Applying Behavioural Science to the Private Sector Decoding What People Say and What They Do, reviewed

By @SimonCocking review of Applying Behavioural Science to the Private Sector Decoding What People Say and What They Do, by Helena Rubinstein.

This book demonstrates how applying behavioural science to commercial problems can effectively help businesses to understand and achieve the best outcomes for their customers. Bringing together theory and practice the author describes how approaches underpinning behavioural science can be adapted to the fast-moving environment of the private sector. 

The first part of the book discusses the underlying theory and principles behind behavioural science. It outlines the history of the discipline, explaining how behavioural scientists use theories and models of behaviour, and discussing why behaviour is so hard to predict. It then describes how the theory can be applied to designing products, services and interventions. In Part II Rubinstein uses several key case studies to explore the challenges of integrating behavioural science into established practices, considering how to use behavioural science in multidisciplinary teams and why this might be useful. She addresses concerns about the ethics of using behavioural science in this context before describing the value of applying behavioural science to business and how best to realise its potential. This book is a must-read for both practitioners and academics interested in applying the science of behaviour to real-world challenges.

This is a relevant and topic book, and as is also clearly identified, the ethics of this subject matter is also extremely important too. There is a lot to like in this book, it is only the overly academic style which does make it a little heavier and denser to read than it perhaps needs to be. The beginning of every chapter is prefaced by who the author is and what they plan to discuss in that particular, whereas is a more ‘normal’ book this would be considered self evident, so it did just seem to unnecessarily get in the way of what is actually a really interesting subject to consider. It does raise the ethical issue again and again, namely that IF marketers can find a way to convince people to follow their preferred behavioural demands, then why would they not apply it. The ongoing Facebook / Cambridge Analytica scandal very right goes to the heart of the ongoing stability or not of our democratic societies. Simply declaring the later company bankrupt leaves many many questions unanswered about what actually happened in terms of the UK Brexit Poll and the US 2016 Trump presidential election victory. These are not trivial issues, with potentially long lasting ramifications for all of us, wherever we live in the world.

Rubinstein ably explores these issues, and clearly flags the areas we should be considering and the issues to be aware of. Next of course it would be good to have a roadmap to ensure that the insights and tech behind these advances in behavioural science are used for good rather than ill. This is not necessarily within the remit of this book, and at 134 pages only, it is a slim volume, but it is at least an important sign post in the direction of the way things are going and hopefully a warning sign of the issues that we must address now.

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