The field of behavioral science is growing. Practitioners are now spread across 72 countries, facing challenges such as making the case for behavioral science (see also the BE Guide 2023 editorial) and measuring its impact. Our survey aims to understand this growth and welcomes participation from practitioners and researchers worldwide, especially from regions outside Western developed countries.
The world is becoming increasingly polarized, as is seen through evidence of “us” versus “them” mindsets. Divisions have evolved into partisanship across groups, highlighting the need to understand how we differ culturally and across groups, why we are becoming more polarized, and how we can begin to reduce the impact of these divides. Cross-cultural and other models provide insight into how individuals differ across groups, and how we can reconnect with those around us.
In behavioural science, context is everything. Behavioural Science Aotearoa (BSA) works across the justice sector in New Zealand, where indigenous Māori people make up almost 17% of the population. We combined behavioural science with Māori cultural principles to encourage people to clear their Warrants to Arrest by voluntarily appearing at court. Working with New Zealand Police, we designed and tested a phone-based initiative and found promising evidence for its success.
In a massive international collaboration including more than 200 researchers, we examined the adoption of public health behaviors and support of public policy interventions during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. We found that individuals who identified more strongly with their nation reported greater engagement in public health behaviors and greater support for public health policies. This result was later replicated using aggregated behavioral data.
Color can affect judgment and decision making, and its effects may vary across cultures. Research reported in this article shows that cross-cultural color effects on risk preferences are influenced by personal associations of color-gain/loss. Our research finds a cultural reactance effect, a phenomenon in which people who hold culturally incongruent (vs. cultural mainstream) color associations show a stronger risk preference.
There are “moral meanings” that people ascribe to objects in white and black colors. We show that consumers see buying a product in white color as an act that is morally good and buying a product in black color as an act that is morally bad. Those who buy white-colored products feel licensed to behave less prosocially afterward, while those who buy black-colored products are more prosocial as they feel a need to compensate for their initial misconduct.
There is a lot of evidence on the variation of human experience and that economic, social and linguistic environments strongly shape people’s behaviour, motivations and preferences. Despite this, these topics have not received a lot of attention in decision making psychology. In this article, I shed some light on the background of why this is the case.
Languages influence perceptions and decision-making. We highlight one of the most important linguistic features – Future Time Reference. FTR impacts speakers’ behaviors involving intertemporal considerations, even the most critical decision on life – suicide.
As the enthusiasm for applied behavioural science spreads across the globe, it is time to think how well "irrationality" travels. This is the start of an article series exploring the impact of factors such as cultural context on decision making - and how our understanding of the human mind is based on a thin slice of humanity.
Consumers regularly track their expenses and assign them to categories like food, entertainment, and clothing, which is popularly known as mental accounting. Our research shows that consumption biases that result from mental accounting are not prevalent in Easterners due to their holistic thinking style, whereas Westerners exhibit such biases due to their analytic thinking style.
