Living by Default

Journal of Happiness Studies, 2005

Barry Schwartz is a psychologist, who has written academic textbooks such as the ''The psychology of learning and behavior''(2001). He has also become involved in social criticism with ''The cost of living: how market freedom erodes the best things in life''(2001). His latest book takes a critical look at modern multiplechoice society. He claims that the amount of choice has become excessive and is detrimental to our psychological wellbeing. This book is a bestseller and it has already been translated into a number of languages, for example ...

Public Choice, 2017

Choice should find useful for three reasons. First, this volume aggregates arguments that Sunstein makes in other works. In doing so, Sunstein address how his arguments about nudging intersect with issues important to readers of Public Choice. Second, Sunstein places nudges in the context of public choice concerns in order to answer some common objections. Third, readers will see a distinction between Sunstein's ideas and important ideas in public choice, such as Buchanan's ''status of the status quo'' and the role of experts when confronting Hayek's knowledge problem. In Chapter 1 Sunstein advances the thesis that behavioral science is winning both in terms of political popularity and policy influence. Nudging is the new way of thinking about the scope and scale of government. Sunstein disputes the view that ''…nudges look like propaganda'' (p. 11). Instead, he sees the status quo of non-intervention as resulting in bias and therefore unjustified without further ethical evaluation. He then introduces the reader to the four values necessary for forming ethical evaluations about policy choices: ''welfare, autonomy, dignity, and self-government'' (p. 3). The second chapters establishes a theory of ''behavioral market failures'' that result from the individual's failure to act rationally. Nudges work to provide information, reduce costs from choosing, and structure the frame for choice to achieve desirable outcomes from the perspective of the chooser. To the extent that nudging frames decisions, Sunstein argues that it sets up a choice between the status quo and a given alternative to the status quo. He emphasizes that ''neither possibility is foreordained by nature, and neither comes from the sky'' (p. 23). In fact, ''nature nudges'' and, given the ethical foundations detailed in chapter 4, paternalism can improve social welfare by using ''choice architects'' who specialize in choosing framing conditions. Choice architects are contrasted with other approaches including customary law, Hayekian ''grown institutions'', and social

Agalma. Rivista di studi culturali e di estetica, 2018

The so-called "voluntary simplifiers" or "downshifters" promote a new lifestyle in reaction to the consumerism and exploitation of post-industrial societies. They advocate alternative lifestyle choices in a number of areas, in the pursuit of minimalism and asceticism, de-growth and anti-consumerism, self-sufficiency and sustainability. Simplifying one's life has proven valuable as a temporary answer to address the unrestrained race towards success and social competition without limits. But what about the durability of the choices? And on what basis does one decide to "live with less"? Unfortunately, voluntary practices for simplifying one's life often remain trapped in the body-mind dualism and anti-materialism, in the traditional ethical frame of spiritual inspiration leading to virtuous life. Moderation, simplification or the exclusion of wealth do not necessarily guarantee existential well-being. On the contrary, the quest for a peaceful, untroubled life can become a hidden source of unhappiness. This is why it is crucially important to examine why we choose to invent a simpler lifestyle, which brings us to take a closer look at the "primordial choice". Dualism Simplifying one's life is a recent trend in which individuals focus on improved existential comfort-one in which these individuals prioritize and make choices with a view to achieving more personal fulfilment and better relationships. Sometimes they tend to understand "simple life" by eliminating material abundance or by reducing the impact of professional success or career standards. Downshifting or the voluntary simplification of one's life thus makes people try to achieve a better balance between leisure and work, and devote their time to artistic activities rather than to paid labor. They thus value a moderate lifestyle in which the focus is on personal growth and on sustainable development. The process of trying to obtain a simpler life includes a wide range of possibilities, which have been experienced and described. Strangely enough, there has been little attention to the existential dimension of lifestyle transformation. To summarize, existing texts deal with problems of territoriality, financial issues, housing, environment or political activism, but have little or no interest in the basic motivation of a person's decision

