Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

WH creates ‘Behavior Insights Team’ to nudge you into obedience
BizPac ^ | July 30, 2013 | Joe Saunders

Posted on 07/30/2013 4:54:40 PM PDT by La Lydia

According to Fox News, the Obama administration is building a team of experts in psychology to come up with ways to subtly persuade Americans to change their behavior in ways the government approves of – kind of like lab rats, Pavlov’s dogs or teachers unions. The “Behavior Insights Team” team is only in its formative stages, but its goals are all ambitious, according to a recruiting letter Fox said it obtained from a university professor who was identified for membership:

“Behavioral sciences can be used to help design public policies that work better, cost less, and help people to achieve their goals,” it says.

The letter shows that the White House has already begun projects to “experiment” with behavior modification at Cabinet-level agencies such as the Department of Health and Human Services – otherwise known as the Obamacare People.

And now a lot of things start to make sense. Remember that blizzard of half-baked ideas to promote Obamacare over the past few months – enlisting celebrities, librarians, motherhood, even trying to enlist the NFL, for God’s sake? They all only looked like typical ham-handed efforts by Democrats to try to get Americans to suck it up and surrender their freedom to the central government, as Democrats have been suckering them into doing since at least the Wilson administration.

They were all experiments of The Nudge.

The nickname – used by the professor who received the recruiting letter – comes from “Nudge,” a 2008 book by Cass Sunstein, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School who served as administrator of the Obama White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, and Richard Thaler, a professor at the Chicago Booth School of Business, according to Fox.

The premise, according to the book’s Amazon.com, is “how sensible ‘choice architecture’ can successfully nudge people toward the best decisions.” It’s a “must read,” Amazon says, “for anyone interested in our individual and collective well-being.”

Connect those dots: Two Chicago professors, one of whom becomes Obama’s regulatory czar, publish a book in 2008 – the same year a former University of Chicago constitutional law professor got himself elected president – about how to push people toward “collective well-being.”

And lo and behold, that becomes the playbook for a government bent on manipulating a population into voluntary servitude. Even better, it’s harmless, it’s warm, it’s friendly – it’s just a “Nudge.”

But as one economist summed it up for Fox: “Nudges can turn into shoves pretty quickly.”

Especially when it’s for the collective.


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Government; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: behaviormodification; bigbrother; nudgesquad; obama; obamapropaganda; propaganda; propagandalegal; propagandateam; socialism
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-51 next last
To: Daffynition

“...and that white effing unicorn you rode in on!”


21 posted on 07/30/2013 5:15:07 PM PDT by sheik yerbouty ( Make America and the world a jihad free zone!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies]

To: Bryanw92
And I still know educated liberals who say that he isn’t a Marxist and this isn’t a Marxist takeover of America. And in corporate America, these educated people become bosses.

What does that tell you?

22 posted on 07/30/2013 5:16:15 PM PDT by Talisker (One who commands, must obey.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 11 | View Replies]

To: La Lydia

Nothing new about this, attorneys have been using this technique for who knows how long.

It’s called conditioned response.

Make a statement and let someone come to what they believe is their own conclusion about the statement.

Because they believe they have reached the conclusion themselves they will believe a lie to be true.

A recent example was repeating over and over the attack in Benghazi was “spontaneous” because of the protest in Egypt.

Every time “spontaneous” was repeated people responded that there was no connection with the attack and the protest in Egypt.

Soon people began believing the lie that there was no connection to the attack in Benghazi and the protest in Egypt.

In reality the attack was planned then the protest in Egypt was planned to create the “spontaneous” lie.


23 posted on 07/30/2013 5:16:25 PM PDT by IMR 4350
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Talisker

That the Marxists and the so-called Capitalists are in bed together.


24 posted on 07/30/2013 5:17:35 PM PDT by Bryanw92 (Sic semper tyrannis)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 22 | View Replies]

To: Jude in WV

we need to end a whole mess of alphabet out of control agencies. good for you.


25 posted on 07/30/2013 5:19:41 PM PDT by Secret Agent Man (Gone Galt; Not averse to Going Bronson.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 18 | View Replies]

To: La Lydia

The kenyan might find out that the citizens are in no mood to be “nudged” and they might ‘nudge’ back.


26 posted on 07/30/2013 5:29:57 PM PDT by 21st Century Crusader (August 26, 1191)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: La Lydia

More Hitler moves, this time it’s brainwashing.

Brainwashing works, Look what it did for Mccain.


