It is time to put the BS in your organization, behavioral science that is
/More and more organizations are moving to a product-aligned organization. This is a positive sign and a good step forward for organizations in their digital transformation. However, another needed transformation is taking form but is not as far along. This transformation is the integration of behavioral science practices and expertise into organizations.
Behavioral science is known by many names like behavioral economics, behavioral finance, behavioral psychology, people science, and others. No matter its name the definitions of these areas generally center around being "a branch of science that deals primarily with human action and often seeks to generalize about human behavior in society" ("behavioral science" per Merriam-Webster).
Some organizations like Google, Lemonade, and Walmart have even formed behavioral science teams and/or hired Chief Behavioral Officers. It is great to see the dedication of these companies. But, organizations don't need to hire a bunch of PhDs and develop a behavioral science center of excellence to start leveraging its power. In fact, it is our belief that behavioral science is one of those skills like analytics that most professionals should be versed on and have a certain level of literacy.
Before getting farther down the rabbit hole there are a few items worth mentioning as a starting point:
Behavioral science is indeed a science so it should be respected in that way by harnessing the scientific method. Yes that means forming a hypothesis, designing an experiment, running the experiment, analyzing the data, and iterating as needed.
Behavioral science is a powerful tool so it should be used for good, not evil. Google has the mantra "don't be evil" and that is something you should repeat and practice if leveraging behavioral science. This doesn't mean avoiding using it but maybe ask your customers and prospects how they feel with ways you are potentially leveraging behavioral science.
Behavioral science is very context-based so concepts sometimes apply strongly in some scenarios but not in other scenarios or in fact may apply in reverse. Plus, there are often multiple cognitive biases interacting in a given scenario so context matters. Hence the need to hypothesize and experiment as mentioned above.
Behavioral science is great for leveraging up what you are doing so look for ways to apply it today and start hypothesizing, testing, and implementing. You don't need a MS or PhD to get started but it is important to leverage knowledge of others when you can and later at the bottom of this article will be some suggested starting points.
Traditionally there had been the belief in fields like economics that most people were "rational actors" and this meant that people act what is in their logical best interest. With behavioral science there is a recognition that people are often irrational. In behavioral science the concept of "cognitive biases" are used to define systematic patterns of the deviation from rational judgment. This irrationality is often back to outdated biology that faced a different reality of worrying about being eaten at any moment and tight bands of tribes compared to our modern massive society where our predicament is too much choice, too much food, etc.
Now let's dive into some of the cognitive biases identified in behavioral science that that you should be aware about. This is just a sampling of cognitive bias but some important ones to get you started.
Confirmation Bias: Concept that people seek out information, evaluate information, or evaluate decisions based on their beliefs, thoughts, and assumptions.
Choice Overload: Concept that too many choices may result in indecision and associated unhappiness for a person.
Loss Aversion: Concept that losses are more impactful than gains. Or, in other words when people are faced with losses or equivalent gains, they are more motivated by the losses.
Priming: Technique where exposure to one stimulus influences a response to a subsequent stimulus, without conscious guidance or intention.
Status quo bias: Concept that people value prefer to be doing the same thing. This may be evidenced by not doing anything to change what is being done now or continued action to maintain what is being done now.
Sunk Cost Fallacy: Concept where people continue down a path or a decision due to the prior investment or effort that can't be recouped.
Time Discounting: Concept that people value items that are closer in time than farther off in time. Sometimes this discount is quite significant.
These are just a few of over 180 cognitive biases that are out there but even with these few you can start thinking about how you might take these ideas and potentially leverage them in your organization. For example, you might look at your communications and realize when you are messaging a loss and a gain in the same communication that the loss may have an over-weighted impression, so you might need to counter it somehow. Or, you might think that you might need to reduce the number of product choices being presented on your website at a time.
An important item to mention is that just because you are aware of cognitive biases doesn't mean that you can't fall victim to them yourself. For example, confirmation bias is something we all face even if you know what it is. But, there are indeed ways to counteract some of these biases. For confirmation bias one way its impact is to have diverse teams and another way is to ensure you have a good experimental design process.
Remember that you don't need to be a behavioral scientist by training or have a behavioral science department to get started and benefit. So if you are a product manager, human resource generalist, executive, data scientist, and many other positions it is time to ask yourself how you can better leverage behavioral science to provide your customers, employees, and shareholders a better experience and more value.
There will be future posts where we dive deeper on individual cognitive biases and other behavioral science concepts and applications to specific scenarios. In the meantime, if you want to learn more then here are some good places to start. Note there are many other great resources out there and this list is in no way exhaustive.
Websites: These are the few of the websites where I tend to access information on behavioral science.
Podcasts: As a person that is both a podcast fan and also a podcast host of Data Able, here are a few podcasts that either specifically focus on behavioral science or often incorporate into their episodes.
Books: There are many books in this space and here are just a few of the many that I would recommend.
In-person Groups: There might even be a behavioral science group in the area you live. Action Design Network is an organization that has groups in many cities but you might also look on MeetUp or just Google "behavioral science group in [city]" to find a group near you.
Happy experimenting and if you ever want to discuss how you might be able to harness behavioral science in your product, design, HR, sales, analytics, or other teams in your organization do not hesitate to contact us.