Research projects

Choice architecture or nudging refers to the use of changes in the environments in which people make decisions to influence their behavior. In this project, we study two aspects that are particularly relevant to the effectiveness of nudging: the emotional state of people and the degree of connection that is established with the self. The first years of the project have been unusual due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Even so, we feel that we have made good progress and have the basis to carry forward the remainder of the project in the extension year we have been granted (until October 2023). Specifically, we have conducted a whole series of experiments on nudging and how it is affected by emotional states in different contexts. Given the circumstances, we have adapted our methodology to conduct the experiments online through the Prolific platform.

One of our conclusions so far is that the emotional states we have studied have less powerful effects than we expected and than previous literature has suggested. In the process of conducting our experiments we have discovered several important effects in relation to nudging and emotions, which we are now exploring systematically and have become a central part of the project. First, we have obtained significant effects of the degree of emodiversity (diversity of emotions experienced) on decision making. For the time being, a related paper has been published in the prestigious journal PNAS. Second, several of our experiments have shown that the emotion of boredom does not have the effects previously suggested in the literature. Our first results in this regard have just been published in the journal Judgment and Decision Making and have led us to explore other aspects of boredom. Third, we have found that the time horizon set for making payments can significantly affect consumers’ willingness to pay and selling prices. This introduces a quite useful potential nudging tool, based on modifying the timing of payments. We have just published a paper presenting these results in the journal Judgment and Decision Making.

Fourth, we have obtained results indicating that making people justify their decisions can be a very useful tool to increase the effectiveness of some types of nudging. Finally, we have discovered interesting results regarding the external validity of some of the economic games we have used. As a whole, we believe that the project will eventually produce a whole series of important results, which will be published in international journals and will constitute important references in their respective fields.