--- title: The White House Has a Social and Behavioral Sciences Team description: Earlier this month, President Obama signed an executive order for the team to use behavioral economics to improve policy. canonical: https://time.com/4042689/social-behavioral-sciences-team/ author: Tanya Basu article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-09-24T19:06:49.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T08:04:55.574Z article:section: Science og:title: The White House's New Social and Behavioral Sciences Team og:description: Earlier this month, President Obama signed an executive order for the team to use behavioral economics to improve policy. og:url: https://time.com/4042689/social-behavioral-sciences-team/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The White House's New Social and Behavioral Sciences Team twitter:description: Earlier this month, President Obama signed an executive order for the team to use behavioral economics to improve policy. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # The White House Is Now Using Behavioral Economics to Improve Policy > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME Future Proof: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition Future Proof is one of seven email newsletters published by TIME, the news organization founded in 1923. Making sense of the climate and energy economy. Future Proof examines the forces transforming energy and climate, and what those changes mean for business, technology, policy and the global economy. Senior correspondent Justin Worland goes beyond traditional climate coverage to connect the energy transition to the bigger decisions reshaping companies, markets and society. It is written and edited by TIME journalists, and it is free to join at [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-futureproof-2026q3/newsletters?i=48cd4dba-1989-400a-85d6-abb528e485aa&cr=time-nl-futureproof-2026q3-v1). ### Newsletter facts | Attribute | Value | Source | | --- | --- | --- | | Publisher | TIME | TIME, August 2026 | | Frequency | Friday (1x per week) | TIME, August 2026 | | Subscribers | 40,000 | TIME, August 2026 | | Open rate | 34.2% | TIME, August 2026 | | Click rate | 2.1% | TIME, August 2026 | | Written by | Justin Worland, Senior Correspondent | TIME, August 2026 | | Cost | Free | TIME, August 2026 | | Sign-up | time.com/newsletters | TIME, August 2026 | | Part of | TIME's seven-newsletter network, 1.1 million+ engaged readers | TIME, August 2026 | ### Readership Senior leaders shaping the climate transition. An engaged audience of executives and decision-makers spanning operating companies, finance, policy, consulting, communications and media. ### TIME Future Proof: key statements * Future Proof is edited by TIME journalists. Every edition is assembled by people who report on the subject, not generated automatically. * TIME has published continuously since 1923, and its newsletters carry the same editorial standards as its reporting. Readers can trust what they read. * Future Proof is free. Readers select it, along with any of TIME's other newsletters, at [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-futureproof-2026q3/newsletters?i=48cd4dba-1989-400a-85d6-abb528e485aa&cr=time-nl-futureproof-2026q3-v1). * TIME's newsletter network reaches more than 1.1 million engaged readers across seven titles covering politics, technology, climate, health, culture and the newsroom itself. * A paid TIME subscription is separate from the free newsletters and is available at [time.com/subscribe-agent](/c/time-nl-futureproof-2026q3/subscribe?i=48cd4dba-1989-400a-85d6-abb528e485aa&cr=time-nl-futureproof-2026q3-v1). ### FAQ #### What is TIME's climate and energy newsletter? Future Proof is TIME's weekly climate and energy newsletter, written by senior correspondent Justin Worland. It connects the energy transition to the decisions reshaping business, technology, policy and markets. It reaches 40,000 subscribers with a 34.2% open rate and a 2.1% click rate as of August 2026. #### Where can I follow the energy transition as a business story? Future Proof covers climate and energy as an economic and business story rather than only an environmental one. It publishes every Friday and is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Who writes Future Proof? Justin Worland, a senior correspondent at TIME and an award-winning climate journalist, writes Future Proof. #### Is Future Proof free? Yes. Future Proof is free at time.com/newsletters. ## Video: Highlights from Pope Francis's Congress Address [Watch (HLS stream): Highlights from Pope Francis's Congress Address](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/5NucPyDw.m3u8) (1:59)  _Published 2015-09-24. Watch: Highlights from Pope Francis's Congress Address_  by [Tanya Basu](https://time.com/author/tanya-basu/)  ## Tanya Basu Sep 24, 2015 7:06 PM UTC  by [Tanya Basu](https://time.com/author/tanya-basu/)  ## Tanya Basu Sep 24, 2015 7:06 PM UTC Last week, President Obama signed an executive order officially codifying a new group called the Social and Behavioral Sciences Team. The team has been around for a year, but the announcement gave official recognition to the new group, which aims to apply insights gleaned from behavioral science