THE BEAUTIFUL MESSINESS OF HUMAN BEHAVIOUR For the last 15 years, I’ve used the Foresight Obesity Map to illustrate the daunting complexity of human behaviour. Across training programmes, client projects and speaking engagements this has been my go-to visual for underlining the need to respect and reflect this unfathomable complexity in our research, design and evaluation.
I’d then go on to reference COM-B, B-MAT, PSE and latterly our own MOVE framework as essential tools to tame this unwieldy beast – to rationalise it into neater, better behaved components more conducive to human understanding and practical application.
But with rapid conceptual, methodological and computational advances, this reductive tendency is becoming less inevitable. Innovations hurtling out of the post-disciplinary complexity sciences are emboldening us to stare down the intimidating wildness of our subject matter and embrace it in all its unpredictable madness.
However, progress will rely on us coming to terms with a highly inconvenient truth: Our current methods of inquiry simply aren't fit for purpose. RCTs, regression-based analysis and a good chunk of the wider General Linear Model that defines our current paradigm aren't built to deal with complex adaptive systems and the dynamic feedback loops that drive them.
In the abstract, these themes have been percolating through my rants and rambles for a few years now. In practice, we’re exploring Agent-Based Modelling, Bayesian Network analysis and other forms of simulation to understand behavioural data through a complexity lens.
At the opposite end of the qual-quant dimension, we continue to emphasise the importance of case-based, narrative-driven approaches to understand behaviour-in-context through ethnography, co-creation and other participatory approaches... whilst exploring if blended approaches such as Quantitative Comparative Analysis might rub out the distinction altogether.
So, as we continue to develop and define the future of ‘behavioural science’ through our manifestos, associations and professional standards, let’s be careful that this doesn’t calcify our conceptual and methodological chops within an insular, 19th century conception of the ‘scientific discipline.’.
Traditional scientific method has required that we create a pixelated facsimile of human behaviour in order to make some sense of it - reflections in Plato's cave. Through the lens of complexity science perhaps we can begin to observe it, understand and influence it in all its beautiful messiness: 4K, high-resolution!
-- #behavioralscience #behavioralinsights #behaviouraldesign #nudge #datascience #humancentreddesign #behavioraleconomics #psychology #science #evidencebasedpractice #behaviouralpolicy