They live among us: Behavioural scientists in the wild

In April 2023 I became a father. In preparation, my wife and I went on an exciting voyage of discovery – pram shopping.

In what can only be described as an act of daylight robbery, the first store was selling four rubber wheels and a basket for, and I kid you not, £1,500!

After picking myself up off the floor, I saw another pram further down the line for “just” £750; due to the fright experienced earlier, this still-hefty price tag sounded practically like a bargain!

Subsequent searching has found more reasonably priced wheels, but the point here is that the initial £1,500 price tag ‘anchored’ me to the point where the £750 option felt reasonable.

Crazy.

What occurred here was two-fold. Firstly, it made me consider getting into the baby business (…its margins must be insane!) and second, it gave me a real-world example of just how powerful a behavioural punch anchoring can pack.

When exposure to a piece of information serves as a reference point for later choices, this is known as anchoring. 

You are likely not aware of it happening at the time; I work in behavioural science and I only really became fully conscious of it once I had left the store. But there is another reason for that, and that reason was Raj. 

Raj the rainmaker… 

Something I neglected to tell you in the above is that we did not stumble by chance on the pram priced like a small country’s GDP, we were led there by Raj, the store assistant. Apart from being one of the nicest customer service agents I have ever come across, Raj was the carrycot-constructing equivalent of a master Japanese samurai.  

At near-light-speed Raj would click and clack different pieces of equipment together, turning car seats into carry cots and back again, meaning that at times it was difficult to tell if I was in Mamas and Papas or watching the latest Transformers movie. A true master craftsman, both functionally…and behaviourally.  

He went on to tell me how the hippo-shaped night lights were selling like hot cakes and once they’re gone, they’re gone but before I could counter with ‘Come on Raj, you smooth talking son of a gun, this isn’t pandemic-era loo roll’ he was off on his next demo. 

Just some of Raj’s repertoire included: 

• Framing – a mattress was not just a mattress. It was ‘a Premium Dual Core, Pocket Sprung, Waterproof Quilted Mattress'
• Social proof – I lost count of the number of times an item being ‘one of the most popular with new parents’ was mentioned
• Scarcity – the ‘here today, gone tomorrow’ hippo lights, for instance

…you get the gist.

So, what’s the point here? 

I am often asked what is a good way to learn about the behavioural biases and psychological principles that describe so much of our behaviour and it has always struck me how purely reading the Sutherlands and Shottons of this world only get you so far.  

Taking my lead from outside of behavioural science, a few years ago I stumbled across an equally wise sage in the form of John Stilgoe, a professor of history of landscape development.   

On the first day of the academic year, Stilgoe tells his students a little about the course ahead but refuses to issue a schedule of topics. Why? Because his view is that giving out a plan of work can lead students to simply ‘get through the material’ instead of actually getting outside and patiently exploring the developing landscape around them.  

I refer to Stilgoe's encouragement of an eyes-open, immersive approach as ‘deliberate exploration’ and it is my longstanding tip for anyone starting out on the road to becoming a behavioural practitioner. As you learn about behavioural biases and psychological principles, go out and find the behaviours they are describing in action; it will never cease to amaze you just how prevalent they are. 

It is from this point that you can then move on to the crucial aspect of exploring the contexts and populations in which their deployment have been effective and in which they have not and why. 

When asked whether knowing about our biases could help us overcome them, Kahneman said he did not harbour much hope of this, so who am I to argue? But for those starting out, once you encounter a behavioural bias or principle, go look for it in the wild. You might even encounter your own Raj, ready to offer a free lesson.

Interesting reads

Stilgoe, J. ( 1998 ). Outside lies magic

Alex McCluckie is behavioural science lead at DJS Research