Behavioural science | The human edge

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Intro:

Hello everyone. Thanks for having me. So first of all, who am I? I'm Mike, a partner in the Behavioural Science practice at Ogilvy in London, that means I spend my days helping organisations answer one simple question: why do people do what they do? Not what they say they do, not what they intend to do, but what they actually do on a normal Tuesday when they're busy, distracted, stressed, and their phone is buzzing.

Imagine for a moment I was to tell you that there is a secret operating system in the brain that if you could tap into it, you could predict what people might do. That's the power of behavioural science and today I want to leave you with two things that are really clear in your head.

Number one, what behavioural science is, so you can understand it. And number two, why it's an emerging career, why it's going to matter even more in the future, especially with AI beginning to show up everywhere. 

1:12: What is behavioural science?

Let me start with a few quick questions. Have you ever wanted a new pair of trainers more once you saw everyone else had them?

Have you wanted to buy something just because it was on sale? Or have you ever planned to study, and then suddenly you're doom scrolling, it's 11:00 PM and you're deep in TikTok or YouTube? If any of that sounds familiar, you already understand the basic problem behavioural science solves: people don't behave like robots, they behave like humans.

So, what is behavioural science? Let's demystify it. Here's the simplest way to say it: Behavioural science is a science of why people make the choices that they make.

It's basically the bridge between what people say they will do and what people actually do, and it blends three things; Psychology – how the mind works, habits, emotions, attention, stress. Economics, how people make choices, money, incentive, trade-offs, value, and then testing and data and experimenting on what works in reality, not just in theory.

Now, a key point, behavioural science isn't just interesting facts about the brain. It's applied. We have to test our ideas in the real world because people don't always act in the way we think they will. 

2:33: Coca-Cola vs Red Bull

Let's look at a quick real-world example. Imagine you were tasked with a big problem for a business. Imagine they come to you and said, now design a competitor, which is going to beat Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola, the world's biggest selling soft drink.

Now, if you were to interview people and ask what they want, they might say things like, well, make it cheaper for me. Make a drink that's healthier and give me more for my money. And all of those things are extremely sensible.

But here's the twist, one of Coca-Cola's biggest competitors isn't another cheap cola. It's Red Bull and Red Bull is smaller, it's more expensive, and honestly, a bit of an acquired taste. Yet people buy it in their millions.

That's your first behavioural science lesson. People don't just buy products just for the functional reason. They buy for meaning, buy for energy, identity status, belonging, confidence. They buy because they think it's for people like me.

So, if you only listen to what people say, you can build the wrong solution. Behavioural science aims to understand what people do and why, and then design around that. 

3:49: Why understanding people will give you the edge in the AI era

So why now? Why is this career booming right now? Because your generation is stepping into a world where AI will be everywhere. It'll be in your school, it'll be in jobs, banking, customer service, medicine, marketing.

But here's the truth that surprises people. Technology doesn't automatically change behaviour. You can build a brilliant learning app, but learners won't log in. You can build a job platform perhaps, but people don't complete their profiles.

You can design the right health service so people are healthier, but patients don't turn up or come back. You can design a product, a financial product that helps people make better money decisions, but people don't trust it.

In South Africa as well, we see this all the time too. So, a service can exist, but if it's confusing, time consuming, stressful, embarrassing, or feels unsafe or unfair, people avoid it.

So, the biggest problems are often not tech problems, they're human problems: trust, motivation, fear of judgment, peer pressure, confusion. You're asking people to do too many things, and this is the key point for the AI era. If everyone can access similar AI tools, what becomes the edge? Understanding people.

That's the advantage, the more human skill. Because AI can generate a lot of answers, but it can't easily solve why people don't believe you, why people follow through on their intentions and why people often feel excluded. And ultimately why people often choose the easy option today over the better option tomorrow.

AI is also in a box. It isn't very good at seeing the real world. So if you can observe people and how they act in the real world, you have an advantage over everyone else because behavioural science is how we build systems that work with real humans.

Also, AI means that a lot of jobs will change, but with change comes great opportunities. You may find more than your parents or other generations that you have numerous careers across different roles rather than just one career that you stay in forever.

But if you have a core understanding of humans, it means you can transfer easily across roles because wherever people are involved, you'll have an advantage and can bring insights no one else can.

