See Your Customer in 4D

Marketers as well as other business professionals have to work with or for clients, customers, consumers, potential clients, target groups, people etc. Regardless of the names we use to describe who marketers are dealing with all day long, the naked truth is that all these terms stand for humans. Whether you call them customers, consumers or anything else has no real importance. You as a marketer have to work with and for humans.

At first glance this is trivial. I personally don’t believe it is so obvious that in our daily work we deal with humans and my belief is based on observation, not on hunches. Too often marketers as well as other professionals simply ignore human nature. I honestly hope that ignoring human nature is due to mere lack of knowledge on the topic.

The core of a marketer’s job is to understand, predict and influence human behavior, or at least a very small part of it. Quite often, endeavors aimed at understanding or influencing the behavior of people, clients, customers etc. are based on assumptions that are not fully accurate. These assumptions regard the elements that influence human behavior and human judgment.

The general assumption is that human behavior is the result of the interaction between cold-reasoned judgment and the personality or character of the individual. Quite often we believe that our customers, colleagues or simply people around us are very similar to Mr. Spok from the StarTrek series. We believe that people are some sort of reasoning machines. To some extent this is true, in the sense that humans are capable of wonderful reasoning. Looking at the modern world we live in, we should acknowledge that the buildings we live and work in, the bridges we cross to get from here to there and the myriad of high-tech tools we use every day are the product of cold-rational reasoning. However, most of human life is not guided by this type of thinking. In fact most of human thinking is based on the so called rules of thumb or in more sophisticated terms – heuristics. When we go to buy a pair of jeans or groceries we do not engage in very elaborate thinking. We simply want jeans that fit well and look good. We want to get it over with shopping for groceries and get back home to watch the football game or play with our children. When your colleague goes to make some photocopies, very likely she has something else on her mind and presses the buttons of the photocopying machine without giving it too much thought. Her goal is to get things done and not to maximize the efficiency of using ink and paper in the office, even if the boss told everyone to be careful with the office supplies because the firm needs to cut costs.  

The second source of human behavior that is established in popular belief is the character or personality of the individual. We infer that what a person does is the reflection of her character. We believe that bad things are done by bad people whereas good things are done by good people. To a limited extent this view is correct. Indeed, there are individual differences among people and they are valid predictors of human behavior. However, these individual differences are good at predicting patterns of behavior and not instances of behavior. For example, personality traits such as conscientiousness can predict professional success which is a long term pattern of behavior. At the same time, this personality trait is not a very reliable predictor of an instance of behavior such as the quality of a presentation given in a certain day at work.

Much of marketing related activities are centered on getting to know who the customer is; to create a profile of the prototypical client. Subsequently the marketers will adapt the product, the distribution, the communication etc. to fit with the prototypical client.

In essence, there isn’t anything wrong with that. However, this approach is incomplete. If the marketer’s job is to understand, predict and influence consumers’ (humans’) behavior, the marketer should know that human behavior is not determined only by who the person is. In fact, personality is the weakest predictor of instances of human behavior. We tend to believe that what we do is determined (solely) by who we are, but this is not the case. A few paragraphs later, I will present the other sources of human behavior. If marketers, or any other professionals that want to understand and influence human behavior, focus only on who the customer is and subsequently adjust their offering, they ignore influencing behavior through other means.

Let me illustrate with an example how factors other than personality influence behavior. Imagine Dana, a young ambitious person. Her boss asks her to give a presentation to some very important prospective clients. Her boss decides to give this responsibility to Dana because she is very hard working, methodical and somehow perfectionist. In personality jargon this would be translated in Dana has a very high score on the personality trait conscientiousness.  However, Dana’s presentation is less than satisfactory and her boss is unhappy. 

