Latest news with #Nudge
Forbes
02-05-2025
- Business
- Forbes
The Psychology Of Better Choices: How Startups Are Rewiring Our Habits
Up for success. We smoke when we promised to quit, snack through a diet we swore we'd follow, and overspend when we meant to be saving for the future. You can call it time inconsistency or just plain self-sabotage, but in the end it all boils down to setting up the 'me of tomorrow' up for regret. Psychologists and behavioral economists have studied this phenomenon for decades. We now have a rich literature from Daniel Kahneman's prospect theory to Thaler and Sunstein's now-famous Nudge showing how tiny tweaks in choice architecture can make us better versions of ourselves. This is the realm of considering opt-outs instead of opt-ins, default savings programs that force our otherwise unwilling hand, with calorie counts made salient at each bite, along with other interventions that are often too small to even notice. But what can we do when the better choice doesn't exist in the first place? That's where entrepreneurs step in to build solutions that not only make good choices easier but often make the better choices we want available to begin with. Financial behavior is perhaps the most studied arena for exploring time inconsistency in action. We know we should save, and we would love it if the past versions of ourselves would have saved more than they did. We often go so far as to even make decisive plans to save. But when the paycheck hits, a series of micro-decisions, from happy hours to the houseplants that are screaming our name when we pass the flower shop, chip away at our financial goals one swipe of the credit card at a time. There's a good reason for this, mind you. Evolution didn't prepare us to plan for retirement over the past millennia it has been in charge of molding the brains of our ancestors. It prepared us to survive, full stop. Immediate rewards light up our brains while abstract future gains eke out a weak 'meh, I might' at best. The problem is compounded when we think of the future in the doubly-abstract terms of money and retirement itself, and we quickly reach the limits of what pure awareness can accomplish on its own. 'The problem isn't knowledge in and of itself,' says Barney Hussey-Yeo, founder of AI-powered money assistant Cleo. 'More often than not people know what they should do. But the way we spend our money is emotional, and the opaqueness of our financial systems make it harder, not easier, to do the right thing.' Hussey-Yeo has taken a different approach, and instead of preaching austerity or shaming spending, he's spent the past years building conversational AI that establishes a real relationship with its users, one that feels more like a friend than a financial advisor whose notifications we can safely snooze. 'We use memes, jokes, and even a little sass to make it all work,' Hussey-Yeo explains. 'The idea is to meet people where they are, then gently guide them to where they want to be. We're all imperfect, and being judgmental is the last thing people want from their supporters.' That blend of behavioral design and empathy seems to work particularly well for those who otherwise spurn traditional financial advice. According to Hussey-Yeo, Cleo users aren't changing habits as much as they are staying on top of their budgets. He accredits this to how the platform seeks to understand a fundamental truth of human nature: we don't respond well to guilt, we respond to feedback loops that make us feel seen, heard, and hopeful. And the demand for financial services that get us to change our habits is only growing. As inflation bites and younger generations confront a financial landscape that looks nothing like their parents', solutions that nudge us in the right direction are quickly becoming necessary instead of nice-to-haves. 'At the end of the day this is all about building financial resilience,' Hussey-Yeo says. 'We're not here to make rich people richer. We're here to help everyday people build a better relationship with money.' That, if anything, is a relationship most of us would pay to have. Money might never sleep, but us humans sure should. In fact, sleep is the original personal investment, and as with most investments we know we should be making, we're skimping on it big time. Sleep is cheap, effective, and endlessly important, and yet, we treat it like an optional upgrade. Too often we boast about burning the candle at both ends, even as burnout becomes epidemic and we're the ones paying the price for every hour skipped Thankfully there's signs that the rise-and-grind culture, once a badge of honor, is finally getting the scrutiny it deserves. And entrepreneurs like Todd Anderson are leading the charge. 'Sleep used to be the thing you cut to get ahead,' Anderson says. 'Now we know it's the foundation for everything, performance, health, happiness.' Anderson, a former NFL player turned sleep educator and co-founder of Dream Performance & Recovery, has spent the last decade studying the science of rest. He holds over ten certifications in performance, fitness, and sleep optimization, but it's his personal journey that gives his message weight. 'What excites me the most is the mindset shift,' he explains. 'People are realizing that sleep isn't a numbers game where you maximize your hours. Instead, we should be getting our best hours.' That shift is being driven by both science and product. From smart mattresses to circadian-aligned lighting, there are plenty of tools to optimize sleep. But Todd insists education comes first. 'We're an education-first company,' he says. 'The product comes after. If people don't understand why sleep matters, no gadget will save them.' Laurent Martinot agrees. As the CEO of Sunrise, a digital health company focused on breathing and sleep health, he sees the consequences of bad sleep every day. 'Sleep apnea is massively underdiagnosed,' Martinot says. 'And it's not just snoring that we're up against, if only so. It's heart disease, cognitive decline, even car accidents. The data is terrifying, and we should be much more upset about the catastrophe our poor sleep culture actually is.' Laurent's company developed a discreet, at-home sleep test that diagnoses these issues without bulky hardware or hospital visits. For him, the mission is deeply personal. 'On the surface of it we're fixing sleep,' he says. 'But at the deep end of it, we're actually fixing trust. People don't go to sleep labs because they don't want the hassle. We make it frictionless and accessible, because if you want to nudge someone toward better health, the path has to be smooth.' Better yet, it has to start early. Just think of how each Monday after daylight savings time begins, there's a documented spike in heart attacks, fatal traffic accidents and a serious case of the Garfield's for everyone who makes it through the day. We tend to think of sleep as a personal failing, the domain of lazy people or those who 'can't get it together.' But what if the failure is collective? What if the world we've designed is structurally incapable of letting us rest? 'Sleep is like any infrastructure,' Martinot says. 'You don't notice it until it starts to crack. And right now, everyone's cracking.' Poor sleep isn't as simple as a lifestyle choice, sometimes it's an entire system failure in and of itself This is why Sunrise, like many of the companies emerging in the post-COVID wave of health entrepreneurship, doesn't treat poor sleep as a personal vice to be corrected. The new wave of entrepreneurship treats poor sleep almost as a societal wound to be healed. Quietly, companies like Martinot's and Anderson's are redesigning the way we engage with sleep not through scolding or optimization, but by restoring trust, reducing friction, and giving people actionable information that doesn't require a medical degree to decipher. Because in the end people truly do want to sleep better. They just don't have a system that lets them, whatever the nudges we have in place. If sleep is a foundational fight we are in the habit of losing, diet and health are the daily battles we wage with forks and phones with equally dismal outcomes. 'We've built an environment where unhealthy choices are the default,' says Danny Yeung, CEO of Prenetics and IM8, a health optimization company backed by clinical trials and global doctors. 'The fight for better health goes beyond pure discipline or blaming the individual, it has to go to redesigning the system itself.' Yeung's company didn't want to launch just another supplement of which plenty exist. Instead, they built an all-in-one product based on real data, one that people could actually stick with. 'We're replacing 16 supplements with one,' he says. 'It's simple, it tastes good, and most importantly, it works.' Here, IM8 is doing what other health nudges often miss out on: being a healthy alternative that is savory, if not treat-like, as a design choice. The company spent years in R&D before launch, together with David Beckham who has been instrumental in making IM8 a reality. 'We could have rushed,' Yeung admits. 'But we wanted to build trust. You can't do that with hype. You do it with results.' What the next wave of supplements understands better than the past ones is that people are ready for proactive solutions, and they are capable of behavioral change as long as they have the products that enable them and support them in the process. However, the outcomes that Yeung refers to have to be real, as without them not even the slickest marketing campaign does more than a temporary dent in the customer's wallet. That same focus on results drives Michael Dubrovsky, co-founder of SiPhox Health. His company is building at-home health testing kits that rival lab diagnostics. 'Right now, healthcare is reactive,' Dubrovsky says. 'You wait until something's wrong and we want to flip that, give people data they can act on, before they get sick.' It's a bold vision: a world where testing isn't a medical event but a routine check-in like brushing your teeth. And it requires a massive shift in how we think about information, and how it flows between our caretakers and the consumers. 'We pay millions to A/B test email subject lines,' Dubrovsky says. 'Why don't we A/B test our own biology?' Again we arrive at how emotions drive our behavior much more than rationality or the science behind it all. When people see their own data and when they feel the consequences of their habits, that's when they have a fighting chance at making a change. This is the key insight driving Cyriac Roeding at Earli, too. His company focuses on a synthetic biology approach that forces cancer cells to destroy themselves—eliminating tumors while leaving healthy cells unharmed. Their goal isn't just to detect cancer earlier but to fundamentally change how it's treated, making therapy more precise, targeted, and effective. 'We're not trying to scare people,' Roeding says. 'We're trying to empower them. Early detection and advanced therapeutics is a medical advantage for sure, but the real problem is psychological. We have to be better at giving people agency instead of just data.' And agency, in a world full of noise and temptation, might be the most important nudge of all. Roeding believes the most powerful nudges are the ones that remove fear and friction at the same time. 'When you remove anxiety from the process, people don't avoid it. They engage,' he adds. 'That's where the opportunity is. To meet people upstream, before the disease begins or even after diagnosis, and give them treatment options that feel like a path forward, not a punishment.' That's the future that's starting to take shape. Not a single gadget, a new miracle drug, or an AI nutritionist but an entire suite of interlocking systems that nudge people in the right direction at the right time. The future we want isn't one where fancy tech makes the right choice easier. Instead, it's the one where the right choice is the one you actually want to make. We'd all benefit from living in a world where we are nudged, but also empowered. Where we are informed without being overwhelmed, guided without being guilted, and supported by products that treat health not as a battle, but as a way of being. Until the system works that way, we'll keep needing nudges. But if we build it right, maybe one day the nudge won't be necessary at all.
