Researchers have tested this many times, in different places, over many years, and they keep finding the same result. This one is safe to trust.
Two neighbouring countries with similar culture, similar wealth, similar values. In one, around twelve percent of citizens are registered organ donors. In the other, nearly everyone is. Germany and Austria. When researchers traced the gap, culture could not explain it. The difference was a checkbox. Germans had to opt in, ticking a box to become a donor. Austrians were donors automatically unless they ticked a box to opt out. One design choice moved the number from roughly one in eight to almost everybody. The pattern has since been found across many countries and many kinds of choice, from pension enrolment to insurance. The finding is not that people do not care. It is that whatever happens when a person does nothing is what happens to most people, because doing nothing is overwhelmingly what humans do.
A default is never a neutral starting point. It is a decision that has already been made for almost everyone who does not actively push against it. Now look at your own organisation with that in mind. A hire proceeds unless somebody objects. A budget renews at last year number unless somebody fights it. A meeting survives until somebody cancels it. Whoever set those defaults, possibly years ago and possibly without thinking about it at all, is still making a great many of your decisions today. The useful question is not what your policy says. It is what happens when nobody does anything, and whether anyone ever chose that on purpose.
Source: Johnson and Goldstein, 2003, Science. Replicated across many countries and choice settings.
Nudge
Thaler and Sunstein, 2008
The book built on findings like this one, on how the arrangement of a choice quietly determines the outcome.
Draw your own card. It does not take long, and it rewards taking your time.