Do you think that Dana’s score on conscientiousness suddenly decreased? The answer is clearly no and Dana is as hard working and methodical as she ever was. The explanation for her unsatisfactory performance lies in what has happened in the previous days. Two days ago, as she was working on the presentation three colleagues came and asked her to join the celebration of another co-worker. Dana was reluctant because she still had to work on the presentation. However, her colleagues insisted and told her that she is not a good team mate if she doesn’t join the celebration; that members of the team have to properly honor their colleagues on their birthdays. Dana decided that she could finish the presentation the next day and joined her colleagues. The next day some unexpected emergencies arose at the office and she couldn’t finish the work. She would have stood over time, but she had a date with a nice guy and she had already postponed their date three times. Dana decided to go on the date and get home early so that she could wake up at 4 A.M. to finish the presentation. Unfortunately, Dana got a really bad indigestion from the sea-food she had on her date and could barely sleep. She did some work on the presentation between two instances of sickness. Just as Dana got to the office, she received a call from father learning that her mother is ill and was admitted into hospital. As you can see, nothing has changed in Dana’s personality. However, situational factors are quite often more powerful than someone’s character.  

My approach on understanding, predicting and influencing human behavior is based on a model that includes four major factors that influence human behavior. I call it the 4 DimensionModel of Behavior. One of the dimensions is Personality. Although it is not a very powerful predictor of instances of behavior, personality is a reliable source of long term patterns of behavior. The other three dimensions are Social Influences, Personal Internal State and Physical Environment.

Earlier on, I have emphasized on human nature and one major characteristic of it is that humans are social beings. We live in organized societies and each of us has our relevant others such as family, friends, rivals, co-workers, people who we admire and people who we despise. As social beings, humans are influenced by the social environment. When we are in a novel or ambiguous situation in which we do not know what the appropriate thing to do is, we tend to copy the behavior of other people around us. This happens to a larger extent if the other people are somehow similar to us.

Imagine that you are visiting a foreign city and you get hungry. In the city square there are a few terraces that sell food. On which terrace are you going to sit and eat? You know absolutely nothing about any restaurant. Are you going to sit on the terrace that has only one table occupied or at the one where only two tables are free? Very likely you will choose to sit on the one where many other people are already sitting on. If other people sat there it means that they know that there the food is good. At the same time, you have absolutely no reliable information on the reasons that led those people to sit on that terrace. You imply that they know something, but you have no proof of it.  

Other times, we do what other people do simply because we want to fit in a group. If at your office there is a money collection for, say donating to the local animal shelter, and many of your colleagues are giving ten euros, very likely you will also give ten euros despite the fact that this month you are short on cash. You need to fit in with the relevant social group of co-workers and this makes you behave similar to them. These are some illustrations of how human behavior is impacted by the social influences dimension.

Another characteristic of human nature is that we are biological creatures and have biological needs. If you have ever gone shopping while being hungry you have probably noticed that you have bought a lot more than you planned and needed. Very likely you have realized this only after you arrived home and ate something. Hunger creates an approach state of mind. We want to get food and this makes us buy more things. The most interesting thing is that when hungry not only do we buy more food items, but also more nonfood items.

Human nature also includes our emotional states, our feelings. Sometimes we experience very powerful emotions such as fury or bliss. When we are under the influence of strong emotions, most of our behavior s is very different from the behavior we exhibit when we are in a cool state of mind. If you are furious because your boss didn’t keep his word on sending you to that conference, don’t write him an e-mail saying that his is a low life creature. Even if taking out all your fury makes perfect sense on the moment, in a couple of days you will regret the bad words you addressed him.

These biological and emotional influences on our judgment and behavior are transient. Usually people are not hungry for long periods of time and thankfully we are not furious for more than a couple of hours. Most often we are blind to their influences and, in general, we are almost incapable of predicting their impact on our behavior and judgment. All these influences on behavior belong to the Personal Internal State dimension.