The National
30-04-2025
- Health
- The National
Science can change how people think to help society, conference hears
Behavioural science can be used by governments to guide decision-making, build good habits and tackle societal ills, some of the world's leading experts have said at an event in Abu Dhabi. At the inaugural Behavioural Exchange conference at NYU Abu Dhabi on Wednesday, Shamma Al Mazrui, Minister of Community Empowerment, called for strategies that strengthen people's ability to adapt and lead. 'It's about building people who can function and thrive and lead when none of these paths exist,' she said in her opening speech. Speaking to The National, Cass Sunstein, Robert Walmsley Professor at Harvard Law School and co-author of the influential book Nudge, said governments and institutions can dramatically improve people's health and well-being through simple design choices that guide but never force better decisions. The concept behind nudge theory is to preserve freedom of choice while gently steering people towards beneficial outcomes. 'The idea is that it's possible to improve outcomes for people by nudging them without mandating anything,' he said. 'If you get information about allergens in food, you're being nudged to avoid those foods. If an airport offers clear directions to the gate or a prayer room, that's a nudge. If your printer defaults to double-sided, you're being nudged to use less paper.' Nudges, he explained, are built into everyday environments. They do not take away a person's autonomy and freedom of choice. Shops, for example, can encourage healthier diets simply by putting nutritious items at eye-level. 'All over the world, nations are using behavioural science to try to improve outcomes,' he said. 'In the UAE, there's extraordinary work being done to help people live longer, eat better, and stay safe.' Rasha Attar, director of the Behavioural Science Group, pointed to successes that demonstrated measurable change in the UAE. 'Some of our early wins that showed tangible and competent changes were in our collaboration with Nema, the national food loss initiative,' she said. 'We were able to decrease food loss across multiple different touch points and to show different stakeholders and new partners that, with simple low-cost nudges, we are able to change behaviours sustainably.' Ms Attar said the team is targeting a range of habits. 'Whether it's encouraging people to become more physically active, to be more aware of what kind of food they eat, to be healthier, these are all behaviours we love to see.' On whether simple nudges could shape long-term behaviour, she said: 'Absolutely, with the right choice, the right environment, but also the correct nudges that have been tailored to suit our particular audience? Absolutely.' She described a study implemented during Ramadan in the Emirates that focused on cutting food waste as people broke their fast, noting that it was cut by 15 per cent per diner after 'simple posters or cards with important messages about waste' were strategically located to raise awareness and trigger different behaviours. Professor David Halpern, president emeritus of the Behavioural Insights Team, said Abu Dhabi is becoming a global hub for this sort of research. 'The whole thing is bringing together leading thinkers, who try to understand human behaviour, with policymakers,' he said. Prof Halpern, often regarded as one of the pioneers of the nudge movement, said that understanding and influencing human behaviour is essential to solving today's most pressing public policy challenges, from obesity to savings habits to climate action. But nudges are only the beginning, with Prof Halpern emphasising that long-term change depends on creating new habits. 'A lot of our behaviour is driven from an almost automatic level of habit. So one of the challenges is for us to become more aware of our habits and what drives them, and that can be empowering for families or communities or countries,' he said. 'Ideally, what we're often trying to do is turn it into a new habit which sometimes even becomes part of our identity.' The conference is hosted by the Behavioural Insights Team and the Behavioural Science Group, in partnership with the Centre for Behavioural Institutional Design at NYU Abu Dhabi. Areas of discussion focus on applied behavioural sciences and how these insights can be used to aid international development, global education and change societal norms. It concludes on Thursday.
