The Obama 'Nudge Unit' Rides Again

 "Nudge" has been defined in this way: A nudge [] is any aspect of the choice architecture that alters people's behavior in a predictable way without forbidding any options or significantly changing their economic incentives.

Emphasis should be on changing people's behavior "In a predictable way." One of the major government promoters of nudging, Cass Sunstein, has unconvincingly suggested that nudging is not manipulative, coercive, secretive, or trickery.

The term is based on the physical nudge, in which one person physically or forcefully pushes another in the direction desired by the nudger.

The nudgee is able to sense both the nudger and the direction in which the nudger desires the nudgee to go.

Now, how many times did the government or others say something like, "President Obama and all of us in the White House's Social and Behavioral Science Team are nudging you here to make this behavioral change which we used psychology to determine would be your predicted behavior. This is a nudge; you are still free to repel our nudge and choose what you want." Or, how many Americans even knew that the Obama-Biden Administration had a Nudge Unit which used "Psychology on its citizens" to get them to act in a predictable way? Probably not many.

The point is that government nudgers and other psychological nudgers most often act covertly and secretly, while a physical nudge and the desired response of the nudger does not occur secretly.

Then the Biden-Harris Administration re-commissioned the U.S. government's Nudge Unit: The Biden-Harris Administration formally rechartered the Social and Behavioral Sciences Subcommittee of the Committee on Science of the National Science and Technology Council in April 2022. 

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/02/the_obama_nudge_unit_rides_again.html