Moral Suasion

Almost a portmanteau, moral suasion is the persuasion of someone by appealing to them via moral values, rather than through coercion or force. Smooth.

In economics, central bankers sometimes use moral sausion to try to influence inflation rates, as well as private and public levers. They try to get economic actors to act in a way that’s good for the economy, out of the principle that it’s the right thing to do. When applied in this way, moral suasion is also called jawboning, since it’s more talk and less action.

Moral suasion can be ironically immoral-feeling sometimes. For instance, central bankers can use moral suasion via veiled or explicit threats to get others to comply with their policy goals. That’s more persuasion by threats than by appealing to morals, but it still falls under the central bank moral suasion category.

Next time someone tries to change your behavior by appealing to morals, you can call them out (i.e. you can’t moral-suade me, mom!). Nice.