The invisible nudge: How subtle pushes shape our choices and our egos.

Carolina Cuervo-Robert
18 minutes ago
4 min read

Written by Carolina Cuervo-Robert

We consumers have all been under the influence of a nudge: those subtle design changes that steer us toward better choices without stripping away our autonomy. Whether it’s a gym reminder, a pre-checked organ donation box, or a veggie option on top of a menu, nudges are everywhere. The debate often focuses on whether nudging crosses over into manipulation, but Professors Matthew Fisher and Daniel Oppenheimer make a different point. They explore an unexpected side effect: nudges don’t just guide our choices; they inflate our egos.

The ego boosting paper

Across 10 studies (with over 5,000 participants), they found that nudges have a sneaky consequence: they make us think more highly of ourselves. Because we don’t realize we’re being gently pushed, we credit our "better" choices to sheer willpower. We feel more disciplined, health-conscious, or eco-friendly, even when the nudge did all the heavy lifting. This might not always work for the best:

“I think it's important to highlight because it suggests that nudges can have the ability of undermining their own effectiveness”

Matthew Fisher

The nudge blind spot

Here’s the irony: the magic of nudges lies in their subtlety, but that very invisibility warps our perception of their value. When we don’t notice the nudge, we underestimate its role… and that can backfire. This systematic underappreciation of nudges is economically interesting because it can lead to a lose-lose situation:

“There are plenty of contexts where consumers should be well calibrated, and it will lead to, ironically, both negative effects for consumers and firms.”

Matthew Fisher

Take gym notifications. They nudge us to work out, but since we don’t recognize their impact, we might dismiss them as annoying and turn them off. The result? Fewer gym visits, lost motivation, and a drop in membership renewals. Everyone loses. Worse still, this pattern repeats across nudges, each unnoticed ‘push’ reinforces the illusion of self-reliance, making us increasingly likely to underestimate external help and overestimate our own discipline. As Matthew puts it:

“More exposure over time should validate consumers' assumptions and strenghten them: if I see myself having continuous success, I'm going to keep attributing it to me. I will see myself in an even more positive light.”

Matthew Fisher

So, the key question here is: how to remedy this miscalibration?

Struggling to find solutions

Usually, if researchers struggle with anything, is with the fear that the effects won’t replicate. Matthew and Daniel faced the opposite: the effect of nudges on overconfidence proved remarkably sticky and extremely hard to get rid of. So persistent, that even when reviewers asked to test across nudges or contexts, the effect remained.

In addition, while the paper diverged from the typical “main effect, mediators, and boundary condition” template, reviewers – curious about the stickiness of the effect – still pushed for them to find ways to counteract the nudge-induced overconfidence. But since the effect was so sticky, it was also hard to eliminate:

“I think one aspect that was surprising was kind of how sticky this effect was and that our best intervention just reduced it. We can never get people fully properly calibrated.”

Matthew Fisher

They tried providing immediate feedback, reminding people that nudges had improved their decisions. But even that just barely reduced the over-confidence, without fully making them realise that they were not as proficient as they thought.

Looking back, Matthew also considered temporarily removing nudges to make their absence felt. For example, when a regular fitness app user travels and loses access to their usual reminders, they may assume they’ll maintain their workout routine independently. But when they inevitably forget to exercise, the disruption could make them realise that without the help, their discipline fell apart, creating a newfound appreciation for external cues.

One final thought: Nudges are powerful, so handle them with care

Overall, nudges are powerful tools. But like any tool, they come with trade-offs which need to be understood. In Matthew’s words:

“We're not anti-nudge in any respect. It's more like, hey, this is an awesome tool that people are using now all over the world. And here's an important side-effect that's gotten overlooked. Let's think through how to mitigate the downsides of this.”

Matthew Fisher

So maybe next time you pat yourself on the back for a good choice, ask: “was it really all me?”

Meet Matthew Fisher

If you could only rescue one idea in marketing, which one would it be and why?

You know one of my favourite things to teach --and I think it’s something that has a big impact we don’t think a lot about-- is the way placebos matter for consumer experiences, and the power of expectations in shaping what actually happens when someone uses a product or service. It’s just such a fascinating area of research to me, where there’s still mysteries about what exactly is happening and why we see the sort of things we see. So, a lot of that obviously shows up in the medical domain but, I think its application to marketing is super interesting and could and should be highlighted a lot more.

If you were not a marketing researcher, what would you be?

I went straight through on the research route; I always knew that's what I wanted to do so I’m struggling coming up with an answer. But since my favourite sports team just won their first title, I think being a sports-writer sound very fun. Working for, or doing analytics for a basketball team, or following and writing about sports… I think that may have been a career that would have interested me.