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.”
Altruism bias
Acting in the best interest of others can contribute to our own happiness

“We humans notoriously underestimate how happy it makes us to give to others.”

– Nava Ashraf

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Download the 2019 BCA Calendar

Behavioral Science Teams Increasingly Important to Financial Services

Behavioral sciences teams can influence business strategy, decision-making and service offerings through deep insight into human behavior. Such a team’s ability to understand behaviors helps mitigate failure and decrease industry waste.
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NHS could save billions by offering cash reward to quit smoking

July 17, 2019

Offering financial rewards to people trying to quit smoking could save the NHS billions of pounds a year and boost the economy, according to research.

At STEM Competitions, Gender Norms Still Hold Girls Back

July 16, 2019

Seventeen-year-old Rachel Seevers waited nervously at the 2019 International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF). The high school senior was about to demonstrate to the public a new kind of underwater propulsion system she’d created and tested in her parents’ basement. But no one came to talk to her. So, Seevers tried an experiment. She and a nearby male participant, who’d been getting lots of attention, switched spots, presenting each other’s research. Lo and behold, his project became much less popular with her standing in front of it, while hers suddenly attracted more interest.

Why you should hire a behavioural scientist

June 28, 2019

In May 2018, more than 76,500 Ontario public service employees received emails from their employer encouraging them to use the federal government’s retirement income calculator. The emails were the same, but the subject lines were different. Each one targeted a different way of thinking: emphasizing the simplicity of retirement planning, playing up its immediate benefits or prompting the receiver to consider who they’ll spend their retirement with.

Habit formation: How The Wall Street Journal turned user-level data into a strategy to keep subscribers coming back

June 27, 2019

The Journal went on a quest to identify the user actions — an app download, an article share, repeat reading of a particular reporter’s stories — that can turn a new subscriber into a loyal one. Then it turned that knowledge into churn-reducing action.

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