Ideas of behavioral economics, how our emotions, society, our perception influences our decision making are here for some time now. Groundbreaking research and insights by Daniel Kahneman, which brought him a Nobel prize in economics, are accessible to all of us. For a short preview, you can watch Khaneman’s TED Talk on our “experiencing selves” and our “remembering selves”, and for a deep dive, there is always his book Thinking, fast and slow.
But how can these insights work in our own lives? What are the principles, and ideas that we can apply so we make better decisions, ultimately leading to better, healthier, and happier lives?
Going straight to the core of his theory, our brain has two operating systems. System 1 is fast, automatic, it operates unconsciously, often triggered by emotions and associations. System 2 is slow and reflective, it’s also conscious, deductive, and logical.1
Think about leaving for work every morning. When you are at the door, you just keep rolling – packing always your wallet, phone, car keys, or the bus ticket, taking the same route without much thinking. Maybe it even happened to you that one morning you were supposed to go someplace else, but you head straight the same route to work. That is your automatic, unconscious, associative System 1 working.
On the other hand, when shopping for a new pair of sneakers, you don’t just go in the store and take the pair from the same shelf you took the last pair. Nope, you look around, choose the pairs you like, try them out, think about their comfort, their price, how well would they go with the jacket you have… That is your slow, reflective, conscious System 2 at work.
When we know that there are these two systems, and how they work, we can deliberately try different things to help them to work benefiting us, instead of doing us harm or getting us into tricky situations (like straight to work instead of the doctor’s office where we have an appointment that morning).
Here are some ideas on directing these systems for healthy lifestyle choices. Since System 1 is fast and automatic, we can:
- Make the healthy choice an easy one. In my case, in trying to make myself drink more water, I put a glass bottle full of water on my living room table in the morning, making it super easy for me to just take a glass of water without the need to go to the kitchen.
- Leverage the power of habit. Habit is defined as an automatic pattern of behavior when actions become paired repeatedly with a context or an event. It’s activated by a cue, after which action starts, leading to a reward.2 So, if we want to leverage the power of habit, we can use a certain context to develop a new, healthy behavior. For me, that is taking my yoga mat and doing morning exercise right after a morning shower. In this way, I don’t leave space to think and decide do I want to do the exercise this morning or not. No decisions to be made, that is already pre-decided – I am exercising every morning, setting the cue to start the exercise just after a shower. In this way, I am leveraging the fast, automatic, and associative thinking of System 1.
As System 2 is slower and reflective, things we can do to leverage this system can be:
- Provide the knowledge, motivation, and resources to sustain healthy behavior. For me, this included getting a book on a healthy diet, reading, and learning how our organism uses foods, when to eat what food, so I can have more energy and feel better every day.
- Providing resources can look like planning meals ahead for each day of the week and getting all the ingredients in advance. Snacks should be planned as well, so we can have a little bag of almonds to nibble on, instead of taking a chocolate bar from a canteen.
I hope that this short preview of the dual-system theory and ideas on how to leverage them can give you inspiration and a push in the right direction to think and put it to use, in which ever area of your life you want to.
If you’re interested in learning more about behavioral economics and its beginnings, read more on this link. Stay healthy, wealthy, and smiling. 🙂
1 Thinking, fast and slow, Daniel Kahneman, 2011
2 Habit is an automatic and rigid pattern of behavior in specific situations, which is usually acquired through repetition and develops through associative learning, when actions become paired repeatedly with a context or an event (Dolan et al., 2010). ‘Habit loops’ involve a cue that triggers an action, the actual behavior, and a reward. For example, habitual drinkers may come home after work (the cue), drink a beer (the behavior), and feel relaxed (the reward) (Duhigg, 2012). Behaviors may initially serve to attain a particular goal, but once the action is automatic and habitual, the goal loses its importance. For example, popcorn may habitually be eaten in the cinema despite the fact that it is stale (Wood & Neal, 2009). The Behavioral Economics Guide 2021
Behavioral Economics Hub 