What drives a behaviour?
Liam McBride
Technical Assurance Manager
06 October 2021
People behave!
The lack of a comma in this statement should leave it as that, a factual statement. All people behave in certain ways. First of all, it’s important to define what a behaviour actually is, which is defined by the Cambridge English Dictionary as:
“the way that a person, an animal, a substance, etc. behaves in a particular situation or under particular conditions”
While this definition seems relatively clear cut, how would you behave if I told you to do something that is relatively simple and mundane by most accounts, say to give me your wallet.
In this situation, you may know and trust me and hand over your wallet, or in the past, you may have passed your wallet to someone and had it returned with more money in it than you had before. But what if you didn’t know me, or if you are too busy to hand over your wallet. What if the assumption that this is a simple and mundane task is presumptuous and you haven’t been shown how to hand your wallet over to someone? What if, in the past you have handed your wallet to someone and they have stolen from you?
This really adds a lot of context to the behaviour of something simple like handing over your wallet and really highlights what drives decision making. Add in a lot of red tape and industry norms and you have a situation that is faced by many in industry and something that Behavioural Science aims to address.
Behavioural Science teaches us that the Cambridge definition above is for the most part, true. However, for complex behaviours, say craning a pallet in a work yard, or driving a train, you have to readily create an environment which encourages the behaviours you do want, and discourages the behaviour you don’t want. To do this, the behaviour must be pinpointed to be very specific, observable and repeatable, as such declaring that a person didn’t do something is not a behaviour.
To be clear, the environment in this case is an overall collection of stimulus that push you in a direction that you are more likely to display or undertake a specific behaviour.
An example of this is the seatbelt in your car. Why do you clip your seatbelt on in your car every time you get in? There’s a number of individual reasons including:
You may get a fine from the police if caught
It’s well advertised that you may get more hurt if you are involved in an accident
Society expects it, your friends or family may moan at you to wear a seatbelt when you are with them
You have always done it
That annoying “dong” if you move the car without it on
These are all individual stimulus, both positive and negative which combined create an environment which make it more likely that you automatically clip your seatbelt in every time you jump in your car.
This approach can be applied to industry and can fix gaps, or drive excellence in safety, assurance, quality and more. For this you need to implement stimulus, creating individual checks, rewards, or even consequences to specific actions within your organisation that make wanted behaviours much more likely, and unwanted behaviours less likely.
Anturas have worked in conjunction with Bob Cummins of Sodak Ltd, experts in behavioural science to develop a training package which outlines ‘The Application of Behavioural Science in Assurance’. We are planning further sessions following a relaxation of COVID restrictions so if you are interested in these or in house training, please get in touch through:
Liammcbride@anturasconsulting.com or go through Sodak on:
