Tom Rath Quotes

A nudge is some feature of the environment that changes the behaviour of humans but would not change the behaviour of rational economic agents, what we call Econs.

"Akrasia" [weakness of will] in rational beings is as common as wine in France.

Positive defaults protect you from yourself - and that helps you to make decisions in the moment that are better for your long-term interests.

I like to think that since I was about 19, I have studied human decision-making and problem-solving.

Fear and greed are potent motivators. When both of these forces push in the same direction, virtually no human being can resist.

The lesson of my field, behavioral economics, is that we need to understand the ways in which we differ from the rational human assumed in standard economic theory.

We humans actually need help controlling our impulses - nudges.

"Save more tomorrow" is a nudge to help people do what they know they want to do, which is save more, but they can't bring themselves to save more now. Just like many of us are planning to go on diets next month, or maybe in two months, certainly not tonight.

Movies don't make people act a fool. People act a fool because they want to act a fool.

Economists think about what people ought to do. Psychologists watch what they actually do.

My research career has been devoted to understanding human decision-making and problem-solving processes. The pursuit of this goal has led me into the fields of political science, economics, cognitive psychology, computer science and philosophy of science, among others.

It's easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.

It is true that from a behavioral economics perspective we are fallible, easily confused, not that smart, and often irrational. We are more like Homer Simpson than Superman. So from this perspective it is rather depressing. But at the same time there is also a silver lining. There are free lunches!

Just being aware of what you are about to do greatly diminishes the tendency to do what you don't want to. You will pull your hand back from that pizza slice, tell the waitress that you are passing on dessert, put on your gym shoes instead of going under the comforter, and take several deep breaths instead of screaming at your daughter.

We historians are increasingly using experimental psychology to understand the way we act. It is becoming very clear that our ability to evaluate risk is hedged by all sorts of cognitive biases. It's a miracle that we get anything right.

When a man is a prey to his emotions, he is not his own master, but lies at the mercy of fortune: so much so, that he is often compelled, while seeing that which is better for him, to follow that which is worse.

I try to teach people to make fewer mistakes. But in designing economic policies, we need to take full account of the fact that people are busy, they're absent minded, they're lazy, and that we should try to make things as easy for them as possible.

I practice what has come to be called behavioral economics.

Economists discount any factors that would not influence the thinking of a rational person.

Traditional economics is based on imaginary creatures sometimes referred to as 'Homo economicus.' I call them Econs for short. Econs are amazingly smart and are free of emotion, distraction or self-control problems. Think Mr. Spock from 'Star Trek.'

I love Richard Thaler's 'Quasi Rational Economics.' A collection of some of his most interesting and inventive essays, the real foundation of behavioral economics.

Half of the troubles of this life can be traced to saying yes too quickly and not saying no soon enough.

In the world of traditional economics, it shouldn't matter whether you use an opt-in or opt-out system. So long as the costs of registering as a donor or a nondonor are low, the results should be similar. But many findings of behavioral economics show that tiny disparities in such rules can make a big difference.

It is true that I am one of the co-authors of 'Nudge,' and I am a behavioral economist, but it does not mean that everything we write about in that book is behavioral economics, nor does it mean that my co-author, the distinguished legal scholar Cass Sunstein, is a behavioral economist.

The left-brainer and the economist in me says watch what people do, not what they say.