Source: French to English Tester Published on: 2026-04-24
Source: The Conversation – France (in French)– By Pascale Tugayé, PhD student in public management, Côte d’Azur University
“Nudge” and “boost” can be used to obtain a particular behavior from a person. But how are these two levers combined? Which one to use? Under what conditions?
The “nudge” has gained great visibility sinceThaler and Sunsteindeveloped the concept at the beginning of this century. Based on the work in the field of behavioral economics by Richard Thaler, Nobel Prize in Economics in 2017, numerous experiments have allowed us to study our decision-making processes.
Less publicized, the “boost” belongs to another field of intervention concerning behaviors. Inspired by the works ofGigerenzeron rapid decision-making based on schematic ideas, its goal is to further develop basic, very technical but relevant skills, in order to make a more informed choice.
Actual or desirable behavior?
Indeed, thenudgeis integrated within what Thaler and Sunstein call a choice architecture. The latter must be studied step by step and revisited in distinct contexts such as a cafeteria, a street, or even a bank statement, to highlight the difference observed between individuals’ actual behavior and the desirable behavior.
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Cigarette butts thrown on the ground: when the effect of nudges goes up in smoke…
By “desirable,” it is understood to mean preferred by the community (for example, throwing fewer cigarette butts in public spaces) or simply preferred in the long term by an individual concerned (completing a difficult report to write). In this case, everyone must make many decisions daily.
Two systems are traditionally identified when making individual decisions. The brain usually makes most of its decisions based on a fast and automatic thinking system. This is the famous “System 1” thinking ofKahnemanon which are partly based the theories ofnudgeand ofboost. The “System 2” of thinking, for its part, requires a genuine effortful reflection from the organism, which it only implements for complex or new problems.
Nudge is designed to encourage individuals to make a more favorable decision without coercion, that is to say without restricting the possibilities available to each person. Deeply rooted in a paternalistic approach – men sometimes need to be guided towards more relevant choices – without giving up each person’s freedom of choice, thenudgesare seen as low-cost and complementary tools to more comprehensive approaches.
The malevolent cousin
Often playful, they are meant to be imperceptible and should only be a little help,a gentle incentive, better to decide within the fast thinking system. But thenudgescan be considered by some as inquisitive and manipulative tools. In response, Thaler and Sunstein developed the notion ofsludge(whose translation could be thick mud). Either the “wicked cousin” ofnudgewhich would aim to make actions more difficult to carry out, notably through a complication of procedures or an excessively long completion time. Thus, the simple act of unchecking the authorization to receive commercial news as part of a promotional offer is equivalent to an attempt tosludge.
A beneficial intuition
Theboost, on its part, is based on the idea that going through a long and complex system of thought, in some cases, can harm the individual and prevent them from making the best decision.Gigerenzer takes the example of an experiment in a hospitalto guide patients with chest pain based on 3 or 19 criteria. The frugal system, based on 3 criteria, allows for better overall treatment of patients and does not prevent seeing a patient with a complex issue for longer and more comprehensive medical processes. Gigerenzer’s work is thus based on so-called heuristic methods.Herzog and Hertwighave recently published an article describing heuristic processes as very basic general rules that omit certain information and allow for faster decision-making.
Let’s return to our previous example: some might think that asking three questions to each patient would not be enough to guide them in an emergency. However, these three decisive questions will be better channeled than 19 criteria, and moreover, they are based on scientifically proven truths: these three guiding axes will be sufficient to guide the intuition of professionals. By being oriented more quickly, the most urgent cases will have a better chance of recovery and the more complex cases will undergo more thorough analyses.
