The Dynamics of Business Behavior

2Think Like a Behavioral Scientist

LET'S ZOOM OUT for a moment first to see the bigger picture of why behavioral science (BeSci) is worth exploring. We're circling through the universe on a giant rock with over eight billion people. What makes us different from a colony of eight billion ants that works in perfect harmony toward a common goal? Each of us has a unique inner world and conscious mind with which we can make individual decisions. This can be clearly seen in history where most historical tribes and kingdoms have been regularly at war in order to gain territory, resources, prestige, or whatever else drove the decision-makers.

In modern, relatively peaceful times with a few notable exceptions, you can still see the same pattern in most walks of life. Whether we're talking about business, politics, technology, or science, many of the problems we encounter are created because different groups of people are lobbying for opposing courses of action. Of course, they each believe theirs is the right approach because they each have a different set of mental models about how the world works. What if we could understand how these mental models are shaped and how they, along with other forces, drive our behavior? This is the quest of behavioral science.

In this chapter, we explore the fundamental insight from behavioral psychology and neuroscience that you need in order to leverage the interventions throughout the rest of the book. You'll learn about the use cases of behavioral ...