Summary
Cognitive policy is the side of a policy that works on how people think: the values and ideas it carries and teaches, as distinct from what it does. Joe Brewer and George Lakoff drew the distinction at the Rockridge Institute in 2008, defining it as “the values and ideas that both motivate the policy goals and that have to be uppermost in the minds of the public and the media” for a policy to seem common sense.
Their case compares two US climate proposals that look alike. Cap and Dividend, which pays every citizen, teaches that “We all own the air!”; Lieberman-Warner, they argue, teaches that polluters deserve their profits.
Rationale
A caveat comes with this one. That policies teach fits our view that “institutions, economic arrangements” reinforce dispositions. But they design the lesson to win support; we’d treat such effects as hunches to watch.