Tour Chicago Booth Through the Eyes of a Behavioral Economics Professor

Richard Thaler: 00:17
Real architecture at some points meets choice architecture. Our great building has some nice features that employ that. This is one of my favorite spots, this internal stairwell.

Richard Thaler: 00:33
Because of these stairs, we all feel like we're in one place, and everyone walks here. Nobody ever takes the elevator to get from five to three, so we get a little bit more exercise. And you even hear people up there, which will cause an incidental contact with somebody that you might not otherwise run into, so this just makes the whole building work better.

Richard Thaler: 01:10
In my book Nudge, we start with an example of a cafeteria director who discovers that the order in which the food is displayed influences what people eat. And I'm happy to say that our cafeteria uses some good choice architecture. The first thing you see is the salad bar, which is over here. You have to walk all the way past this to get over there, where they've got the burgers and fries. Just sticking you right up front with the salad will make people more likely to eat the salad, and that'll be good for people.

Richard Thaler: 01:52
I've been bragging about how great our building is, how beautiful it is. There are some little things that they still get wrong. See this handle? You know what the name of this handle is? It's called a pull. It's shouting to you, "Pull." To use this door, what do you have to do? You have to push. Some designer liked the look of these things and thought that it should have the same look on both sides. That's just bad choice architecture.

Richard Thaler: 02:26
This is the center of the building, the atrium, the focal point of the building. It's such an attractive place to be. It's where people hang out. It's a place where people run into each other. The faculty walk through here and will have chance encounters with students. It makes the school into more of a community.