KEYNOTE: BEYOND NUDGING: HOW TO BOOST MEDICAL DECISION MAKING

Current discourse on how policy makers should apply insights from the social and behavioral sciences to better serve the public interest and improve decisions about health, wealth and happiness frequently focuses on the notion of nudging. Nudging bets that changing people's choice architecture will alter their otherwise detrimental behaviors in positive and predictable ways. In this talk, I will be concerned with policy interventions that do not nudge but boost, that is, extend people's decision-making competence rather than co-opting their deficits. I will discuss boosts taken from the domains of diagnostic inference, surrogate decision making, patient communication and dietary choices.