The fourth dimension of the 4D Model of Human Behavior covers the influences of the physical environment. One such category of influences concerns our senses. Throughout the long evolutionary process humans have developed ways in which to perceive the surrounding environment through the five senses. Although the environment in which we live now is very different from the one in which our very distant ancestors lived, our senses serve us quite well. However, the reactions and psychological mechanisms that are triggered by our senses are the same as tens of thousands of years before.

For example, for our very distant ancestors food was scarce and ingesting and digesting as much highly nutritious food as it was possible to find was perfectly natural. This is why we like sweet or fatty foods. In today’s world such drives to eat fat and sugar are not exactly useful and this is because today, at least in the western world, highly nutritious food is abundant. A related illustration is that of the influence the smell of freshly baked bread has on purchasing behavior. When smelling the freshly baked bread our sense of smell tells the digestive system to get ready for a treat. Digestion begins, but if there is no actual ingestion, the sensation of hunger occurs. In turn, hunger changes our thinking by inducing the approach mindset and this, in turn, leads to us buying and spending more.

Let’s go back a bit to Dana’s unsatisfactory presentation. You have learned earlier that the lack of quality was not due to whom Dana is as a person, but rather those social factors, physical influences and a change in her internal state, both physical and emotional, were much stronger than her personality. If you are a marketer, don’t you think this is the case for your clients’ behavior? Don’t you think that all these three types of forces influence their behavior to a larger extent than do their personality traits? Who you client is might give you a base-line long term pattern of behavior, but actions and instance of behavior are influenced mostly by the other three dimensions from the 4D Model of HumanBehavior.

Discarding any of the four dimensions from the 4D Model of Human Behavior is equivalent with ignoring human nature.

An Extensive Description of the 4D Model of Human Behavior can be found in my book: It Makes (No) Sense…

Get a Free Download (Introduction) of 
It Makes (No) Sense: - Between the Joy of Gaining and the Fear of Losing

How (Much) Your Clients Think

Before trying to change people’s minds, understand how they work!

If you believe that your clients actually give more than three seconds of thought to what you are selling, read this article with eyes wide open. It is far more valuable than 10(0) articles on five ways in which you can effectively tie your shoe laces and definitely more valuable than five-thousand articles on eight ways in which you can screw up. … After all, who doesn’t know how to fail?

First, if you think that your clients give more than two-three seconds of thought on your product/ service, there are two possibilities: (a) you are dead wrong; (b) the client doesn’t get too much on what you are trying to sell.

In the first case things are straight forward: three seconds is too little for the deliberate reasoning to switch on and your clients use some kind of “rule of thumb” (heuristic in psychology jargon) to make the decision.

In the second case, since your clients face ambiguity their judgment is prone to using heuristics and then finding solid reasons to justify their decision (post-rationalization in even more sophisticated psychology language).

You, other highly skilled (or not) marketers and the overall way of life of the XXIst century modern living make people think very fast and very superficially about most of day-to-day life’s decisions. Whether we admit it or not, much of our daily lives is on auto-pilot.

Second, think hard if you are asking yourself the questions your clients are answering when making a decision regarding your product (brand). Much of human decision making (which includes your clients’ decisions regarding what you are selling) is powered by simplistic judgment processes known as heuristics.

The fundamental process of heuristic judgment is “attribute substitution”. This means that when trying to answer a difficult question, most often we are, in fact, giving the answer to a simpler question.

To illustrate this with an example: Answer the following question: “what is the capital of Australia?” Don’t Google it!

I am sure that some of you gave answers like Sidney or Melbourne … but the Capital City of Australia is Canberra (you can google it to confirm)… The question “what is the capital of Australia?” is quite difficult if you don’t know the answer (read are Australian). However, you know some cities in Australia and the first ones that come to mind are Sidney and Melbourne … moreover these cities are larger and better known than Canberra… So, while trying answer the difficult question of “what is the capital of Australia?” some of you gave the answer to the much easier question “which city in Australia is most known?”