Qualitative Research in Financial Markets, 2023

This book from the co-author of Nudge (Thaler and Sunstein, 2008) has important lessons for public policy and especially financial policy in an era when doubts about "elites" and their unaccountable power is rising. Sunstein's book arrives as just the latest in an extensive line of his works considering how we might best combine the free markets that have made us wealthy, with the social justice that makes a materially comfortable life worthwhile (Sunstein, 1997). Those of us who favour free financial markets, as engines of financial wealth and risk management, may wish to heed the concerns Sunstein raises in this and related works. At its broadest, Sunstein's subject is the drivers of social change. He frequently illustrates this with reference to the struggle for equal rights by women and blacks. But as finance scholars, we might think of the swings in popularity of financial capital; from angels in the mid-1990s to devils in the late noughties. If the inherent relative merits of women, blacks and financial capitalists have remained broadly the same over time, why has our view, and even our laws, changed so much with respect to these groups? If Universal Banks were a good thing in 1995, why did they seem so bad by 2015? If big CEO bonuses were in vogue in the 1980s, why had the tide already turned by the start of the millennium? I structure my discussion of the book, largely, around the three chapter themes he adopts: (1) the establishment and evolution of social norms, Chapters 1-3; (2) nudging, Chapters 4-11; and (3) how our chosen political philosophy might be informed by developments in behavioural science, Chapters 12-16.

Revista crítica de ciências sociais, 2013

Conservation Biology, 2012

This paper proposes a way to understand transformative choices, choices that change ‘who you are.’ First, it distinguishes two broad models of transformative choice: 1) ‘event-based’ transformative choices in which some event—perhaps an experience—downstream from a choice transforms you, and 2) ‘choice-based’ transformative choices in which the choice itself—and not something downstream from the choice—transforms you. Transformative choices are of interest primarily because they purport to pose a challenge to standard approaches to rational choice. An examination of the event-based transformative choices of L. A. Paul and Edna Ullman-Margalit, however, suggests that event-based transformative choices don’t raise any difficulties for standard approaches to rational choice. An account of choice-based transformative choices—and what it is to be transformed—is then proposed. Transformative choices so understood not only capture paradigmatic cases of transformative choice but also point the way to a different way of thinking about rational choice and agency.

Psychological Science, 2011

Choice makes North Americans feel more in control, free, and independent, and thus has many positive consequences for individuals’ motivation and well-being. We report five studies that uncovered novel consequences of choice for public policy and interpersonal judgments. Studies 1 through 3 found that activating the concept of choice decreases support for policies promoting intergroup equality (e.g., affirmative action) and societal benefits (e.g., reducing environmental pollution), but increases support for policies promoting individual rights (e.g., legalizing drugs). Studies 4 and 5 found that activating the concept of choice increases victim blaming and decreases empathy for disadvantaged people. Study 5 found that choice does not decrease Indians’ empathy for disadvantaged individuals, indicating that the social and interpersonal consequences of choice are likely culture-specific. This research suggests that the well-known positive effects of choice for individuals can be accom...

It's My Own Choice, 2023

When the desire for a long life dominates, we do everything we can to prolong life - if possible: without end. But those who do not have that desire (anymore) are forced to behave cunningly and deceitfully. The urge and compulsion exercised by proponents of a long life, ignores the fact that there are many people who no longer experience that desire.

Marketing Theory, 2015

Psychoanalytic concepts and theory have long served studies of consumption, from exposing unconscious motives to elucidating contemporary consuming desire. Sharing with psychoanalysis an interest in symbolic meanings, anthropological approaches have also contributed to the study of contemporary consumption and social life. In this article, we draw on both Freudian psychoanalysis and Douglas’s structural anthropology to examine the field of non-consumption or the ‘choice’ not to buy. Based on detailed interpretations of interview data, we argue that consuming less at the individual level is not always the result of purposeful acts of ideological, anti-consumption protest or the outward expression of countercultural sentiments. Rather, forms of non-consumption can have deeper psychological origins that are located in a view of consumerism as a threatening force and a potent source of toxic contamination to mind and body, ‘dirt’ in Douglas’s conceptualization. We argue that this outloo...