Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Using Nudges To Increase Engagement With Suicide Prevention Resources In An Online Sample Of United State Military Veterans, Brian W. Bauer

Dissertations

Suicide rates have continually increased from 1999 to 2019 in the United States, with populations such as military Veterans showing substantially higher suicide death and attempt rates than civilians. Behavioral economics researchers have demonstrated that people regularly make decisions that are not aligned with their own self-interests (i.e., irrational decisions). These irrational decisions often stem from humans having bounded rationality (i.e., limited computational power), which produce reliable cognitive biases that occur outside of people’s awareness and influence the decisions they make. There are many important decisions leading up to a suicide attempt (e.g., whether to engage with suicide prevention resources), …