I have a question for you: from the moment you opened your eyes this morning until now, how many decisions have you made? I realize how strange a question like this might seem, but try to answer it anyway. Probably just a dozen or so, right? I’m sorry to disappoint you, but according to research conducted at the Cambridge School of Clinical Medicine, we make roughly 35,000 decisions every day. Some we make consciously, of course, but most happen almost without us noticing. So then, who is making these decisions for us?
In the world of psychology, there are few superstars. Of course, there’s Freud, but his status is more that of an icon and an inexhaustible source of quotes. By contrast, a star on psychology’s Walk of Fame certainly belongs to Daniel Kahneman, the only psychologist (so far!) to have won a Nobel Prize. Together with Amos Tversky, Kahneman demonstrated that decades of economic theory were based on a flawed assumption: starting from the hypothesis that we are perfectly rational beings, these theories failed to explain why people behave irrationally. What drives a person to buy an exorbitantly priced coffee at Starbucks, to stand in line at 5 a.m. to buy the new iPhone, or to dine at a Michelin-starred restaurant? Thanks to his research, Kahneman has shown that our supposed rationality is actually an illusion. In 98% of cases, we make our decisions by relying on a completely irrational thought process that doesn’t even involve the most evolved parts of our brain—a system based on stimuli from our environment, our past experiences, or our habits.
More recently, Richard Thaler won the Nobel Prize for explaining who, very often, makes decisions for us. Think of any supermarket: where are the basic necessities, like water and bread? And have you ever noticed that the most appealing products—the ones that make our mouths water just by looking at them—are placed exactly at eye level? Ah, and how could we forget the candy and other sweets waiting for us at the checkout counters… These, like so many other things around us, are striking examples of what Thaler and his colleague Cass Sunstein have popularized as “nudges”—the gentle prompts that steer our behavior. We must remember that our brain is a bit like a Ferrari: a masterpiece of engineering whose workings fascinate us, but which requires enormous amounts of fuel to function. The equation then becomes very simple: if every decision we make consciously consumes a large amount of resources, how can we reduce that consumption? Simple—by making fewer conscious choices, thanks to a masterpiece of evolutionary economics (and psychology), and letting the environment around us guide our behavior.
And do you want to know what’s the most fun part of everything I’ve told you so far? It’s that there are people who, in their work, focus specifically on applying these (and many, many other) concepts to facilitate the process of change in people. I said “fun” because I still have to get used to the fact that this is really my job, yet every self-respecting Behavioral Designer does exactly this: they start by researching theories, study the context, understand the people in front of them and the kind of change they’re about to experience, and make sure it all comes together in a change project. It involves hypotheses to be validated, unpredictable variables that still need to be anticipated, and complex systems that occasionally make you wonder ifthe “rocket science”Americans talk about is really that difficult after all. Because, you see, even though the behavioral sciences are a rapidly growing and expanding field, Behavioral Design is a sector that has only begun to take shape in recent years. And this means that day after day we make discoveries, take our understanding of human behavior—and of the best levers to support change—one step further, and above all, learn how to apply our knowledge in different contexts. I must say that, as someone who has always sought absolute certainties, it’s not bad to know I’m part of a field that’s still evolving. It gives you the chance to experiment by trying out solutions that may seem absurd at first glance, to venture into that immense labyrinth that is the human mind, and to let scientific curiosity and creativity soar together in search of something that, however close it may seem, will always retain its inscrutable charm.
.svg)
.png)