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Cass R. Sunstein’s “nudge science”

Ethics, influence, and public policy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 May 2018

Ronald F. White*
Affiliation:
Mount St. Joseph University
Eliah J. White
Affiliation:
Northern Kentucky University
Charles Kroncke
Affiliation:
Mount St. Joseph University
Edward Sankowski
Affiliation:
University of Oklahoma
David Vanderburgh
Affiliation:
Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corp
*
Correspondence: Ronald F. White. Email: ron.white@msj.edu

Abstract

Type
Forum
Copyright
© Association for Politics and the Life Sciences 2018 

In 2008, Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein’s best-selling book Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness set the standard for the philosophy and psychology of political influence. Reference Thaler and Sunstein1 Sunstein’s works since then — Why Nudge: The Politics of Libertarian Paternalism (2014), Reference Sunstein2 The Ethics of Influence: Government in the Age of Behavioral Science (2016), Reference Sunstein3 and Human Agency and Behavioral Economics: Nudging Fast and Slow (2017) Reference Sunstein4 — expand and expound on (what we shall call) “nudge science.” The following collection of essays will explore this body of work from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, with a special emphasis on explaining and predicting how each discipline might address the ethics of influence in a democratic society. The intent of the following articles is not to critique “nudge science” but to focus on current U.S. public debates — obesity policy (psychology), retirement savings policy (economics), breast cancer screening policy (medicine), and climate change policy (philosophy) — and, ultimately, to speculate on the immediate future of libertarian paternalism in the United States.

Note

Earlier drafts of these five essays were presented in a research session at the 35th Annual Meeting of the Association for Politics and the Life Sciences, held at DePaul University, Chicago, April 5, 2017.

References

Thaler, R. H. and Sunstein, C. R., Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008).Google Scholar
Sunstein, C. R., Why Nudge? The Politics of Libertarian Paternalism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014).Google Scholar
Sunstein, C. R., The Ethics of Influence: Government in the Age of Behavioral Science (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016).Google Scholar
Sunstein, C. R., Human Agency and Behavioral Economics: Nudging Fast and Slow (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017).CrossRefGoogle Scholar