ArticleBioethics2025
The Effectiveness of Nudging and Its Ethical Implications.
Article in Bioethics, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
Abstract
Nudging consists of interventions that aim to alter behavior in a certain way by changing the presentation or framing of options, without coercion or changing economic incentives. This paper discusses the effectiveness of nudging and the ethical implications of this effectiveness. Section 2 suggests that-if publication bias is adequately accounted for-recent comprehensive meta-analyses as well as high-quality experiments show that nudging is much less effective than previously assumed. Sections 3 and 4 discuss the ethical implications. I argue that the lack of effectiveness of nudging is an additional moral consideration against it. There are two reasons: First, reduced effectiveness makes nudging less cost-effective. Second, reduced effectiveness reduces the benefits of nudging but does not, to the same degree, weaken the moral reasons speaking against nudging. However, a comprehensive assessment of the effectiveness of various forms of nudging in diverse contexts, as well as their ethical permissibility, requires further empirical and ethical research.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.