I’m more likely to wash my hands — an activity so essential for safe medical care
that it’s arguably malpractice not to do so — if a poster outside your room prompts me to think of your health instead of mine.
At four months, both incentive groups had lost more than three times as much weight as the control group (about 14 pounds versus four pounds),
but the deposit group lost slightly more than the lottery group.
Nearly 80 percent of patients in the comfort default group chose comfort, while only 43 percent in the aggressive care default group did.
People overwhelmingly tend to stick with default options when given a choice (organ donation rates are over 90 percent in countries where citizens need to override a default
and opt out of donation compared with 4 to 27 percent where they much choose to opt in).
A similar study found that patients were more likely to walk 7,000 steps a day if they were given an upfront payment — part of which had to be returned each day
that they didn’t meet their exercise goal — compared with lotteries, rewards or old-fashioned encouragement.