Nudge

is an excellent book by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein (isbn 978-0-141-04001-1). As usual I'm going to quote from a few pages:

School children, like adults, can be greatly influenced by small changes in the context.

There is no such things as a 'neutral design.'

Roughly speaking, losing something makes you twice as miserable as gaining the same same thing makes you happy. In more technical language, people are 'loss averse'... Loss aversion helps produce inertia.

Most teachers know that students tend to sit in the same seats in class, even without a seating chart.

Eating turns out to be one of the most mindless activities we do. Many of us simply eat what is put in front of us.

Social scientists generally find less conformity, in the same basic circumstances as Asch's experiments, when people are asked to give anonymous answers.

On average, those who eat with one other person eat about 35 percent more than they do when they are alone; members of a group of four eat about 75 percent more; those in groups of seven or more eat 96 percent more.

Self-control issues are most likely to arise when choices and their consequences are separated in time.

Even hard problems become easier with practice.

The best way to help Humans improve their performance is to provide feedback.

For most of their time on earth, Humans did not have to worry much about saving for retirement, because most people did not live long enough to have much of a retirement period.