Stephanie Mertens
Behavioural scientist. First author of the 2022 meta-analysis of choice architecture interventions across behavioural domains.
Who they are
Mertens and her co-authors assembled and analysed the largest available body of choice architecture studies, covering hundreds of experiments across many domains, and reported that the interventions are effective and widely applicable.
The same paper reports moderate publication bias in the literature it analyses, a disclosure that is usually dropped when the meta-analysis is described.
Key papers
Mertens, S., Herberz, M., Hahnel, U. J. J., & Brosch, T. (2022). The effectiveness of nudging: A meta-analysis of choice architecture interventions across behavioral domains. PNAS, 119(1), e2107346118.
Key ideas
Interventions that restructure the choice itself outperform those that merely describe the options differently or remind people of their intentions.
The database assembled for this paper is what made the reanalyses of July 2022 possible, so the correction that followed rests on this work rather than replacing it.
Concepts on this site
Sources
- doi:10.1073/pnas.2107346118