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There is more to behaviour than behaviour
Pretty much all our problems are behavioural…but does that mean the solutions are?
Could it be that very problem humans face, individually or collectively, is a behavioural problem? It sounds a bit grandiose. But when we exclude unexpected cosmic disasters and such like, it really seems as if pretty much every problem can be reduced to people (a) not doing something they should, (b) doing something they shouldn’t, or © doing the wrong thing. So, all we’d need to do to solve all our problems is change our behaviour, right?
For someone — like yours truly — who is concerned with human behaviour, who seeks to understand why we do what we do, and how to get us to do something else when needed, that should be good news. Behavioural science as the saviour of humanity, now that would be something.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Before we go further, we must deal with two questions. If a problem is caused by individual behaviour, does that necessarily mean the solution lies in altering individual behaviour? And is altering behaviour as easy and straightforward as is we assume?
The individual and the system
A recent working paper by two behavioural science heavyweights put the cat among the pigeons. In…
