
In this episode of The Brainy Business podcast, Melina Palmer revisits the powerful concept of defaults and how they can significantly influence decision-making. This refreshed episode explores the psychology behind nudges and the importance of...
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Welcome to episode 542 of the Brainy Business Understanding the Psychology of why People Buy Today's episode is all about the Dnudges defaults. Ready? Let's get started.
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You are listening to the Brainy Business Podcast where we dig into the psychology of why people buy and help you incorporate behavioral economics into your business, making it more brain friendly. Now here's your host, Melina Palmer.
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Hello. Hello everyone. My name is Melina Palmer and I want to welcome you to the Brainy Business Podcast. If you've ever had a subscription, renew without thinking about it, or clicked Accept without reading the terms or stuck with the plan option or offer that was already checked for you, you've been nudged by a default. And while that may seem like a simple setting, it's actually one of the most powerful tools in behavioral science. Today's refreshed episode, which was originally number 38, is all about defaults. How they shape behavior, why they work so well, and what you need to consider when building or auditing the default settings in your own business. So why am I refreshing this one here for you today? It's for a very exciting reason. This Thursday's episode is my conversation with Richard Thaler, yes, the Nobel Prize winning behavioral economist and co author of Nudge along with Alex Emis about their new book, the Winner's Curse. We're going to talk about the psychology behind smart people making predictably poor decisions and how tools like Choice Architecture help shift those outcomes for the better. So of course it felt like the perfect time to refresh something from the Nudges series I did here on the podcast in honor of Richard's work. Defaults are one of the most essential and easily overlooked forms of nudging, which makes this a perfect time to revisit them, especially if you want to apply behavioral science in more meaningful and ethical ways. Really quickly, before we get into the episode, I want to be sure you know there are links in the show, notes for my top related past episodes and books, ways to get in touch, and more. It's all within the app you're listening to and@the brainybusiness.com 542. Now let's jump right in and learn about defaults. When you think about choice and defaults, you may think it only applies when there is a preselected option on a list, but this is not the case. As I mentioned on episode 20, every choice always has a default. In many cases, the default is to do nothing, and that's still a choice, which is important for many choice architects to remember when you are constructing a choice for someone, it's important to remember what their default is and how status quo bias will influence the default. People like to maintain the status quo, and inertia will often keep them from doing anything. When it comes to choice architecture, I'm going to talk about two different kinds of defaults and these are my categories, something that I've created for you here in the episode and what I do with my clients. First is the true default. This is what happens when the chooser does nothing, and next is the implied default. This is a way we can help nudge a choice using concepts like framing and herding. I will give plenty of examples of both throughout the episode, but for now, let's start with the air conditioning example I've been using throughout this series. While my husband and I have decided we want to get air conditioning, this the default option is to do nothing to live in our hot house. Even when it's 90 degrees inside, which it was a few times last summer, we have to make decisions and take actions on our own to decide to get air conditioning, including calling the company and setting up an appointment for them to come out and take time off when they do come to the house to provide a quote. It's a pretty significant hurdle to overcome to decide to get something that costs a lot of money up front. So so the default is pretty big and daunting to get past for the company. If they were a client of mine, I would advise them to consider the ways they could make it easier for their potential customer to overcome this first default hurdle. Sure, they do advertisements and those are useful for brand awareness, but because this is a difficult choice with a lot of barriers and it's easy to put off even if you want air conditioning. Many people do not know how much air conditioning costs. They probably just know someone else who's gotten it and said it was expensive, or someone who got a quote and decided to bear the heat because they didn't want to pay for it. This adds to the stigma and hurdle they need to get over, and it's the responsibility of the company to to help them get there for whatever reason. Far too many companies in this type of a business where you have a large ticket item and you worry that cost is going to be an issue, you think that it might prohibit people from buying or that they're going to delay the purchase, it's going to be a problem in choosing you. And so you sort of make this approach of not talking about it until you get somebody in front of them. But then you don't train your employees to be really good at talking about costs and getting them comfortable with the expense. It causes this sort of circular issue to where you can never really get as many people to buy as would be interested and would like to. And as I'm going to talk about here in a minute, going back to the incentives, going back to the mapping process, when you're choosing your default, you can really make a big difference. And that is something I would work with any of my clients if this type of company was to call me, what I would tell them to do. And especially because one of the things I realized in this process, as I mentioned on an earlier episode in this series, is there's a basic formula for air conditioning here in the States, at least it's based on the number of vents and square footage of the house. And while the number of vents is not listed explore explicitly in home information on Zillow or Redfin. It's pretty easy to guess based on building codes to get the minimums and the number of rooms in the house which would be listed on any of those types of housing sites. So that means the guy who came out wasn't having to create anything special. For me, the unit size we need is based on things that are already known, but they choose not to mention any numbers at all until you're really deep in the process. As I said, this is a mistake and let me tell you why. First, there's no anchor. And for those of you who have listened to episode 11, what do we know about anchors? When there isn't one, the anchor is zero. Nothing. And a lot of that comes from the default. If my default is to do nothing and I'm overcoming a hurdle to buy an expensive item that I will not feel the benefit of for several months, a zero dollar default is a terrible place to start from. You create sticker shock even if someone did their homework. I found a lot of articles online talking about the average price for air conditioning. Some list the cost of the unit and then say labor and delivery is extra. Unfortunately, that's a huge chunk of the cost. If someone does research and finds articles saying it's $2,700 plus labor and then gets a quote for $6,500, the potentially real average price, assuming there's nothing wrong or extra work to be done, they're going to be in a state of shock that does not lead to good decision making. And again, in your case, when you're coming from this low default it's really difficult to get them over that hurdle in the moment. If instead this person was sent a mailer, let's say, which said, would you pay $2 a day for air conditioning? Or on a sweltering summer day, would you pay $14 for air conditioning in your home? That would catch their attention and get them to likely say or think, yes. And the message could go on to explain, that's over 10 years and on an average. But someone can come to them to do a more direct quote if they're interested. When thinking about defaults in choices, it's important to realize that each complete choice can be broken down into a bunch of mini choices and each one has its own default. So the initial default in my air conditioning example, as I've outlined already, is to not get air conditioning. Once I've brought them out for a quote, my default is still to not get it. I have to take action, choose a model, and give them a credit card to buy from them. But when the choice is presented, it can be properly worded to help nudge to a different default than not nothing or to not buy or $0. Let me show you what I mean. Think about how cars are sold. People are not often quoted the total dollar amount of the car. Instead, they're sold on a monthly payment, especially in advertisements which showcase leasing, even though far more people buy cars instead of leasing them. There are loans available, and while I could not find the exact number number, I know from other research I've done for my master's thesis and whatnot, that only 39% of Americans have enough in savings to cover a $1,000 emergency. So it's likely that at least 60% of people would get a loan for air conditioning. So why don't they start there? The default when quoting pricing for air conditioning could and should be for the monthly payment of a loan instead of the bulk cost. Even if it's a shorter term loan, like 12 months instead of 48 or 60 for a car, it's still a lot easier for someone to come to terms with and get over the default than the lump sum. And those who can pay cash always have that option. Perhaps there's a discount if they pay cash and the cost for the loan and extra effort is worked in into the pricing. So the discount is really kind of the standard price that you would have offered it at anyway, and you're marking up the cost for those monthly payments because we humans are not logical. We do not do well with sticker shock, and that can lead to delaying A choice. Which sounds better to you? We can install the unit for $6,500. Do you want to schedule an appointment? Or most people opt for our 24 month payment plan which comes to $295 a month. Or you can pay cash upfront for a 5% discount. Which option do you prefer? In case you did not notice the subtle shift, I've moved the default option in the offer from not getting air conditioning, the true default, to getting air conditioning on a 24 month loan. This is the implied default because most people do this and if you are like most people and didn't do that, not so quick math in your head. $295 a month is actually factoring in an extra $25 per month for the install company on each of the 24 months of the loan, which is $600. The 5% discount for paying cash is about $350. Again, this is the power of framing. People like to be part of the herd. So when you use phrases like most people choose option X, it becomes the implied default because the brain thinks, oh, if most people do that, I probably should too. It can help shift the default in the customer's mind from the true default to what I'm calling the implied default. Alright, now that you know what a default is and how it can benefit your company, how do you pick one? In episode 36 on incentives, in nudging, I outlined the choice we had about getting a wi fi enabled unit or a basic one, and how the company should choose which one to lead with. Understanding incentives and how they impact the business is very important when choosing a default. You do not want to inadvertently select a default that's bad for your company. If you've not yet listened to episode 36 on Incentives and gotten your freebie worksheet, there is a link in the show notes. Once you understand the incentives and which option is best, you can select your default based on that. So what's going to be the win win win for the company, the customer. And if you have somebody out selling and it's important to know which thing you are leading with so you can set up the map to help the customer to get there. And of course mapping was the focus of last week's episode. Going back to that wi fi enabled option, the incentives should be lined up between the business and the customer and that's likely the best choice for the customer. So it should be priced to also be the best for the company. And as I said, the guy out making the quote on site once that is done. He the person making the quote should be given language to help shift the implied default throughout the conversation and when he's actually doing the pitch. So instead of saying which do you want? He would say most people select Wi fi enabled because it allows them to change the temperature of their house without having to get out of bed or when they are outside the house, which can make them more comfortable and reduce energy costs. Would you like to move forward with that option as well? Or something along those lines? And as I said in the mapping episode, it's important important to use good ethics and only say most people do something or that it's the best value if it truly is. But understanding this default what most people are going to want the incentive the map can help you to choose what default you want to focus on and how you're going to shift it from the natural default, the doing nothing, to now being a choice between do you want A or B which is implying that that they are going to make a purchase all right, now that we've walked through the air conditioning example for defaults, I'm going to give a bunch of examples from other industries. First, I'm going to start with the coaching or consulting company and really any service based business. This example is inspired by Kerry Clark of Next Level Coaching who left a five star review on itunes titled awesome Sales Business and Brain Science Info and Advice and her review reads As a business owner I love all of the easy takeaways that I can put to use to improve my business, but I think the brainy business podcast is also great for non business listening as well. So fascinating the way our brain works. Love this podcast as my way of saying thank you to Carrie, I went to check out her website at Next Level Coaching to provide a quick tip tip here on air of how to use defaults and nudges like we're talking about on the episode and something you can learn from as well. Next Level Coaching, as I said, is a service based business so she could use a lot of the same advice that was provided for the air conditioning example in her coaching. She actually does a really great job on her website which says the ROI on coaching is 700% and you will reach your goals nine times faster than trying to do it alone. This is framing an action to help the potential customer overcome the inertia of the natural default of not hiring a coach even if you want one. I'm guessing those are national standards and research versus something she did herself, but as you can see it doesn't matter when you heard those numbers that coaching has a 700% ROI and you're going to reach your goals nine times faster than if you did it alone. Did that make you feel like you wanted to get a coach? And if you were already on her site then when you seek pricing it makes you more likely to want to buy and test out her services. This also uses herding to show how those who want to be successful use coaches which can help the potential customer get over that hurdle. So great job Carrie. As I said, there is a link to this page on Next Level Coaching in the Show Notes if you want to check it out. That specific page I'm talking about on her website. If you would like a quick tip for your business and to be considered for a shout out in a future episode, please consider leaving a five star review like Carrie did in itunes or whatever app you listen through and engage on social media where you can find me as the brainy biz on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. All right, moving on. Default options can cost your company money in more than just missed sales. There are a lot of little places where defaults are set up that you can tweak to have a big impact. For example, when I used to work at the credit union, I noticed every time I went to a branch either to do a transaction myself or to observe behavior to make recommendations for the staff. I saw staff finishing a transaction and grabbing the receipt that automatically printed out. Then ask the member if they wanted the receipt and when they said no, which happened about 90% of the time, crumple it up and throw it in the garbage underneath their desk. I did some research and the automatic printing of receipts was a default setting in the system and something that could be turned off with a simple click of a mouse. By training the staff to ask would you like a receipt? Before they closed out the window. They could also click one time to print a receipt for the few people who wanted one, but it eliminated the need for thousands of tossed receipts every day. It also meant not putting member information into printed form, which can be a security issue and then it needs to be shredded which can save additional money and trees if you don't have this step. The default setting was costing the company hundreds and depending on the scale of the company, it could easily be thousands of dollars each year. Think about if Starbucks was to make this shift. That's a lot of paper. Similarly, in 2008 the city of Tulsa, Oklahoma reportedly switched all their printers to default to double sided printing, which they estimated saved them more than $41,000 a year in unnecessary expense. So take a look at some of the things that you're doing at your company and question those defaults that exist. Do they have to be that way? Is it really the best way just because that's how we've always done it and simple, tiny little tweaks could make a huge impact. And just think that's maybe, you know, $40,000 they can spend on marketing or something else. What about if you want to reduce food waste? If the default in a cafeteria shifts from having trays to no trays, people take less food because they can only put what's on the plate they can hold in their hand and that results in less waste. Similarly, the default plate size chosen impacts the amount of food we eat, so smaller plates mean less calories consumed. Our default as humans is often to eat food in front of us, and mindless eating can be a problem. If the default plate size is smaller at home or out at a restaurant, you will put less on the plate and often realize that you're full earlier. And in a further attempt to reduce waste in restaurants, consider the default of providing plastic straws or lots of paper napkins. Seattle, Washington was the first major city to ban plastic straws from restaurants in 2018 and they're needing to come up with compostable alternatives. They cannot have the default be to provide straws anymore. That's going to keep millions of tons of plastic out of landfills and the oceans and save businesses money as well. Same goes for paper napkins. If it's no longer the default to have stacks of them on the table or stuff a handful of them in a fast food bag, it can quickly reduce a lot of waste which results in a lower carbon footprint as well as saving money for the business. Really win win win win win wins all around. I talked a lot about subscriptions in episode 20 when I first introduced defaults and I've recently encountered a new example of this which I found very interesting and want to share with you. When recently ordering some mascara on Amazon. It was actually just after doing a live on my Facebook page which I do every week to answer your questions. In that episode I was introducing nudging so this was really on my mind. I've always bought my mascara at the store and didn't know if the brand I liked was on Amazon so I decided to do do a quick search because I had forgotten to buy it the last half a dozen times I went into the store. This is expecting error which I will talk about next week. So I Was really excited when I found it. It came up and was less than I usually paid, so I decided to buy it right away. And what was the default? A monthly subscription which would have new tubes of mascara delivered to me regularly and also charge my card with each order. I could of course cancel at any time. But for someone who was not paying attention, this could have come as a shock. Since Amazon does not default everything to a subscription. But if you use the item and would presumably need to order it regularly and are likely to forget, this is a really good deal. Keeping it as the default means more people will get subscriptions than one off purchases. In this case it was selected. So if I would have hit buy without doing anything else, it would have been my choice. It was easy to click the one time purchase and essentially opt out of the subscription. And they also had options for a subscription every two months if I would have preferred something like that. The thing to note is the natural default of a person who would be choosing to buy something on Amazon is to buy something once. That's most likely what someone's doing in a transaction. And for most companies this is the case. But if it's something that you know they're going to be getting over and over again and that they might benefit from a subscription style of order, and that helps you as a company as well by changing the default to be automatically enrolling in the subscription helps to stop their subconscious brain for a second to flag the conscious and say, hey, do we want a subscription? Instead of just sort of glossing over the buying process where we don't need to focus on what we're doing, it's able to be kind of a mindless transaction. I chose the thing, I'm going to go ahead and pick it. I move forward. So by changing the default to the subscription, the brain, if it sees it, will think that's different. And then you stop to think and maybe decide you want to get get that subscription. Or maybe you just mindlessly order it and then it shows up next month as well and you're kind of now in the loop of the default. Now your default is to keep the subscription and to keep receiving tubes of mascara or grocery delivery or diapers or medications or makeup or milk every single month or week or whatever the ordering cycle is that makes sense for those. So it's good for the company and it can be really good for the person as well. This could also be an option through an ordering service for toilet paper or other necessities people use often. Let's say you sell office supplies and it's likely that a business is going to order staples and tape and things regularly. So why not make it a default? That would be easier on them. One less thing to remember and better for your company so you're not having to chase customers around for sales. It really becomes a win win. So think about your business. Do you have a product or service that people buy regularly that they use often? Would they benefit from a subscription style default? And even if that's not what you're naturally doing now, and that's not exactly how they buy it, doesn't mean that it couldn't be, or that they shouldn't, or just because they haven't thought about it or asked for it that it wouldn't be a benefit to shift to their default. I briefly mentioned that it was easy to opt out of the subscription model on Amazon and an opt in versus an opt out can have a huge impact on choice. In episode 20 I talked about how organ donation could be dramatically increased by switching from an opt in to an opt in out, and that is really about switching the default. One thing that Washington State Parks did to increase donations was having all vehicle tab renewals include a $5 donation to the state parks, which can easily be removed by the person paying for their tabs if they choose to. Including it in the cost of the tab renewal that was quoted made it easy to keep the amount in, but it was also easy to go without. If you don't think this would make a difference. Switching from a question of saying would you like to donate $5 to the state park versus hey, this is included in your cost and do you want to remove it? In its first year, the switch of the default from an opt in to an opt out reportedly raised an additional $1.54 million for the state parks in Washington, which kept many of the parks open instead of being forced to close. It's pretty impressive for such a small change, don't you think? Where do you have opt ins versus opt outs in your business? Are there any features people have to opt in for that would actually be best for them and increase your profitability? Consider buying cars again, if someone is presented the higher end option with lots of features included as the default, they will end up leaving with more features and a more expensive car than if they were given a base model and asked to opt in to all the features they want. This is loss aversion coming into play. Say you're an interior designer or furniture store quoting a price for a couch that has four different levels of fabric available start with the most expensive one as your default. This also sets a high anchor. It's much easier to get someone to a choice where they can reduce a cost than it is to get them to add money in after they've been quoted, which is why choosing the right default is so important. And if you're questioning the what people would do naturally and how you're influencing their decision, think back to the initial example I gave you on nudges in episode 35. When we first started this video series, which is about choosing meals in the cafeteria. We might think that if children were left to their own devices, they would always choose junk food and desserts over healthy food in a cafeteria or something like that if they were on their own. But what those studies showed is that when you put the desserts in a separate line, or if it came first, had a very large swing, that moving something around could actually increase or decrease, decrease the likelihood of those items being chosen by 25%. And so if you have carrot sticks at eye level, they're 25% more likely to be chosen, whereas if the fries are at eye level, they're 25% more likely to be chosen. So understanding what someone's natural choice would have been is really difficult, if not impossible, because situations impact the choice. They always do. Whether you think about this or not, whether you put it in the context of your business or not, whatever you're putting out there, the way it's presented is impacting the choice. And there is a default you're creating, whether you're thinking about it or not. So it's really best to do this in a way where you think about what your customers will want, what's going to benefit them, what's going to benefit the business before you set up that default and the map to get there, and so that you can be providing them with the best possible way to make the best possible choice for them. Next, let's think about things like insurance. If you've bought a car recently in the United States, someone likely tried to sell you gap insurance, either at the dealership or the financial institution where you got the loan. Having worked in the financial industry for a long time and having a lot of clients that are still in that space, I really believe in the benefits of gap insurance. It's essentially that insurance that if you drive off the lot and you get into an accident and your car's totaled, you know, insurance would only cover maybe 80%, and the gap insurance will cover the gap so you're not out A bunch of money for a car that you just bought that you have a loan on and maybe haven't paid down yet. It's typically good for the person buying a car and for the financial institution, but far too many financial institutions don't include it in their loan pricing and instead ask staff to try and add it on after the fact, which is a hard sell, even though it's a really useful product. Instead, the advice I always give my clients is to bundle it in with the initial quote and let the member know. Or if it's a bank, the customer know that they can remove it if they don't want it. It will result in a lot more people getting the insurance, which as I said, is usually the best choice. And in this case, even though it's something like $12 a month or it adds $2 a month or some really nominal amount, what ends up happening in the way that our brains look at the default and we sort of adjust with the anchor, Things like that. So if I give you the quote for your loan and say it's going to be, you know, $375 per month, and that includes gap insurance, which you can remove if you want, then you look and you say, okay, it's $5 on a $375 a month payment. Eh, probably worth having in the flip. If I say, okay, your payment's going to be $370 per month and you can add this in and it's, you know, gap insurance is $2,000, but broken over the life of loan, it's only $5 per month. Do you want to get that? They kind of settle on that bigger amount, the total amount versus the incremental add, even though we don't want them to and they shouldn't. It's just how our brain looks at the takeaway versus the potential gain. So keep that in mind. Again, that's loss aversion, that's anchoring and adjustment, that's framing a whole bunch of concepts included in with this choice architecture, nudging, default stuff as well. And this brings me to something like travel insurance, which would be similar as well. You know, I book a lot of flights because I travel so much for speaking at conferences or working on site with clients. And there's almost always an option after I've been quoted the price, which asks if I want to add travel insurance to guarantee my flight and get a refund if I can't make it. It's usually around $20 and I almost always decline. On some of our international trips, We've added it on and I'm guessing that most people do the same thing. But what would happen if the default price included it and then you had the option to opt out and remove it? I'll tell you what would happen. A lot more people would buy travel insurance. Defaults are a powerful and very simple nudge to apply. There are tons of places where any business could implement