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Review
. 2017 Dec 26;114(52):13643-13648.
doi: 10.1073/pnas.1712757114. Epub 2017 Dec 8.

Default neglect in attempts at social influence

Julian J Zlatev  1 , David P Daniels  2 , Hajin Kim  3 , Margaret A Neale  4
Affiliations
Review

Default neglect in attempts at social influence

Julian J Zlatev et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. .

Abstract

Current theories suggest that people understand how to exploit common biases to influence others. However, these predictions have received little empirical attention. We consider a widely studied bias with special policy relevance: the default effect, which is the tendency to choose whichever option is the status quo. We asked participants (including managers, law/business/medical students, and US adults) to nudge others toward selecting a target option by choosing whether to present that target option as the default. In contrast to theoretical predictions, we find that people often fail to understand and/or use defaults to influence others, i.e., they show "default neglect." First, in one-shot default-setting games, we find that only 50.8% of participants set the target option as the default across 11 samples (n = 2,844), consistent with people not systematically using defaults at all. Second, when participants have multiple opportunities for experience and feedback, they still do not systematically use defaults. Third, we investigate beliefs related to the default effect. People seem to anticipate some mechanisms that drive default effects, yet most people do not believe in the default effect on average, even in cases where they do use defaults. We discuss implications of default neglect for decision making, social influence, and evidence-based policy.

Keywords: choice architecture; decision making; default effect; nudges; social influence.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Study 1: meta-analysis of percentage of CAs using optimal default nudges across all 11 studies. Error bars are SEs. The left bar shows overall results. The middle bar includes all nonprofessional samples (i.e., online adult studies and nonprofessional university affiliates). The right bar includes all professional samples (i.e., managers, JD students, MBA students, and MD students).
Fig. 2.
Fig. 2.
Study 2: percentage of CAs using optimal default nudges in a 20-round repeated one-shot default game. Error bars are SEs.
Fig. 3.
Fig. 3.
Study 3: percentage of CAs revealing directionally correct beliefs and directionally incorrect beliefs about the effect of defaults on CM behavior in the stay-or-switch default game and the preselect default game. Error bars are SEs.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Comment in

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