Decision Architecture: and How Governments should frame decisions

Eric J. Johnson presents a review in Science of the book Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein.

I quote:

the many factors that influence choice represent a choice architecture. The analogy is to the fact that the architect of a building determines quite a bit of the behavior of the building's users through the placement of doors, hallways, offices, and perhaps even bathrooms......Every way of presenting a choice will influence the decision-maker in some way. For example, all ways of presenting a choice have a (usually implicit) default, and these options will be chosen more often than if other defaults had been selected by the architect......anyone who poses a choice is a choice architect--the role is performed by supermarket, stockbroker, doctor, and government agency alike. The concept of choice architecture is a big idea, one clearly worthy of a book on its own....

They (the authors) suggest that government should, often, offer people a choice in matters of public policy, but that this choice be provided with an architecture that favors people's best interest. It is difficult to disagree with some of Thaler and Sunstein's examples. Given that Americans do not save enough toward retirement, it seems responsible to change the default (as has been done in some retirement plans) to a reasonable savings rate rather than the original default of no savings, but give everyone making this decision the option of changing that level.