In recent weeks, I’ve gone through a few books simultaneously tangential and central to my work in sustainable marketing. Tangential because these books don’t deal with marketing directly; central because they shed bright light into human psychology, the command of which should prominently feature in every sustainable marketer’s toolbox.
Whether these pieces come from behavioral economics, social psychology, or popular neuroscience fields, the overarching conclusion is this: Science — experiments, observation, measurement — has demonstrated that human behavior is driven primarily not by rational, utilitarian, and individualistic calculations but by irrational, unconscious, and emotional impulses embedded in the fabric of social networks. (What an irony: rational tools devised by our rational minds have revealed our irrational essence!) Over the past few decades, the Western view on humanity and the individuals in it has shifted from rational-individual to emotional-social.
The book list, for your reading pleasure:
- Dan Ariely, Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions, 2008
- Ori Brafman and Rom Brafman, Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior, 2008
- Jonathan Haidt, The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom, 2006
- Chip Heath and Dan Heath, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard, 2010
- Jonah Lehrer, How We Decide, 2009
- Alex Pentland, Honest Signals: How They Shape Our World, 2008
I’ve also already mentioned the following:
- Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge, 1967
- Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler, Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives, 2009
Let this quote from Honest Signals speak for all the goodness in these volumes (emphasis mine):
“[O]ur conscious minds are not fully in control of our behavior. Conscious and unconscious appear to be intertwined in our daily lives… While it is clear that conscious thought can (usually) override our instincts, only a minority of human behaviors may be governed by conscious, cognitive processes. Elevating the importance of our ancient social senses relative to our conscious mind (…) emphasize[s] that our behavior is deeply and immediately connected with that of other humans.“
Duh, you may think, but it’s taken us a while to realize this. Here’s to the emotional-social age!
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Image credit: alles-schlumpf
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