Tiny nudges that can drastically improve your life

117 snips

Feb 10, 2025

Guest

Tim Houwerzijl

Guest

Eva van den Broek

Eva van den Broek, a behavioral economist and co-author of "The Housefly Effect," joins Tim Houwerzijl, an expert in merging behavioral science with creativity. They discuss how tiny nudges, like the Delboeuf illusion impacting children's eating habits, can significantly shift our choices. Schiphol Airport's fly paintings illustrate a clever nudge design. Loss aversion is shown to improve teachers' performance, and IKEA’s low-cost ice cream leverages the peak-end rule to enhance customer satisfaction. Discover how these subtle changes can alter behavior for the better!

Ask episode

AI Snips

Chapters

Books

Transcript

Episode notes

ANECDOTE

The Housefly Effect

Schiphol Airport reduced urinal splashback by painting small flies in the urinals, giving men a target.
This simple nudge cut cleaning costs by 50%, demonstrating the power of subtle cues.

ANECDOTE

The Power of Defaults

Eva van den Broek encountered a pre-selected default for maximum student loans on a website.
Simply removing the default halved the number of students taking the maximum loan.

ADVICE

Defaulting to Vegan

Make desired choices the default option, like Burger King Austria did with vegan burgers.
Reframing choices through defaults can significantly influence consumer behavior.

Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode

Get the app

Join the Nudge Unit: https://maven.com/nudge-unit/course-cohort

Can tiny nudges dramatically change our behaviour? In this episode, Eva van den Broek and Tim den Heijer explore the subtle yet powerful psychological tools that influence daily decisions, often without us realising it.

You’ll learn:

Why doubling the size of a plate made kids eat 41% more (feat. the Delboeuf illusion).

Why Schiphol Airport painted a fly in the urinals (“The Housefly Effect”).

The role of defaults in organ donation, student loans, and fast food orders.

How loss aversion turned teachers into top performers, improving student grades by 10%.

Why IKEA sell cheap ice cream (feat. the peak-end rule).

----

Get the book: https://bedfordsquarepublishers.co.uk/book/the-housefly-effect

Connect on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/phill-agnew-22213187/

Watch Nudge on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@nudgepodcast/

----

Sources:

Carmon, Z., & Kahneman, D. (1996). The experienced utility of queuing: Experience profiles and retrospective evaluations of simulated queues.

Dai, H., Milkman, K. L., Hofmann, D. A., & Staats, B. R. (2015). The impact of time at work and time off from work on rule compliance: The case of hand hygiene in health care. Journal of Applied Psychology, 100(3).

Holden, S. S., Zlatevska, N., & Dubelaar, C. (2016). Whether smaller plates reduce consumption depends on who’s serving and who’s looking: A meta-analysis. Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, 1(1), 134.

Kahneman, D., Fredrickson, B. L., Schreiber, C. A., & Redelmeier, D. A. (1993). When more pain is preferred to less: Adding a better end. Psychological Science, 4(6), 401–405. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.1993.tb00589.x

Kaur, S., Kremer, M., & Mullainathan, S. (2015). Self-control at work. Journal of Political Economy, 123(6), 1227–1277.

Levitt, S. D., List, J. A., Neckermann, S., & Sadoff, S. (2016). The behavioralist goes to school: Leveraging behavioral economics to improve educational performance. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 8(4), 183–219.

van den Broek, E., & den Heijer, T. (2024). The Housefly Effect. Bedford Square Publishers.