In fact, anyone can initiate work by creating a mind map (sometimes also called a heuristic map): this diagram can serve as a guide or a synthesis of a discovery. It is rarely complete but allows the main lines of thought to be outlined in a few minutes. The boost invites us to appreciate our intuition while helping to overcome its limits: biases. Indeed, decisions based on heuristic thinking are often equated with cognitive biases. Alison Gopnik explains that babies form their understanding of our world by calculatingprobabilities. As we grow up, we gradually integrate the information around us by deducing probabilities from our experiences. We create cognitive biases in the form of heuristic thinking, intuition, mental highways that allow us to arrive more easily, sometimes at the risk of adopting behaviors that are detrimental to us.
These quick heuristics, when performed based on demonstrated statistics and probabilities as in a boost, allow each person to make more rational decisions. These boosts can take several forms detailed byHerzog and HertwigÂ: learning the real statistics related to a situation, creating rules for financial separation between private and professional life, or even aself-nudge. This last specific boost consists in observing our choice architecture and the biases that cause us trouble. It is then a matter of devising nudges ourselves to achieve better behavior. In this case, the individual’s commitment is complete. Concretely, imposing a period without notifications and without calls on one’s workstation can be a form ofself-nudge. The boosted individual allows himself this intervention on his workspace to better achieve his goal.
Former or incite, must one choose?
A detailed analysis of several nudges with ecological dimensionswas published in 2023in order to know which ones were the most effective. This analysis carried out a classification ofnudgesbased on two main levers which are feasibility (how?) and desirability (why?).
Within the “feasibility” lever, it is a matter of playing on the architecture of choice by framing the information, or by giving visibility to the best choice, or by facilitating the information. Thus, someAsian hotels have placed a sticker on an eco-responsible water refill thresholdbathtubs. This first category of green nudges seems to work better than the others because it would reduce the psychological distance to implementing an action.
A boomerang effect
Within the lever of desirability, there hides among other things a type of extremely well-known and criticized nudge which is that of social desirability: revealing one’s behavior to everyone, for example by forcing everyone to use transparent garbage bags; or, likewise, being compared to astandardsometimes distant and vague, as can be observed on certain electricity bills describing a household’s consumption deviation from the norm. Despite a proven positive effect, these devices can generate a counterproductive effect. This is what some researchers call a boomerang effect: feeling manipulated, a segment of the population reacts by adopting the undesired behavior. All these types of nudges do not allow individuals to take a step back from their behavior.
On the contrary, theboostoperates on mental maps and aims to provide new skills. This can involve improving the understanding of setting a price for a complex service, for example. Some forms of boosts can even be triggered intentionally by individuals or by a third party, such as those that help develop motivation for learning.
Nudgeandboosteach aim to modify the fast thinking system. The nudge operates within decision-making on the action itself, while the boost reconfigures, through a slightly more energy-consuming process upon discovery, the choices made. If a tool must indeed be chosen, it is always a matter of composingwiththe limits of the human mind.
A different time horizon
The effects ofnudgesseem not to last over time. Boredom, weariness, deterioration… Thenudgesassociated with thepreservation of water or energy, for example, have a direct and notable effect but which fades within a few months.
Theboost, on the contrary, does not always have a direct effect on the choices made. A period of adaptation or motivation is tolerated between the moment an individual encounters aboostand the establishment of rational and desirable behavior. On the other hand, theboostwould be more sustainable over time. It involves a better understanding of the individual’s heuristic reasoning and assumes a commitment from the boosted individual.
Thenudgesand theboostsfunction differently but both aim to facilitate quick and effective decision-making on a daily basis. There are still gray areas where each person can determine what falls undernudgeor ofboost. Their effects are often positive, neutral, and sometimes counterproductive, especially when the underlying logic is close to a certain form of manipulation. In any case, they cannot be sufficient by themselves and must be considered as possible tools, by definition non-neutral.
Pascale Tugayé is a member of the GRM laboratory and the Association of Francophone Doctoral Students in Management. She will receive funding from the partner Chair “Water in the territories of Alpes-Maritimes” for her research.
–ref. “Nudges” and “boosts”: how do they work together? –https://theconversation.com/nudges-et-boosts-comment-sarticulent-ils-268785