Search

The success of choice architecture, including its adoption in government policy and practice, has prompted questions of whether choice architecture design decisions are sufficiently transparent and publicly acceptable. We examined whether disclosing to decision-makers that a particular choice architecture is in place reduces its effectiveness and whether an understanding of the effectiveness of choice architecture design decisions increases their acceptability. We find that disclosure of the design decision does not reduce its effectiveness and that individuals perceive the effectiveness of specific designs to be higher for others than for themselves. Perceived effectiveness for self increases when individuals have actually experienced the effect of a design decision rather than having it simply described to them. Perceived effectiveness for oneself and others increases the acceptability of the designs. We also find that the intentions of the source matter more than who the source actually is. Important for policy-makers, then, is that disclosure of design decisions does not reduce their effectiveness, and their acceptability depends on their perceived effectiveness and the inferred motivations of the design architect.

The effect of choice bracketing — the consideration of repeated decisions as a set versus in isolation — has important implications for products that are inherently time-sensitive and entail varying levels of risk, including retirement accounts, insurance purchases, and lottery preferences. We show that broader choice brackets lead to more optimal risk preferences across all risk types, including negative expected value and pure-loss gambles, suggesting that broad decision framing can help individuals make better choices over risks more generally. We also examine the mechanism behind these bracketing effects. We find that bracketing effects work by attenuating (magnifying) the weight placed on potential losses for positive EV (non-positive EV) gambles and by providing aggregated outcomes that might not otherwise be calculated. Thus, decision frames that provide probability distributions or aggregated outcomes can help individuals maximize expected value across different types of risky prospects. % removed part about "largely unexplored" - I'm sure someone will % object to that.