Coming back to marketing, take the example of package redesign. When redesigning the packaging, most often marketers want to give their brand a fresh(er) look and they want to keep most of their existing (regular) customers. Marketers will ask many questions in their market research, but most clients (particularly the current ones) don’t care too much about your brand-refreshment. (Really! They don’t.) They want to buy the, say, apple juice they’ve been buying in the last five years and suddenly at the juice self in the supermarket they don’t find it. What is the question your clients are answering?

They might ask themselves “where is that juice I’m looking for?”, but they will answer the following one: “Which one of these bottles looks like the one I’ve been buying for so long?”

Take another example from the real-estate market. Marcel and Samantha are browsing the market to buy a house (apartment). Naturally houses are highly complex products and the commitment (read bank-loan) is a long term one. Regardless of what they say that they are looking for, the (main) question they will answer during and after viewing a house is “Does this feel like home?”

If the answer is “no” they will identify numerous (objective) flaws in the house that will support their answer. If the answer is “yes” they will find all the virtues of the house and will find flaws in the other houses they have viewed and on which they were not sure if they feel like home.

Third, emotions, emotions, emotions. Quite often marketing efforts are based on asking people what they think about something (read brand) and on trying to convince (persuade) them to buy your brand. It’s not wrong, but this approach discards one blunt reality: thinking leads, usually, to conclusions… Feeling, usually, leads to action.

To better understand this, let’s make a short trip in the area of motivation. Who is going to wake up at 5 A.M. and go to work with a good stamina? (a) The person who works for a company that offers high-speed (broad-band) internet in developing countries or (b) The person who contributes to decreasing domestic violence by empowering women in poor countries?

If you answered “b”, you got the point.

The Power of Emotions comes with both up and down-sides and here is not the place to discuss this topic in detail. What you need to understand is that: First we feel and only after we think.

Before trying to change people’s minds, understand first how they work!

  For more join me in How (Much) We Think – Seminar on Psychology of Judgment and Decision-Making

Choice Architecture Training by Pikant & Naumof at Storm Software Solutions Bolton UK

On 3-4 December 2013 I, Nicolae Naumof - The Behavioral Science Trainer, gave a session of the Choice Architecture Training Program Designing Decisions for Storm Software Solutions in Bolton UK.

Four very eager to learn employees of Storm Software Solutions attended the training. Here’s what Paul Flood, Managing Director of Storm Software Solutions said about the Choice Architecture Training:

Fascinating program covering Choice Architecture. Nicolae presents the content in an easy to understand way and adds his own perspective on this exciting   area of behavioral science.

Below are some pics from taken while the participats were solving the case studies on designing choice environments using tools of choice architecture.

For me, giving this training was a pleasure and I was delighted by the participants’ openness and their willingness to learn. Moreover, I was very pleasantly surprised by the Northern English Hospitality.

 Learn Choice Architecture: How to Design 

Choice Environments that Influence Choice

Join me in Designing Decisions - Training on Choice Architecture.

Airplane Crash, Blinding Emotions and Uncritical (Causal) Thinking - Irrationalities of WHY Part 2

About four days ago, a small airplane crashed in the western mountains of Romania. There are two particularities of this airplane accident: First, the passengers were medical doctors who were transporting an organ for a transplant – life savers. Add to this that the pilot of the plane was more or less of a “media personality”. The second particularity of this accident is that everyone survived the impact. However, due to injuries the pilot and a medical student died before help reached them (which took about 6-7 hours).

Not surprisingly, the mass media was and is full of stories, news etc. regarding this accident and some heads (including Minister of Internal Affairs) rolled as a punishment for the chaotic manner in which the saving operation has happened. (Just as a note: a lot of hindsight bias here). Not surprisingly there is a lot of emotion attached to this sad event and this led to it overshadowing other events much more important for the country, but this is not what I want to talk about…

The public opinion is outraged of the fact that two people died because help arrived at the scene too late. I would see the up-side… help arrived in time to save another five people… in case you don’t know it’s literally freezing in the mountains in winter.

