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The Housefly Effect: How Nudge Psychology Steers Your Everyday Behaviour
THE INSTANT INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER
How do house flies help save millions of euros? How do the layout of casinos keep you gambling?
We are not nearly as rational as we'd like to think – every day we overestimate our ability to resist temptation.
Effective advertising experts use this to nudge us, making the most of our natural behaviour to get the results they want.
In order to process the millions of decisions we make each day, our brains take shortcuts. We are fooled by drugs that don't contain active ingredients, traffic light buttons that aren't connected, and the obsolete 'save' feature in MS Word – these are all examples of placebos that can be surprisingly reassuring. There are countless things that affect our reward and punishment, beauty and attraction, and the human tendency to follow the crowd.
THE HOUSE FLY EFFECT reveals how to recognize some of the things that affect our behaviour everyday and how we can use this knowledge to our advantage.
How do house flies help save millions of euros? How do the layout of casinos keep you gambling?
We are not nearly as rational as we'd like to think – every day we overestimate our ability to resist temptation.
Effective advertising experts use this to nudge us, making the most of our natural behaviour to get the results they want.
In order to process the millions of decisions we make each day, our brains take shortcuts. We are fooled by drugs that don't contain active ingredients, traffic light buttons that aren't connected, and the obsolete 'save' feature in MS Word – these are all examples of placebos that can be surprisingly reassuring. There are countless things that affect our reward and punishment, beauty and attraction, and the human tendency to follow the crowd.
THE HOUSE FLY EFFECT reveals how to recognize some of the things that affect our behaviour everyday and how we can use this knowledge to our advantage.
233 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 21, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
February 12, 2025
An extension of Nudge, many examples were shown about how we are nudged by everyone. Those that I remember:
1. We prefer the default option. So make organ donation the default if you want more people to benefit.
2. We like choices but hate choosing. So limit choices and dating apps are bad this way.
3. Supermarkets: fresh fruits first presented so we feel virtuous, then at the cash register we will buy unhealthy snacks. Eye level is the most bought so products fight to be put there.
4. Last experience effect: always have a good ending so we remember the period welL
5. Repetition becomes reality
6. Use simple messages to appeal to emotions, not detailed arguments
Interesting read
1. We prefer the default option. So make organ donation the default if you want more people to benefit.
2. We like choices but hate choosing. So limit choices and dating apps are bad this way.
3. Supermarkets: fresh fruits first presented so we feel virtuous, then at the cash register we will buy unhealthy snacks. Eye level is the most bought so products fight to be put there.
4. Last experience effect: always have a good ending so we remember the period welL
5. Repetition becomes reality
6. Use simple messages to appeal to emotions, not detailed arguments
Interesting read
August 13, 2026
Read this and navigate the world more wisely
Very entertaining with many insights into human fallibility, openness to suggestion, and the ethical choices that you make to improve the world (or your part of it anyway). 20 million readers can't be wrong actually I made that bit up.😉
Very entertaining with many insights into human fallibility, openness to suggestion, and the ethical choices that you make to improve the world (or your part of it anyway). 20 million readers can't be wrong actually I made that bit up.😉
August 25, 2026
1.5 stars
Some good insights alas the whimsy of explaining psychological ideas and theories as house flies kind of drove me insane.
It felt incredibly patronising.
Also the authors really loved to demonize food. A lot of examples were in relation to knowing calories and weight loss habits which gave me the ick
Some good insights alas the whimsy of explaining psychological ideas and theories as house flies kind of drove me insane.
It felt incredibly patronising.
Also the authors really loved to demonize food. A lot of examples were in relation to knowing calories and weight loss habits which gave me the ick
May 3, 2026
This is a super read, well-written and clear. If you're a heavy consumer of psychology, there will be some repetition on previously (in some cases, heavily) published research, but otherwise this held my attention and gave me some interesting new perspectives.
October 31, 2025
The best book I’ve read on behavioural psychology and now I want to explore this genre all i can. I feel way smarter and intelligent now that I’ve read this.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews