The Smarter Screen is a new book about influencing people’s behavior while they are spending several hours a day staring at screens.
Author Shlomo Benartzi is a professor at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management and has applied behavioral economics to help Americans increase their savings rates with Richard Thaler.
Benartzi writes, “My hope is that we can use the scale of technology to bring more fixes to more people in far less time. In order to take advantage of these digital nudges, I believe we need to tailer them for our new online environment. Although we like to pretend that our brain isn’t altered by technology, new evidence suggests that these splendid inventions are shifting the patterns of our behavior in all sort of subtle ways. What’s more, these shifts are often predictable, allowing us to anticipate how people will act on a device, and how they will respond to our interventions.”
In the book he discusses how people’s behavior differs online. For instance you are more likely to add bacon to your pizza if you order online and you’re likely to overvalue a product you are considering if shopping with a touch screen device. He also discusses how you are more likely to choose a product if it is in a screen “hotspot”, even if there is a better option available and how online viewing affects memory.
You can learn more about the book at Amazon
The effect of screens on our behavior is something I (as someone who does stare at screens all day as part of my job) think about a lot. Will definitely add this to my “to read” list.