ABSTRACT
Within behavioral science, some people have found it helpful to distinguish between two families of cognitive operations in the human mind: System 1, which is fast, automatic, and intuitive; and System 2, which is slow, calculative, and deliberative. In terms of law and public policy, it is useful to distinguish between educative and noneducative nudges. Educative nudges, offered by government agencies, attempt to strengthen the hand of System 2 by improving the role of deliberation and people’s considered judgments. Noneducative nudges are designed to appeal to, or to activate, System 1. Noneducative nudges include default rules and uses of order effects, which are designed to preserve freedom of choice, but without necessarily increasing individual agency. The sharp distinction between majority approval of a System 1 nudge for voting and majority approval of a System 2 nudge for abortion attests to the importance of people’s judgments about whether a right is at stake—and whether a nudge is promoting or undermining it.