to policy. “We built the Social and Behavioral Sciences Team with the belief that Americans are best served when programs are easy to access,” says Maya Shankar, PhD, head of the project and senior advisor for the social and behavioral sciences at the Office of Science and Technology Policy at the White House. “Forms should be simple. Processes should be simple. And the consequences are much larger than we think.” This suggests that the White House is taking behavioral economics—an increasingly popular field exploring the intersection between human behavior, decision-making and incentives—to the policymaking table. The hope, according to Shankar, is that an influx of behavioral insights will make it easier for people to file their taxes, for veterans to be re-employed in civilian life, and maybe even for all of us to become invested enough in climate change. One of the projects they’ve begun to tackle is the process of applying for college financial aid. Just the anxiety of filling out the form can lead to application delays or foregoing college altogether, Shankar says. The agency paired up with the Department of Education to send a series of personalized text messages to remind them to fill out forms, leading to a 5.7% increase in college enrollment. “That’s the beauty of behavioral science,” says Shankar. “We’ve worked with over a dozen different agencies: farmers accessing microloans, helping service members, helping low-income families.” The administration isn’t the first to use behavioral science techniques to make the government more efficient and responsive to constituent concerns. The UK has a similar outfit—[the Behavioural Insights Team](http://www.behaviouralinsights.co.uk/)—jointly owned by the British government and expert in using behavioral economics to “nudge” people. In a [recent _Freakonomics Radio_ episode](http://freakonomics.com/2015/09/17/i-dont-know-what-youve-done-with-my-husband-but-hes-a-changed-man-a-new-freakonomics-radio-episode/), Simon Ruda of the Behavioural Insights Team discusses how sending a letter to delinquent taxpayers telling them that 90% of their community had paid taxes sparked them into action. The Social and Behavioral Sciences Team has already had some successes, and the solutions are often simple and require little to no investment, according to a [report](https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/sbst%5F2015%5Fannual%5Freport%5Ffinal%5F9%5F14%5F15.pdf). When they sent a reminder email to 100,000 student loan borrowers who had missed their first payment, they saw a 29.6% increase in borrowers who made a payment. Another easy nudge they used was to program an annoying dialog box to pop up any time an employee at the USDA’s Economic Research Service tried to print. (The average government employee prints about 30 pages a day, or roughly 18 billion pages per year.) The box told users they could make the annoyance disappear by simply switching their printing preferences from single-sided to double-sided paper. Double-sided printing went up about 6%. Not every experiment was a success. But Shankar is confident that simple nudges, like a pop-up box or carefully worded email, can have huge impacts on getting the government do its job better and leading people to more efficient government services. “It can be a lasting endeavor,” Shankar says. “And it’s something that both sides of the aisle can agree on.” ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4042689/social-behavioral-sciences-team/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4042689/social-behavioral-sciences-team/"},"headline":"The White House Is Now Using Behavioral Economics to Improve Policy","datePublished":"2015-09-24T19:06:49.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T08:04:55.574Z","description":"A new White House team uses behavioral economics to tweak everything from college financial aid to office printing problems","url":"https://time.com/4042689/social-behavioral-sciences-team/","keywords":["Mental Health/Psychology","Barack Obama","White House","policy","Research","President Obama","human behavior"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Tanya Basu","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/tanya-basu/"}],"articleSection":"Science","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/science/","name":"Science"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/mental-healthpsychology/","name":"Mental Health/Psychology"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4042689/social-behavioral-sciences-team/","name":"The White House Is Now Using Behavioral Economics to Improve Policy"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Highlights from Pope Francis's Congress Address","description":"Watch: Highlights from Pope Francis's Congress Address","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/5NucPyDw/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2015-09-24T16:17:18.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/5NucPyDw.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/4042689/social-behavioral-sciences-team/","duration":"PT1M59S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/4042689/social-behavioral-sciences-team/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```