President Obama has signed a new executive order authorizing Federal agencies to perform behavioral studies on American citizens. The studies, which will be performed without express permission from participants, are designed to advance government initiatives by ‘nudging’ citizens toward certain behaviors and choices.
‘A growing body of evidence demonstrates that behavioral science insights – research findings from fields such as behavioral economics and psychology about how people make decisions and act on them – can be used to design government policies to better serve the American people,’ reads the executive order, released on Tuesday.
The new program is the end result of a policy proposal the White House floated in 2013 entitled ‘Strengthening Federal Capacity for Behavioral Insights.’
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The initiative draws on research from University of Chicago economist Richard Thaler and Harvard law school professor Cass Sunstein, who was also dubbed Obama’s regulatory czar. The two behavioral scientists argued in their 2008 book ‘Nudge’ that government policies can be designed in a way that ‘nudges’ citizens towards certain behaviors and choices.
This post was published at shtfplan on September 17th, 2015.
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