6:15: The power of social norms

So, let's look at behavioural science in action. Let's see what this looks like in real life. We all want to look after the environment. We all want to do the right thing and save the environment, so it's better for all of us in the future. But we say we do, but that doesn't always translate into action.

If you've ever been asked to recycle anything, this might resonate with you.

One way to be better to the environment is to use less water. And hotels know this more than anyone. They ask guests to re-use towels to save water and energy. So, if you use less towels, you save water and you use less energy.

In a study, one hotel tested different messages on a poster that they placed in a room. The standard message was, “Please help save the environment, reuse your towel”. Makes sense, right? People say they want to be kinder to the environment; they're going to do the behaviour. Then they added what we call a social norm message, which was “Most guests in this hotel reuse their towels”, and social norms are just the fact that we're guided by what other people do. It's just that we don't always know it.

So, what happened? More people reused towels when they believed this is what most people do. Why? Because your brain has a quiet question running in the background. What do people like me do in a situation like this? If the message answers that, behaviour changes.

Designing these messages, bringing creativity to solve some of the biggest problems today is where you and where behavioural science can be most helpful.

And what else can we learn from this? Because humans are extremely similar, more than we might think. So, what can we learn from this example and translate into others?

Imagine for a moment your school is trying to reduce litter. The first message that you tell students might be, “Don't litter, keep the school clean”. Most people would probably want to agree to that.

And then message B might be, “Most learners at this school put their litter in the bin”. Message B will often work better, not because learners suddenly become saints, because it signals, this is normal here. This is who we are.

You can make it even stronger if you go even more specific. “Most people in a certain grade in this corridor use the bin”, “Most learners in this class keep this area clean”. In short, we're hugely guided by what others do more than we think. 

8:46: Humans are predictably irrational

Another example from a brand that you might know called KFC and what we call the $1 chips problem, and this is some work that we did at Ogilvy, and any side hustlers in the audience, this one might be for you.

So, KFC came to us with a simple problem. How do we sell more $1 chips? They thought they were really good value. Everyone said they really liked them, but people weren't buying them.

Now the rational approach would be lower the price, run a big campaign showing them how delicious the chips are. They tried all that, it didn't move the needle.

So we looked at the behavioural reasons. In the small print, KFC had a rule, because the chips were so cheap, they only wanted to sell a maximum of four per person. So instead of hiding that rule, we made it the headline, “$1 chips – max four per person”. And suddenly everybody wanted them.

Not only did people buy four packs, people tried to buy more. They sent a friend in, they sent their mum in. People literally came back in disguise so people wouldn't recognise them, and they can buy more.

Now, that's irrational, but it's predictably irrational. Because when you tell humans you can only have this much, it triggers scarcity, “it might run out” or reactants, “don't tell me what to do”, or competition, “I'm going to beat those guys at KFC, I'm going to beat this system”.

That's behavioural science. Spotting the psychological lever and using it to help drive behaviour. 

10:14: Behavioural science as a career

Now, behavioural science as a career. The big question is, is this an emerging career? It is, and it's growing quickly. You might see it under names like behavioural science, behavioural consultant, behavioural economist, or UX researcher for those who do web design, people analytics, people working in HR, policy and public service design roles, people working in government.

And here's what is exciting. Behavioural science is not one industry, it's a skill that travels across banks and insurers, helping people to save across retail and e-commerce.

Looking at things like pricing and store design, government and NGOs, looking at how to help people be better around health, education jobs, public service, tech companies, about designing better products, user research, adoption of AI tools.

And HR and workplaces, giving people training and, and making performance better in jobs.

If we think of some of the world's biggest organisations – Uber, Spotify, Google – they all have behavioural scientists and behavioural science embedded in their teams, designing the apps that billions of people use every day, for better products, better experiences.

But what do behavioural scientists actually do in their day to day? A typical project might look like this: First of all, finding the real problem, not just judging people, but showing and finding that they have very specific needs and preferences.

Next, we diagnose the behavioural barriers. Is it fear? Is it effort? Is it mistrust? Is it peer pressure? Next then we'll design the right solution. We might simplify the process, change wording, change the time that we speak to people, add reminders, and then we test. We run small experiments to see what works. Then finally, we measure the impact. Did behaviour change for who at what cost?