And the weather and winter conditions are what I want to talk about. Thick snow (between 30 and 60 cm) is one of the causes that led to help arriving late (another is a bit of traditional Romanian idiotic management). Cold weather and thick snow for sure didn’t help the people who were in the airplane after it crashed. Broken bones and being in the cold for seven hours are not exactly a pleasant mix.

But there is another thing about cold weather and thick snow: I believe that it was the thing that saved the lives of the five people who survived. It sounds a bit paradoxical since thick snow and the cold caused a delay in help arriving (hiking on mountains in the summer time is wonderful, doing so in winter is dreadful). Moreover, low temperatures might have contributed to the death of the two victims.

Leave these negative influences of the snow and cold weather and think how come that all seven passengers survived the actual impact… the airplane is a small – light-weight one… and as you already know mountains are made of rock and the soil (ground) on top of the rock is quite thin. Without claiming that I am an expert in physics, I believe that the thick lair of snow on the mountain had a huge contribution in making the impact non-lethal… Naturally the pilot’s actions played a role too… may he rest in peace…

Add to this that there was no fire, despite the airplane loosing fuel … When metal hits rock there can be sparks… when it hits snow, not so much…

Something that is the cause of a bad thing can be a hidden cause of something good…

My book: It Makes (No) Sense: Between the Joy of Gaining and the Fear of Losing

Traditional Winter Payments and their Pain of Paying

When putting together the words “Traditional” and “Winter” the first thought goes to Christmas and New Year since these are the main events of winter and they happen each and every year. Naturally, both Christmas and New Year come with some expenses and subsequent payments. Every payment hurts and I believe that payments made for the usual Christmas and New Year purchases are less painful than are other payments. For Christmas and New Year people have money allocated for things such as gifts, food, booze (after all it’s a reason to party) etc. Moreover, Christmas and New Year most often come with joy and reasons to celebrate or at least party.

There are, however, other payments that are specific to the winter season and are completely unrelated to the holidays. These payments include paying (local) taxes, paying the regularization (balancing) for utilities such as energy, water etc., paying one-year fees for very necessary services such as sanitation (picking up the garbage) and sewerage. All these payments are due in the winter months (at least in some countries).

Naturally all these payments have to be made and everyone is more or less aware of this fact. However, these payments come with an increased level of pain of paying – the psychological discomfort experienced when making payments.

Let’s take the example of paying the regularization (balancing) for utilities bills. In The Netherlands (and in some other countries) for energy people pay a fix amount each month and at the end of the year a computation is made in order to see whether the individual paid more or less than she has actually consumed.  Not surprisingly there are quite some cases in which people consumed more than what was estimated. When the invoice comes it is a painful one. Energy is something we don’t see; it’s the electricity that powers my laptop, the heat in the room (in The Netherlands usually it is quite cold) and the electricity or gas that makes the cooking stove work. Moreover, when being informed at the end of the year that you need to pay more for something that you have consumed during the entire year, there is a feeling of paying for nothing. Those 400 Euros you have to pay extra include the electricity consumed by the light that you forgot to switch off in March. It simply feels awkward…

A very important factor involved in the pain of paying experienced in relation to these “traditional winter payments” is the way in which the payment is made. Let’s stick to the example with balancing energy bills. Usually in The Netherlands such bills are paid using the “Direct Debit” method which means that the amount due to be paid is withdrawn from the bank account of the client by the company that issued the bill. In essence, the payer does not have to do anything, except for making sure that there are enough money in her bank account, which can be quite challenging since a lot of money was spent on Christmas and New Year.

Now, imagine that this method of payment would not be available and the only way in which someone could pay this bill would be to go to one office of the energy company which is half-way across the city in winter weather and the payment can be made only in cash (bills and coins).

It is obvious that the level of discomfort associated with the payment is higher in the second case than it is when using direct debit.  

“Traditional Winter Payments” are annoying by their very nature. However, most people simply accept them as a given status-quo. Everyone realizes that energy bills have to be paid and that annual payments for sanitation and sewerage services are mandatory if one wants to have the benefits of civilization…  Minimizing the pain of paying associated with these payments is a worthy endeavor.

Take a moment and think of how other payments that are less vital for a civilized standard of living (having energy and sewerage) influence purchasing behaviour and customer satisfaction. Purchasing behaviour is influenced by many factors including the price, income etc. What is often ignored is the level of pain of paying associated with a purchase…

Take a look at My Training Programs on Pain of Paying

And

Psychology of Money

The Irrationalities of WHY – How We Fail to Incorporate (True) Causality in Our Decisions and Judgments

Children between the ages of tree and five have an (annoying) habit of asking repeatedly Why. Although these repeated questions of why may get to the nerves of many adults, they are very useful for intellectual development. We humans have a very basic need of understanding why things around us are the way they are and why they happen the way they do.

Despite this intrinsic curiosity and need for understanding the whys of the world, we are very often incapable of understanding (true) causality. It seems to be a paradox, but there’s a reasonable explanation, which is that as long as we find a plausible answer to the question why, we do not look any further.

Let me illustrate this with an example from Mother Nature. Earthquakes are reality of our planet. Most importantly, earthquakes come with damage if they are quite large. Engineering has tackled some of the downsides of earthquakes such as buildings collapsing, but by far there still are buildings that fall and people are killed and injured in earthquakes. In face of a big earthquake there is nothing anyone can do. It is only naturally that people fear earthquakes and it is only natural that only the possibility of a big earthquake generates a bit of hysteria.

Apart from the disasters they generate, earthquakes have another particular characteristic, namely that they can’t be accurately predicted with more than a few tens of seconds before they happen. Even the current technology can’t do very well when it comes to predicting earthquakes. Just as a note, even those 30 seconds are a great achievement and come with huge benefits such as the possibility of switching off nuclear power-plants, natural gas distribution in cities etc.

Although we cannot accurately predict earthquakes, we know what generates them: the collision between tectonic plates. Putting things very simplistically, in essence an earthquake is the release of accumulated tension between two tectonic plates.

Knowing this and keeping things simple, the tension accumulated between two tectonic plates can be released gradually – which results in many small earthquakes, or it can be released at once which results in big earthquakes.

Keeping in mind this simplistic rule, we can say that when a small (and non-dangerous) earthquake happens, it is in fact good news. This is because some of the tension accumulated between two tectonic plates was released, thus the remaining tension is smaller which in turn means that the probability of a big (and dangerous) earthquake occurring in the near future decreased.

Human psychology is, however, quite different. We humans become scared and even panicked when we experience a small earthquake. This is because the notion of earthquake is suddenly very salient in our minds and all the disastrous consequences of a big earthquake are vivid in our imagination.

To sum up, when a small earthquake occurs, the objective probability of a big earthquake to hit in the near future decreases because part of the tension between the tectonic plates was released. However, in our minds, the occurrence of a small earthquake makes the possibility of a big one to hit in the near future more vivid, thus increasing the subjective probability of it occurring.

Another similar illustration on our fallacy to understand true causality comes from Australia where at the end of 2013 there was a huge bush-fire. Naturally there are many causes for a bush-fire such as negligence in using open flame, but one major cause of big bush-fires is that there is a lot of material that can burn. TV reports said that in the past ten years there were no considerable bush-fires in the areas hit. So, the physical, pragmatic cause of the huge bush-fire – flammable material – was there and has accumulated in quite a large time-span.

On the Psychology side, it is only natural for people to be terrified by huge fires (it is in our hard-wiring). However, I am convinced that in the ten years preceding 2013’s huge bush-fire, very few people were concerned or terrified by the lack of small-scale bush-fires. In fact, it is very plausible for people to have thought during those ten years that the danger (risk) of bush-fires to have decreased since no significant bush-fire happened in the recent past (this was before the huge one in the end of 2013).

