Behavioral Science vs Nudging: What Organizations Get Wrong
What Nudging Is
Nudging, popularized by Thaler and Sunstein, refers to designing choice environments so that the desired behavior becomes the path of least resistance without restricting options. Default settings, simplified forms, strategic placement, social proof messages, and timely prompts are all nudges. Nudging is a legitimate and evidence-based behavioral intervention technique.
The Confusion
Many organizations equate behavioral science with nudging. They hear 'behavioral science' and think 'clever tweaks to the environment.' This is like equating medicine with aspirin. Aspirin is medicine. But medicine is much larger than aspirin, and prescribing aspirin for every ailment is not good medical practice.
Nudging addresses a specific category of behavioral barrier: physical Opportunity. It redesigns the environment to make the desired behavior easier. When the barrier is environmental friction (too many steps, poor defaults, confusing layout), nudging is exactly the right intervention.
But when the barrier is capability (people do not know how to do it), or social opportunity (peers are not doing it), or motivation (the behavior conflicts with identity, trust, or perceived risk), nudging will not work. Changing the default setting does not help someone who lacks the skill to use the system. Simplifying a form does not address the social stigma of using a service.
What Full Behavioral Science Looks Like
A complete behavioral science approach starts with diagnosis, not with solution selection. COM-B identifies whether the barrier is Capability, Opportunity, or Motivation. Nudging is one intervention category that addresses one barrier type (physical Opportunity). The full toolkit includes 93 Behaviour Change Techniques, 73 implementation strategies, and 33 strategy cards that cover the entire COM-B spectrum.
Organizations that reduce behavioral science to nudging miss the diagnostic step entirely. They apply environmental tweaks to motivation problems and skill-building to environmental problems. The result is an expensive trial-and-error process that could be avoided with proper diagnosis.
Nudging is one tool in the behavioral science toolkit. It addresses environmental barriers. A complete behavioral approach diagnoses the barrier first and selects from the full range of evidence-based interventions. Diagnosis before design, always.
