Boost (How to Make Decisions in a World Designed to Manipulate You)

A call to rethink behavioral science that empowers people to steer themselves toward good choices.

From an internationally acclaimed, multiple award-winning expert on decision making and a leading philosophical voice in behavioral public policy.

We all struggle to make good choices—what to eat, where to invest, when to get angry, whom to trust. For some time now, these struggles have been attributed to flaws in human reasoning: People are just not rational enough to do what’s in their own best interest. Policymakers, buying into this view, have focused on nudging citizens in the “right” direction rather than empowering them to figure things out for themselves.

In Boost, Ralph Hertwig and Till Grüne-Yanoff offer a fresh alternative: boosting. Instead of subtly steering people’s behavior, boosts enhance people’s competences to help them make the right call in all areas of life.

How can we eat more healthily? Manage our money? Save energy? Navigate the traps of the digital world? This book provides practical solutions for these everyday challenges and more, covering boosts from temptation bundling to psychological inoculation to disinformation detection trees. It shows how policymakers can use boosts—and why they should.

Boosts matter because lifelong learning matters, especially in the face of powerful industries—from Big Tech to Big Food—that seek to exploit our weak spots for profit. This book empowers us to unmask their tricks and fight back against manipulation, and enables policymakers to help us make wise choices in wicked times.