The news that Obama had some of the lead­ing behav­iourists advis­ing his cam­paign comes as no sur­prise to me, how­ever I likely under­es­ti­mated how much they influ­enced both the cam­paign and the voters.

Time takes a look at this “behav­ioural dream team” and dis­cusses how the Obama admin­is­tra­tion is using behav­ioural eco­nom­ics to guide its finan­cial poli­cies.

The exis­tence of this behav­ioral dream team — which also included best-selling authors Dan Ariely of MIT (Pre­dictably Irra­tional) and Richard Thaler and Cass Sun­stein of the Uni­ver­sity of Chicago (Nudge) as well as Nobel lau­re­ate Daniel Kah­ne­man of Prince­ton — has never been pub­licly dis­closed, even though its mem­bers gave Obama white papers on mes­sag­ing, fundrais­ing and rumor con­trol as well as voter mobi­liza­tion. All their pro­pos­als — among them the famous online fundrais­ing lot­ter­ies that gave small donors a chance to win face time with Obama — came with foot­notes to peer-reviewed aca­d­e­mic research. “It was amaz­ing to have these bul­let points telling us what to do and the sci­ence behind it,” Moffo tells TIME. “These guys really know what makes peo­ple tick.”

Pres­i­dent Obama is still rely­ing on behav­ioral sci­ence. But now his Admin­is­tra­tion is using it to try to trans­form the coun­try. Because when you know what makes peo­ple tick, it’s a lot eas­ier to help them change.

While I like this pro­gres­sive move, I—like Mind Hacks’ Vaughan—feel the need to ask, “Where are the scep­ti­cal voices?”