Choice architecture autonomy. The choice architecture term was originally coined by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein in their 2008 book "Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness". Thaler and Sunstein have endorsed thoughtful design of choice architecture as a means to improve consumer decision-making by minimizing biases and errors that arise as the result of bounded rationality. This approach is an example of "libertarian paternalism", a philosophy endorsed by Thaler and Sunstein that aims to "nudge" individuals toward choices that are in their best interest without limiting choice. Libertarian paternalism may also be described as soft paternalism. Behavioral scientists have grouped
Nudge (book) people having the desire to save more, yet procrastinating on actually doing so. This program would invite "participants to commit themselves, in advance, to a series of contribution increases timed to coincide with pay raises". The book contains an analysis of the Bush administration program Medicare Part D. Thaler and Sunstein state that "on some dimensions, Bush was on the right track" with the plan, but that, "as a piece of choice architecture...it suffered from a cumbersome design that impeded good decision making". Specifically, they think that default choices for programs should not have been random and that beneficiaries of