them and many already do. Some have gotten into trouble, like assuming someone saying they want to receive one email means they want to be on every email list ever, which has led to new regulations to help protect consumers. But when used responsibly, defaults are great and often appreciated by customers. Remember when I said that the default is what happens if someone does nothing? That's true most of the time, but there are some safeguards in place, like the dead man switch on a lawnmower or a chainsaw that makes the machine turn off if you stop pushing a button or holding down a lever. This improves safety and it makes it so its default standard is to be in the off position if you're not actually doing something, if you're not holding something down, making it stay on. There are also some instances where a company or government organization can instill what's called mandated or required choice. But this is something to do space sparingly. In the case of a mandated or required choice, you don't have the option to not select something or to add a bunch of things in, or to make the selections of yes I want to add this or no I don't. Yes or no? Yes or no? Yes or no? You have to choose to be able to move forward and sort of the. The leaving and doing nothing. The effort is to make it so you have to make a choice to do nothing and to kind of opt out. This can be good when you want to make sure someone evaluates the options before making their choice so they're not defaulted into something they didn't want. But it can cause frustration when it's used too much in reality because our brains are lazy and we like the status quo. Many people think required choice is a nuisance and most would prefer a good default. Consider ordering food at a restaurant. The default is to get the meal the way the chef has chosen to prepare it. If there was no default, you would have to tell them how to prepare the dish, which sounds terrible and really defeats the purpose of going out to dinner or for software installation. What if you were required to choose every single setting before you could use your new computer or phone? It would likely include a bunch of questions you do not fully understand. And far too many people would have electronics they would never use or are not happy with because they're not confident in the choices they made. Implied defaults can be incredibly helpful when they're used strategically. Customers appreciate them and they can benefit the company who's using them as well. So take a look at your business and the products or services you offer, as well as some of the places where you could save money, like not defaulting to print receipts and throw them in the garbage. So what got your brain buzzing as you learned about defaults today? For me, it's really important to remember that defaults aren't just a quirk, they are a tool you can use to influence behavior. And they work because they feel so natural, so frictionless, and therefore most people don't even realize a decision was made. But here's the thing. A default is a decision. It's a statement about what's expected, normal and safe. If you're not actively considering and setting your defaults across customer journeys, internal systems, product pricing, employee onboarding, and more, they're still being set, just probably not in your favor. So you need to think about what is that person's status quo? What are they typically doing? What is their default that you need to overcome? If you are the default, how can you keep that moving in your favor? And if not, you know, what else do you need to be considering to help Nudge the way that they make a choice since this episode originally aired many moons ago, I've worked with so many amazing clients and had the opportunity to apply these principles across industries and around the world. And the results are consistently impactful. Shifting a default might only take a few lines of code or a simple checkbox, but but the behavioral impact is massive. It's one of the first things I train people on to be looking for and working on. You have to know what do you want someone to do? What are they doing now? What's keeping them from doing the thing you think they should do, that default? And how can you help to nudge the behavior? You have to think about and understand the default. And once you do start to see them, the good news is you can't really unsee them. They become very obvious in hindsight. But you have to put in the work and the effort and to practice, think about and look at those defaults and you can look at yourself to your own behavior. They're really, really a rich area to learn and see what's nudging your behavior and where you can turn that on for people you're working with. And if you enjoyed even a little bit learning about defaults today, you are absolutely going to love this Thursday's new episode where I got to interview Richard Thaler and Alex Emas about their new book, the Winner's Curse. One of the core ideas in both that conversation and the book is how often smart, capable people make poor decisions not because they don't care, but because the structure around them makes the wrong choice feel right. So here's something to reflect on as we wrap up the episode. Where are defaults quietly driving decisions in your business or life? And what might change if you rewrote just one of them? Come share your reflections with me on social media. You'll find me as the Brainy biz pretty much everywhere, and as Melina Palmer on LinkedIn. There are links in the show notes to make it easy, including related past episodes, books, ways to get in touch, and more. It's all waiting for you in the app you're listening to and at the brainy business.com542 and just like that, episode 542 on defaults is done. Join me Thursday for my conversation with Dr. Richard Thaler and Dr. Alex Emas about the Winner's Curse. If you're curious about anomalies, sunk cost, auction behavior, and how behavioral economics continues to evolve, you don't want to miss it. Until then, thanks again for listening and learning with me. And remember to be thoughtful.