This way of thinking has a huge influence on the behaviour of purchasing risk managing products and services such as insurance. The sales of insurance policies that cover the risk of earthquake (or bush-fires) increases after the occurrence of an earthquake (big or small, but big ones have a stronger influence). Similarly, sales of such insurance policies decrease when there hasn’t been an earthquake (or fire) for quite some time. Most interestingly, this dynamic of behaviour is completely the opposite of the dynamic of objective risks. After an earthquake (may it be small or big) the objective risk of a big earthquake occurring in the near future is lower, whereas during a period without earthquakes (or fires) the risk of a big one with subsequent big damages is, in fact, higher.

Small bad things such as small earthquakes and small bush-fires are, objectively, good news because they contribute to decreasing the risk of big bad things (big earthquakes and huge bush-fires that go out of control). However, the huge majority of people doesn’t think this way and panics when small bad events occur. Moreover, the lack of small bad things goes mostly unnoticed and when thinking of the risk of big bad things many people perceive it as being low since not even small bad things happened in the recent past.

For more on how Emotions and Vividness of Events Influence Judgment and Decision Making more than Does Cold-Reasoned Thinking join me for
How (Much) We Think – Training on Psychologyof Human Judgment and Decision-Making

From a Rational Point of View, People Often Do Things that Make No Sense…

Adding knowledge from behavioral sciences helps remove the No from It Makes No Sense…

From a rational point of view, people often do things that make little or no sense. But when these actions are viewed through the lens of behavioral sciences, a new interpretation emerges. Through the filter of a four-dimensional model of human behavior developed using top-level research in behavioral sciences, the reasons that people do what they do begin to come into focus. Building on this idea, It Makes (No) Sense: - Between the Joy of Gaining and the Fear of Losing offers a counter-intuitive perspective and macro-rules on human judgment, decision-making, and behavior.

The first section of the book, “How We Think,” explores human judgment and decision-making. This knowledge serves as the basic of understanding of how social factors, transient internal states, and physical environment elements influence human behavior. Sections two through six go on to describe the 4D Model of Human Behavior, a very effective tool for understanding, predicting, and influencing human behavior. This study gives particular attention to the drivers of human behavior beyond personality. Section seven, “An Alternative to Carrots and Sticks,” criticizes the established way of offering incentives and applying penalties in order to influence behavior. Through the careful application of knowledge from the behavioral and decision sciences, behavioral change can occur.

Some insights from early readers of the book: It Makes (No) Sense: - Between the Joy of Gaining and the Fear of Losing:

“In It Makes (No) Sense, Nicolae Naumof doesn’t just add structure to your ideas about how people think and decide, he also adds a lot of background information and plenty of great and very human examples. He’s comfortable relating advances in psychology to our evolutionary origins and goals, but just as good at creating compelling stories about how they affect our day to day lives. In its 75 chapters he will introduce you to a host of different psychological and behavioral effects – and just as importantly, how they fit together into a “4D model” of human decisions.

Oh, you might say, I’ve already read this bestseller or that one on decision making – why do I need another book? But you’d be wrong. For one thing, there’s so much in here you’ll surely learn something new. For another, Nicolae cares too much about this topic to simply repeat the hype. In fact, his final chapters – about how important experimentation is to behavior change, and what you can expect when you try to create it – are probably the most vital in the whole book. His message is simple: this is science, not magic, and it’s only by understanding why effects happen, and testing your interventions, that you can hope to create consistent change.”

The BrainJuicer Behavioral Change Consultancy.

“Great new Behavioural Science book: It Makes (No) Sense -Between the Joy of Gaining and the Fear of Losing” On Tweeter from John Kearon - CEO BrainJuicer

Start Removing the No from It Makes No Sense…

Get a Free Download (Introduction) of
It Makes (No) Sense: - Between the Joy of Gaining and the Fear of Losing