Sunstein on Choosing Not to Choose

Cass R. Sunstein, “Choosing Not to Choose.” Duke Law Journal 64(1): 1-52, October, 2014.

• This article essentially responds to a critique of one common behavioral economics-style policy intervention, the strategic use of default settings. The critique is that using default settings to nudge people is an affront to their autonomy, even if it is easy to choose something other than the default. 

• Sunstein’s response is to suggest that a failure to provide a default could just as easily be an affront to autonomy: often, people do not want to choose, they want a well-chosen default in place so that they can avoid choosing. 

• Therefore, mandating an active choice (as opposed to setting up a default) can itself be paternalistic, and maybe not even in a libertarian fashion. Sunstein calls it “choice-requiring paternalism” (page 7).
  
• A compromise between using a default and requiring an active choice would be to ask people if they want to choose, knowing that if they do not, they can “opt out” of choosing and receive a default choice (which they could alter) instead; this approach is called “simplified active choosing” (page 8).

• Of course, the question of whether you want to choose might itself be an unwelcome query. 

• If you can’t trust the default, there is much to be said for active choosing. But if the situation is unfamiliar, then why choose, if the default setters can be trusted?

• Active choice might make more sense in situations where you can learn about choices over time, or develop your preferences. 

• The rise of big data means that sellers might know better than consumers what the consumers want. 

• One reason not to want to choose is to deflect responsibility. Also, people have plenty of decisions to make (200 a day for food, we are told) and might prefer to focus their autonomy on an important but manageable subset of decisions. 

• Sometimes active choice is to protect third parties, or to provide credible proof that a choice was made in a deliberate fashion. This might be the case with organ donation, for instance. 

• Is GPS undermining our ability to navigate? Does Pandora hinder learning about different types of music? Jane Jacobs noted that cities bring about unwelcome but nevertheless consciousness-expanding encounters, by providing an architecture of serendipity. 

• People seem to value more highly options they have chosen than options they have been assigned, that is, they have a bias in favor of choice. 

• Would you be willing to have your book purchases chosen by big data? How would you feel about being defaulted into a regime where big data chose your books and charged your bank account? (You could return the books for a refund.) Would you feel differently if we were talking not about books but about household goods like paper towels or detergent? 

• In summary, choice can sometime be a curse, undermining your autonomy and your welfare. 

• This article later spawned a book with the same title.