27 posted on 07/30/2013 5:37:28 PM PDT by Venturer ( cowardice posturing as tolerance =political correctness)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: La Lydia

Paging Dr. Joseph Goebbels,..... Heir Obama’s Propaganda Minister.


28 posted on 07/30/2013 5:39:15 PM PDT by G Larry (Let his days be few; and let another take his office. Psalms 109:8)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: La Lydia

I wish them a whole lot of luck when they nudge the wrong people.


29 posted on 07/30/2013 5:40:10 PM PDT by jy8z (From the next to last exit before the end of the internet.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: La Lydia
Obama Administration of nudging..

I hear them talk about it and I do believe that talk show hosts are being advised by "consultants" that political talk -- especially if it is "always" critical of Democrats -- is a turnoff for a majority of listeners.

Personally I am convinced that Cass Sunstein and phony "consultants" are "nudging" us back into the "Fairness Doctrine" era of a silenced majority.

If the FCC imposed "fairness" there would be outrage.. this way it looks like "we" want it. It's Sunstein's idea of libertarian paternalism.. we are free to choose but the liberals present us with the options and nudge us into choosing the "correct" one.

30 posted on 07/30/2013 5:48:32 PM PDT by WilliamofCarmichael (If modern America's Man on Horseback is out there, Get on the damn horse already!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: La Lydia

One of my “heroes” is Edward Bernays, who basically is the founder of most modern “public relations” tools.

He was big on “engineered consent” and other techniques to nudge you into doing something, usually commercial in nature but government too.

He was one of the team that successfully sold WWII to America.

So this is nothing new, really, just a but spiffier and more scientific.

And it’s being done by skeevy people with questionable ethics.


31 posted on 07/30/2013 5:51:05 PM PDT by DBrow
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: La Lydia

Or, “Research Team To Suss Out The Most Effective Lies.” What do you expect from that impostor bereft of God’s love.


32 posted on 07/30/2013 5:52:02 PM PDT by HiTech RedNeck (Whatever promise that God has made, in Jesus it is yes. See my page.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Viennacon

“Anyone not conforming to the ‘Nudge’, will be ‘Nudged’ into a FEMA camp for reeducation.”

Or beaten to a pulp by his neighbors. Cuba’s revolution had no camps and the Cultural Revolution did not have many.


33 posted on 07/30/2013 5:53:16 PM PDT by DBrow
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

To: combat_boots

This is so subliterate grammatically!


34 posted on 07/30/2013 5:53:48 PM PDT by Revolting cat! (Bad things are wrong! Ice cream is delicious!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 14 | View Replies]

To: La Lydia

My NUDGER is L&L`d.


35 posted on 07/30/2013 5:54:02 PM PDT by bunkerhill7 (("The Second Amendment has no limits on firepower"-NY State Senator Kathleen A. Marchione.))
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Ken522

Forget Congress, they have already been given “the nudge”.

None of this crap is going away at any ballot box.

Our time is running out.


36 posted on 07/30/2013 5:54:26 PM PDT by dforest (BR)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 7 | View Replies]

To: DBrow

For what it’s worth, that sort of concerted PR attempt MIGHT actually make things a little more reasonable. Right now it’s just about pure Alinsky which gives an oblique salute to the demonic. Anyhow, the conservative strategy is plain: fight the liberal lies, and do not indulge in lies yourself however convenient.


37 posted on 07/30/2013 5:54:58 PM PDT by HiTech RedNeck (Whatever promise that God has made, in Jesus it is yes. See my page.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 31 | View Replies]

To: SnuffaBolshevik
Those are filling ad time—they aren't sponsoring Rush at all. The local affiliate plays those for ad time it can't sell.

Sadly, stupid liberals (media types) fill many stations and they plant the more liberal of these PSAs to counter and spite Rush and his followers.

38 posted on 07/30/2013 5:59:11 PM PDT by ConservativeMind ("Humane" = "Don't pen up pets or eat meat, but allow infanticide, abortion, and euthanasia.")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 15 | View Replies]

To: Aevery_Freeman

I think I’m in love. :)


39 posted on 07/30/2013 6:15:28 PM PDT by La Lydia
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 10 | View Replies]

To: La Lydia

ROTFL...social psychologists got America recycling because they know how manipulate people. Get any college textbook on the subject, read, and weep. My book was written in so bad I had to keep it.

I wrote rush about this long ago.


40 posted on 07/30/2013 6:15:28 PM PDT by huldah1776
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-51 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson