Is nudging just to help men to aim, or is it a rhetorical technique unethical, a covert persuasion? What is nudging and is it a new method for management and public health?

One of the very first examples of nudging is actually the etching of the image of a fly into the men's room urinals at Schiphol Airport. I experienced them myself decades ago and yes, I did as figured. The fly image at the bottom of a urinal has improved men's aim, leading to lowered cleaning costs.

The nudging theory proposes positive reinforcement and indirect influences on the behavior and decision making of groups or individuals. Rhetors have stressed the techniques of persuading step by step, and more recently, scientists like Professor Daniel Kahneman and Professor Robert Cialdini have described the pathway of nudging.

In 2020, not only the British government of Boris Johnson, but the Swedish administration as well, decided to rely on nudge theory to fight the coronavirus pandemic. One step at a time, the citizens of UK and Sweden accepted isolation and restrictions. The key was to understanding and acceptance to move the people in the direction of the governments. The citizens gave up their civil rights and accepted not only isolation, but vaccination and geo-surveillance and new vaccine passports. All for a good cause.

Other countries not using the psychology of nudging had a much harder time implementing curfews, restrictions, etc. They might flatten the curve quicker but with less acceptance by the citizens. So the technique is recreated with new terminology at a kickstart in the urinals in Netherlands!

But one cannot resist thinking of the experimental social movement created in the sixties at a Californian high school to explain how the German population could have accepted the actions, using techniques of nudging (but not the terminology) of the Nazi regime, an experiment later filmed, The Wave. It was the most ugly face of nudging, the very same technique of the Nazis; "we just need to invade yet another country for the Third Reich, just a bit more 'lebensraum', if you just accept that. Then we are fine", and well they never were. But the other European leaders didn't know what to think and bought it for years. Every technique of covert persuasion can be used both for positive reinforcement as well as negative reinforcement which can be devastating. Be aware of PsyOps going on, I am sure they are studying nudging right now. The psychological warfare and asymmetric threats are as vivid as other disinformation and hacker attacks going on. Be aware and remember, it all started with aiming at a fly.