I was setting up a new laptop last week. There's this part where you go through all the settings, and I got maybe twenty minutes in before I just stopped caring. Not in a frustrated way, just—I couldn't make myself care about whether to use light mode or dark mode anymore.
I think I kept most of it on whatever it came with. Not because those were good choices. I just didn't want to keep deciding things.
There's this study (Johnson & Goldstein (2003)) by Madrian and Shea from 2001 about 401(k) enrollment. They looked at what happened when companies switched from opt-in to opt-out enrollment. Participation went from 49% to 86%. And I remember reading that and thinking "well yeah, people are lazy," but I'm not sure that's actually what's happening. Also, one study doesn't mean it's true. Even if there are twenty studies showing the same thing, which there might be, I don't know.
Because I don't think I'm lazy about my laptop settings. I mean, maybe I am. But it feels more like—okay, someone already decided this. And if I'm going to un-decide it, I need a reason. And I don't have a reason for most of this stuff.
The weird part about the retirement study is that it wasn't just a small bump. 49% to 86% is huge. That's like, most people will save for retirement if you set it up so they have to actively choose NOT to. But most people won't save for retirement if you set it up so they have to actively choose TO do it. Same people. Same money. Same future. Just different default.
That seems backwards, doesn't it? You'd think if people cared about retirement, they'd sign up either way. And if they didn't care, changing the default wouldn't matter. But apparently how much you care about your future is less important than whether there's already a checkmark in a box.
My email does this thing where it sorts messages automatically. I didn't set that up. It just started doing it one day after an update. And sometimes it gets it wrong—like it'll put something important in "promotions" or whatever. But I never changed it back. I just learned to check the promotions tab.
Like I'm adapting to the software instead of making the software adapt to me.
Johnson and Goldstein did this organ donation study across different countries in Europe. In countries where you're a donor by default unless you opt out, about 90% of people are donors. In opt-in countries, it's like 15%. Same people, basically same values about organ donation probably, completely different outcomes just based on what the form assumed.
Though I guess that could be wrong too. Maybe there's something else going on with those countries that explains it. I saw something recently that said when you actually track the data over time, the opt-out thing might not work as well as people thought. So who knows.
But if it's even halfway true, that's kind of terrifying. Because it means most people don't actually have an opinion about whether their organs should be donated. Or they have an opinion but it's so weak that it loses to "I don't feel like checking a different box."
I was telling someone about this and they said "yeah but phones are complicated, there are too many settings to care about all of them." Which is true. But then what does that mean? If there are too many decisions, then someone else is making most of them for you. And you don't even know which ones.
There was this European bank that increased sales by 387% just by changing which option was selected by default. 387%. They didn't change the product. They didn't change the price. They just moved the checkmark. And suddenly four times as many people wanted it.
That doesn't make sense if people are actually choosing what they want. That makes sense if people are just accepting whatever's in front of them and trying to move on with their day.
I keep thinking about that 401(k) study. About three-quarters of the people who got automatically enrolled kept the default contribution rate. They also kept the default asset allocation. Which means someone else decided how much of their money to save and where to invest it, and they just... went with it.
These aren't small decisions. This is their retirement. This is decades of their life. And they're outsourcing it to whoever set up the form.
I don't know if this is a problem exactly. It might just be how things work when things get complicated enough. Maybe there's only so much choosing a person can do before they run out of whatever energy it takes to care about things.
But it's strange to think about. Like, how much of what I do every day is just... running on someone else's defaults?
Probably a lot. I don't actually think that's the best way to live. But I'm not sure I could do it differently if I tried.
Because right now I'm writing this on a laptop with fonts I didn't choose, in an editor I didn't configure, with keyboard shortcuts I didn't set. And I've been using this computer for three months.
Sources:
1. Madrian, B. C., & Shea, D. F. (2001). The power of suggestion: Inertia in 401(k) participation and savings behavior. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 116(4), 1149-1187.
2. Johnson, E. J., & Goldstein, D. G. (2003). Do defaults save lives? Science, 302(5649), 1338-1339.
3. European bank default effect (387% increase in sales) - Referenced in behavioral economics literature on status quo bias.