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.”
Limited attention bias
Information overload leaves us effectively blind, meaning we’re unable to distinguish between what’s useful and what’s useless

“Our minds are not able to tease apart the useful information from the irrelevant information.”

– Iris Bohnet

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Download the 2019 BCA Calendar

To Solve the Environmental Crisis, We Must Foster the Power to Imagine

Toward the end of my senior year at Dartmouth, I watched my peers line up in front of the Career Services building. Waiting for their interviews for corporate jobs, all seemed to be dressed the same—the men wearing navy jackets, the women dark dresses. I thought back to my first day on campus four years earlier when we all wore different colors and dreamed of different futures. It was as if our education, instead of enhancing our individualities and imaginations, had reduced them to sameness.
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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.

“Natural Is Better”: How the Appeal To Nature Fallacy Derails Public Health

September 16, 2021

As consumers, we are faced with a virtually endless range of “natural” products. We can start our mornings with a piece of toast slathered in all-natural smooth peanut butter and wash our clothes in naturally dirt-demolishing laundry detergent, while those of us with certain habits can enjoy a natural American Spirit cigarette when the craving hits.

“Urgency and Agency”: Michael Mann on Conquering Climate Despair

September 9, 2021

I will admit that I sometimes fall into the climate-doomism camp. As a sustainability and behavioral scientist steeped in a steady stream of information about how much we have to do and how often we fail to do it, it can be hard to feel optimistic. I was surprised—then chastened, then angered—when I realized that my climate despair might actually be a tool being wielded by those looking to undermine climate action.

Vaccine Hesitancy: Understanding Why People Refuse or Indefinitely Delay Vaccination

September 3, 2021

In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, it becomes essential to understand why people refuse or indefinitely delay vaccination. A new Polish study, conducted at the Jagiellonian University (Krakow, Poland) and the SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities (Wroclaw, Poland) and published in the peer-reviewed scholarly journal Social Psychological Bulletin, brings up the impact of the active spread of attention-grabbing anti-vaccine arguments, as well as the overall distrust in the Big Pharma, science and health providers.

Play Is Serious Business for Elephants

August 12, 2021

Young dogs, apes and other animals develop skills needed to survive and reproduce. People tend to think of play as an activity one engages in at one’s leisure, outside of learning important skills needed to succeed later in life, such as hunting, mating, and evading predators. But although playing is fun for all involved—and fun for those who are watching—play behaviours evolved as ritualised forms of survival skills needed later in life, providing the opportunity to perfect those skills.

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