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.”
Availability bias
Basing decisions on information that comes to mind most easily means we can overestimate the significance of things we’ve been exposed to frequently

“Often we don’t realise that our attitude toward something has been influenced by the number of times we have been exposed to it in the past.”

– Robert Cialdini

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Download the 2019 BCA Calendar

The World Health Organization Needs to Put Human Behavior at the Center of Its Initiatives

At the beginning of this year, the World Health Organization (WHO) issued a list of top 10 threats to Global Health. These threats ranged from climate change and non-communicable diseases, to antimicrobial resistance and vaccine hesitancy. The list also included HIV, dengue, weak primary care, fragile and vulnerable settings (e.g. regions with drought and conflict), Ebola, and threat of a global influenza pandemic.
More...

Behavioural science: Model behaviour

May 16, 2019

Nicholas Pratt looks at the growing use of behaviour science in the funds industry and its potential role as the saviour of active management.

How Uber and other digital platforms could trick us using behavioral science – unless we act fast

May 11, 2019

Uber’s business model is incredibly simple: It’s a platform that facilitates exchanges between people. And Uber’s been incredibly successful at it, almost eliminating the transaction costs of doing business in everything from shuttling people around town to delivering food.

Keeping People Engaged in Your Cause With Help From Behavioral Science

May 10, 2019

Nonprofits struggling to keep supporters excited about their causes should follow these five recommendations to make the most of Stanford behavioral scientist B.J. Fogg's model for getting people to act.

How psychology can help us understand — and fight — poverty

May 8, 2019

By looking at the way people in poverty make decisions, UW research psychologist Crystal C. Hall hopes to dismantle the assumptions we make about them.

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