that to our advantage.

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Thus, setting your own series of reminders can help you engage in self-nudging so you’re going in the right direction. Some of my hospital appointments are done months if not a year in advance, so I often set a series of reminders to make sure I keep the date free. I also keep my appointments pinned to my fridge so I’m regularly reminded of them.

Speaking of the fridge, the use of self-nudging visibility (how easily see the item is), accessibility (what obscures might get in the way, such as the number of doors that would need to be opened), and availability (if someone is worried about running out of the item) are potentially important components of Nudge Theory’s effectiveness.

A study by Campisano (2021) investigated the effects of self-nudging on healthy eating and dieting using self-nudging visibility, accessibility, and availability as part of their study. The study consisted of 17 males, 82 females, and one non-binary participant. The results showed that healthy eating could be affected positively by the visibility of healthy eating nudges. But they couldn’t find a positive link with nudge accessibility and availability.

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Campisano’s (2021) study also couldn’t find a positive connection between visibility, accessibility, and availability when it came to exercise. This could be because people wear exercise clothes as everyday wear, meaning that it has lost their potential to work as self-nudging. But that’s just my guess.

Anyway, back to the fridge. If you want to use Nudge Theory through the use of self-nudging then this study points the way through the placement of healthier food options at home.

Put your healthier food options front and centre in your fridge and hide less healthy choices in the back. If you’re anything like me, I pretty much forget what food I have at home as soon as I’ve put it away. Therefore, when I go looking for something to eat, if I have all the healthy stuff at the front and more easily accessible, and hide the less healthy stuff, then I’m more likely to forget I even have less healthy options. Thus, I’ve just nudged myself towards healthier eating. It doesn’t guarantee I’ll eat healthier, but it increases the odds that I will.

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I’m not denying myself the choice of picking something less healthy. I’m just increasing the odds that I won’t make that choice. And, if this works enough times, then it’s possible the less healthy choices stop being bought in the first place. But that might be wishful thinking on my part. Just think of Nudge Theory and self-nudging as an aid to helping establish healthy habits in the context of helping with your wellbeing. So, exploit the use power of positioning and manipulate its accessibility for your own needs (Today).

Another thing I do is to keep something that will function as a prompt in my eyesight. I do this with my medication and pretty much anything I want to do. If I want to remember to change my sheets, I’ll position a set of clean sheets where I’ll see them so they’ll prompt me to change them. I could just do it at the time I place the sheets as a prompt, but that’s not how my procrastinating mind works.

Another good example of self-nudging could be to take a packed lunch with you when you go out, as that will help you avoid eating

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