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Thank you for listening to the Brainy Business podcast. Molina offers virtual strategy sessions, workshops, and other services to help businesses be more brain friendly. For more free resources, visit thebrainybusiness. Com.
Podcast: The Brainy Business | Understanding the Psychology of Why People Buy | Behavioral Economics
Host: Melina Palmer
Episode: 542
Release Date: October 21, 2025
In this engaging episode, Melina Palmer unpacks the powerful yet often overlooked role of defaults in shaping consumer choices. With expertise in behavioral economics, she explores how seemingly small design decisions—like a preselected checkbox or a pre-filled option—can have outsized effects on what customers choose, buy, and do. Drawing from personal experience, cross-industry examples, and behavioral science, Melina explains both the mechanics and the ethics of setting defaults in business processes. Her message is clear: properly chosen defaults are a win-win for companies and customers, but only if set thoughtfully and ethically.
[02:00]
“Every choice always has a default. In many cases, the default is to do nothing, and that's still a choice.”
— Melina Palmer
[05:30]
[06:00]
“If my default is to do nothing and I'm overcoming a hurdle to buy an expensive item… a zero dollar default is a terrible place to start from.”
— Melina Palmer
[15:22]
“I've moved the default option… from not getting air conditioning… to getting air conditioning on a 24-month loan. This is the implied default because most people do this.”
— Melina Palmer
[20:00]
[23:00]
[25:30]
Tulsa, Oklahoma saved $41,000 a year by setting printers to default to double-sided printing.
[27:00]
[29:00]
“Keeping it as the default means more people will get subscriptions than one-off purchases.”
— Melina Palmer
[33:00]
“Switching from… 'would you like to donate'… to 'this is included, do you want to remove it?'… raised an additional $1.54 million for the state parks in Washington.”
— Melina Palmer
[36:45]
[38:30]
| Time | Segment/Topic | |-----------|------------------------------------------------| | 02:00 | Defining defaults & status quo bias | | 05:30 | True vs. implied defaults | | 06:00 | Air conditioning decision hurdles | | 13:11 | The power of anchors in pricing | | 16:48 | Shifting implied defaults with payment plans | | 20:00 | Choosing effective, ethical defaults | | 23:00 | Coaching/business service application | | 25:30 | Operational defaults: receipts, printing, trays | | 27:00 | Plate size & food waste | | 29:00 | Subscription defaults (Amazon example) | | 33:00 | Opt-in vs. opt-out; government revenue nudges | | 36:45 | Financial products & insurance defaults | | 38:30 | Mandated/required choice | | 37:41-39:12 | Notable quotes & wrap-up |
Melina closes by challenging listeners to notice and re-examine defaults in their own businesses and lives. Defaults quietly drive behaviors, and shifting them thoughtfully can have transformative results.
“Where are defaults quietly driving decisions in your business or life? And what might change if you rewrote just one of them?” [39:20] — Melina Palmer
Don’t miss Thursday’s episode: Melina interviews Nobel laureate Richard Thaler and Alex Emas on the further evolution of behavioral economics and choice architecture.
For related content, tools, and episode resources, visit: thebrainybusiness.com/542