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

Scientists sharing Omicron data were heroic. Let’s ensure they don’t regret it

One of the positive experiences during two years of pandemic gloom has been the speed of scientific progress in understanding and treating Covid. Many effective vaccines were launched in less than a year and rapid large-scale trials found a cheap and effective drug, dexamethasone, that saved thousands of lives. The global scientific community has also carried out “genomic surveillance” – sequencing the genome of the virus to track how it evolves and spreads at an unprecedented level: the public genome database has more than 5.5m genomes. The great value of that genomic surveillance, underpinned by a commitment to rapid and open sharing of the data by all countries in near-real time, has been seen in the last few days as we’ve learned of the Covid variant called Omicron.
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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.

Will the Metaverse Impact Mental Health?

November 25, 2021

Publicity has been given to the planned creation of a ‘metaverse’ by Facebook. A ‘metaverse’ is a term given to the evolution of the internet into a virtual world in which people interact through digital selves or avatars. According to Facebook: “In the coming years ... people will transition from seeing us primarily as a social media company to seeing us as a metaverse company … In many ways the metaverse is the ultimate expression of social technology.”1 The motivation behind this development is somewhat unclear, and the public justifications given by the company to date are scientifically incoherent or improbable. However, there is research evidence that helps us understand the likely outcomes of a metaverse for mental health.

The Children’s COVID-19 Vaccine Rollout Requires a Different Playbook

November 19, 2021

Now that the FDA approved emergency-use authorization of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for children 5 to 11 years old, it’s essential for as many as possible to get vaccinated. But successfully rolling out the vaccine to young children will require a different approach than for adults. The FDA approval represents a watershed moment in the fight against COVID-19, yet many parents, even those who are vaccinated themselves, are hesitant to vaccinate their children.

Cop26 leaders blame individuals, while supporting a far more destructive system

November 11, 2021

It suits governments to lecture us on our consumption, but they need to offer systemic change if we are to tackle the climate crisis. The protesters gathered in Glasgow for Cop26 are a diverse group – at the demonstration on Saturday I watched everybody file past – from international socialists to Scottish nationalists, healthcare workers to striking refuse workers, from indigenous activists at the very front to cycling enthusiasts at the very back.

George Loewenstein and the NEW New Economics of Information

November 4, 2021

Readers consuming fake news, investors ignoring a bear market, Internet users giving away valuable personal data in online quizzes: All of these trends can have dramatic consequences for the individuals involved as well as for society, and none are well explained by traditional economics. George Loewenstein, the Herbert A. Simon University Professor of Economics and Psychology, discussed his research on these trends and other topics at the Behavioral Insights in Action conference, hosted by the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences' Department of Social and Decision Sciences.

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