The Spanish journal of psychology
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An estimated 1 in 4 elderly Americans need a surrogate to make decisions at least once in their lives. With an aging population, that number is almost certainly going to increase. This paper focuses on financial surrogate decision making. ⋯ Experiment 2 also suggested that those who were more numerate were less likely to be influenced by default settings than the less numerate, but only when the decision is whether to "opt in" (p = .05). These data highlight the importance of a recent debate about "nudging." Defaults are common methods to nudge people to make desirable choices while allowing the liberty to choose otherwise. Some of the ethics of using default settings to nudge surrogate decision makers are discussed.