What is Behaviour Change?

Why is falling for fake news so easy despite all the warnings? Why do we carry high-interest debt even when we have the means to pay it off? Why are there so many browser tabs open on your screen right now even though digital clutter is so stressful?

The answers to these questions – and so many other perplexities of human behaviour – are the domain of behavioural science.

Once upon a time, we believed human beings were logical creatures, capable of making good decisions and acting in our own best interests.
Today, we know better.
Thanks to breakthroughs in behavioural research, we’ve been able to peer at the inner workings of our decision-making processes – and instead of logic and reason, we’ve found a tangle of biases and cognitive pitfalls that lead to irrational and even harmful behaviours.
The good news? We have effective tools at our disposal to steer those behaviours in a more desirable direction.
At BCA, we mine insights from behavioural research to illuminate what really motivates human actions.
Then, we add rigorous data analysis and a range of creative strategies to develop behavioural and communication solutions that improve decision-making and create better outcomes for customers, employees and citizens.
"To understand why we do what we do, neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky looks at extreme context, examining actions on timescales from seconds to millions of years before they occurred. In this fascinating talk, he shares his cutting-edge research into the biology that drives our worst and best behaviours."
The biology of behaviour
Understanding something as wildly complex as human behaviour is impossible without considering our biology. The work of Stanford neurobiologist Robert Sapolsky has done a lot to illuminate the neurological and biological factors that influence how we act and make decisions. As we learn more about these interconnections, our insights can be used for positive behaviour change. In Sapolsky's words, “We’re learning more and more about the biological underpinnings of our behaviour, and that can help us produce better outcomes.”
Self-control bias
Lack of self-discipline in the short term means we fail to act in pursuit of our long-term goals.

“January is always a good month for behavioural economics: Few things illustrate self-control as vividly as New Year’s resolutions. February is even better, though, because it lets us study why so many of those resolutions are broken.”

Sendhil Mullainathan

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Download the 2019 BCA Calendar

African researchers must be full participants in behavioural science research

Behavioural science involves understanding humans. However, it fails if it develops a limited understanding of humanity - 17% of whom who live in Africa. Africa’s voice must therefore be included in behavioural science research. Collaborations with African researchers should be grounded in respect. Public policy has been experiencing a behavioural renaissance. Policy makers in august bodies such as the World Bank and the United Nations are beginning to recognize that one must understand human behaviour and the context that shapes it to understand how people will react to a policy intervention.
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Behaviour Change in the age of Covid-19

September 15, 2020

This Mail & Guardian webinar was sponsored by The Behaviour Change Agency.  Speakers included Antoine Ferrere, Global Head of Behavioural Science at Novartis, Switzerland; Matthew Battersby, Chief Behavioural Scientist at Reinsurance Group of America, United Kingdom; Aimee Wesso, Advanced Strategic Specialist at Afrocentric Group; Pat Govender, Founder and Managing Director of The Behaviour Change Agency and Dr Anam Nyembezi, Behavioural Medicine Specialist and a Senior Lecturer in the School of Public Health, University of the Western Cape.

ChatGPT has left-wing bias – study

February 9, 2023

Which politics does ChatGPT stand for? A study shows that AI is on the left side of the political spectrum. The release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT has catapulted the technology of large language models into the public eye. It is already leading to changes in society, for example in the education system: schools and universities are trying to deal with the possibilities of such systems – or ban them.

Report: Food Loss and Waste in Farming

January 31, 2023

Insights from South African farmers: This research lays the groundwork for implementing a behavioural strategy that could reduce the estimated 34,4% of food that is wasted in South Africa. It would also help the country to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for 2030, especially SDG 12.3, which states: “By 2030, halve per capita global food waste at the retail and consumer levels and reduce food losses along production and supply chains, including post-harvest losses.”

Why South African farmers don’t measure lost food

October 27, 2022

About 45% of South Africa’s total available food supply that enters the food value chain is lost or wasted, with much of it occurring during initial agricultural production on farms. But fewer than 40% of farmers measure how much food is wasted, a new study has found. The research was conducted by The Behaviour Change Agency, for the World Wildlife Fund South Africa (WWF-SA), the Nedbank Green Trust and Food Forward.‍

Realistic Reasons to be Bullish on Nudging

September 30, 2022

Critics of nudging argue that it is no longer equal to society’s problems. Nudges try to change behavior by altering the environment in which we make decisions rather than resorting to bans or incentives. For some, this makes them too focused on the individual when our attention should be on wholesale systems change. For others, nudges aren’t focused on the individual enough: rather than tweaking their environment we should be trying to change people’s psychology at a deeper level.

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