And these are skills you can start building now, even at school. You don't need to be a genius. You need curiosity. And a few core skills like clear writing and speaking, basic maths and graphs, just to measure what works. And then curiosity and empathy, understanding people that are different from you. An experiment mindset as well. Testing as much as you can.

Simple school projects that are behavioural science and that might help you get more experience, might be testing whether different reminder messages improve homework submission, redesign a confusing school form in plain language and test it. Run a two-week experience on study habits that help you help more students, perhaps even during load shedding. That's not just homework, that's evidence that you can do real behavioural work.

Then you can see if you're eligible to apply for a specialist university course such as psychology or behavioural science. But it all starts with you, and a curious mind is the first step in making this career a reality.

13:15: Learn more from these books, podcasts and influencers

Before we wrap up, I want to make this practical as well. If you’re sitting here thinking, okay, cool, but how do I actually get into this? These are easy ways to learn more. So, you can read some of the foundational books. This might be a starter pack, if you want to understand behavioural science properly, these are the classics:

Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. This explains how we actually think and the common biases that affect our decisions.

Nudge by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein. This shows how small changes in choice design can have a huge effect on millions of people and change their behaviour without forcing people.

But don't read these like textbooks. Read them like a detective, after a chapter ask, where do I see this at my school? Online or at home? In a community? You can become a behavioural scientist overnight.

And then things to watch and learn. So, if reading feels a bit heavy, you can learn a lot through content that's online and easy to access.

You could start by finding a guy called Rory Sutherland on TikTok. He's quite famous on TikTok now. He started the behavioural science practice in Ogilvy and is a huge proponent of behavioural science. Start perhaps with his Ted Talk Life Lessons from an Ad Man, but also find him on TikTok as well, where you can find all of his insights in how he views real world examples.

And then podcasts as well, featuring Rory and others. Search his name on platforms and choose episodes that interest you. Good places to look include Diary of a CEO, Freakonomics and Hidden Brain. There's much more, but this is a great place to start your behavioural science journey.

And at Ogilvy, we also have our own behavioural science festival called Nudge Stock, which you can find online, and you can dial in every year to watch.

So, in closing, your generation is entering a world with more AI, more options, more noise, more pressure. So, the winning skill isn't only knowing things, it's understanding why people do what they do, and designing environments that help people make better choices.

If you remember one line, remember this, “The future belongs to people who understand people”, and if you understand this, it belongs to you too.

Thank you.

Books to introduce you to behavioural science

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

• Explores the two systems that drive the way we think: one fast, one slow.

Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein

Explores how small changes (nudges) can significantly influence choices.

Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions by Dan Ariely

Examines how humans consistently make irrational decisions.

Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don't Make Sense by Rory Sutherland

A masterclass in challenging the limits of traditional logic.

Courses or places to study Behavioural Science

University College London (UCL): MSc Behaviour Change

This postgraduate degree in behaviour change centres around the systematic application of behaviour change theory and methods to design, implement and evaluate interventions, primarily using the Behaviour Change Wheel. This approach equips students to work in this emerging and exciting field to address social, health and environmental challenges.

London School of Economics (LSE): MSc Behavioural Science

From climate change to financial market fluctuations, many of today's most pressing issues are rooted in human behaviour. This programme will equip you with practical skills to drive positive behavioural change.

University of Cape Town (UCT)

Behavioural Economics and Neuroeconomics (RUBEN)

• The Research Unit in Behavioural Economics and Neuroeconomics (RUBEN) is a group of researchers who use the methodology of experimental economics, both in the lab and the field, to examine the role that preferences, beliefs, and constraints play in economic decision-making. 

Master of Public Health (MPH) - Social and Behavioural Sciences Track

• The Division of Social and Behavioural Sciences was created in 2013. It coordinates the School’s teaching and research capacity in the social and behavioural sciences.  This is a disciplinary area that is increasingly recognised as a critical element in fulfilling public health’s broader mission within the School, the Faculty, and by the public health community at large.

Stellenbosch University

Postgraduate Behavioural Economics

42 Courses: Behavioural Economics, With Rory Sutherland

This course will help you quickly and easily master the fundamental principles of Behavioural Economics, including nudging, framing, social proof, scarcity, and commitment devices.