Blog 6: Nudging and How Well-being is Reflected in Products

Nudging is using positive reinforcement and indirect suggestions to try to achieve non-forced compliance can influence the motives, incentives and decision-making. We use nudging to thus get people to do what we want without removing their autonomy. When people do not have the cognitive resources to deal with the multitude of decisions presented to them, the use heuristics like nudging to lessen the cognitive load so that they can focus on other things. MINDSPACE is a method for nudging. It stands for messenger, incentives, norms, defaults, salience, priming, affect, commitment, and ego. A specific technique of nudging is gasification which entails  adding elements to a an activity that provides entertainment, is used in cognitive behavioral therapy today; an example is the stair piano. 

To see how well-being is reflected in products our class took field trips to Starbucks, McDonalds, BurgerKing, Dunkin Donuts, 7/11, and KFC. We went to these American run franchises to see what changes they had made to reflect well-being in America versus in the United States. We looked at place, product, and people. Most groups noticed across the board that 

the visual aesthetics of the business were much more appealing than in the US. The products themselves also looked more appealing, reflected in higher quality ingredients and a higher price. This is probably because the people here value quality over quickness.