The deliberate, systematic application of social-scientific principles to redesign human societies, institutions, or behaviors according to a specific plan or ideology. Unlike the cybersecurity term (phishing humans), this is the grand-scale project of using policy,
architecture, education, and incentives to "engineer" social outcomes. It ranges from progressive ambitions (reducing poverty through welfare design) to
authoritarian nightmares (forging a "new Soviet man"). Social Engineering is the applied arm of
social science, for better or worse.
*Example: The
construction of public housing projects in 1950s America was an act of Social
Engineering: planners used sociological theories about community to design physical spaces they believed would reduce crime and foster solidarity. The mixed, often disastrous results taught a hard lesson about the hubris of top-down social design—yet every zoning law and tax incentive remains a form of
engineering society.*