Behavior science is a common practice for public health experts. Professionals related to sociology, psychology, economics, biology, etc. are constantly researching customers’ behaviors. The term behavioral science is often used with social sciences but the latter is more of an experimental approach than the latest. Behavioral science uses metric experimentation and observation that helps scientists study human behavior. It is about examining and observing the behavior of specific individuals and how their thought processes impact several products or fields. This post will walk you through a detailed definition of behavioral science and how it is beneficial for decision-making in product design.
What is Behavioral Science?
Behavioral science or social science or behavioral economics studies human actions. This study incorporates various fields such as psychology, economics, cognitive neuroscience, psychiatry, biology, political science, etc. The study includes observing human behavior to understand how people react and act and make everyday decisions. Particularly, behavioral science is about finding out a particular way our emotions, social factors, and environment play roles in decision-making.
It also uncovers the factors that drive us to make irrational decisions. These factors involve heuristics and social and personal biases. However, behavioral scientists don’t only observe human behavior, they also do experiments on them to understand the logic behind people’s decisions. Experts take note of human behavior to make developments that would satisfy their consumers. For example, there are many diseases that are influenced by people’s behavior and mental health. You as a scientist will have to observe those behaviors so that you can find solutions to prevent those health-related problems.
For instance, if you had high blood pressure, there would be a possibility that you intake a small amount of sodium. A health professional can address your other health factors by determining your amount of sodium intake. Likewise, other lifestyle decisions including your sleeping habits, diet, physical activities, etc. help professionals create strategies that would improve people’s health.
Behavioral Science Helps Better Decision Making
People can make irrational decisions all the time but they always depend on multiple factors while making a decision. Professionals understand the patterns that drive people to make irrational decisions and they use those insights to create environments to help those people. Applying behavioral science can improve people’s decision-making skills through products, marketing, or lifestyle changes.
Scientists have established that people make 97% of their everyday decisions based on their beliefs. So every time you make a marketing campaign or landing page, you will have to take people’s choices and beliefs into consideration. In behavioral science, it is called “choice architecture”. So, whenever you are designing a choice of architecture, you will intentionally or unintentionally influence other people’s choices.
Here are the various elements that impact people’s choices:
1. Psychological Influences
Psychological influences such as motivators help people decide what they want to do and what they don’t want to do. A person’s unfulfilled needs create desires that motivate them into acting in a certain way. A person’s confidence in achieving something can also influence their behavior and decisions.
2. Behavioral Influences
A person’s values, how they approach risks, how they approach things with their beliefs, their cultural references, etc. affect how people behave and make decisions.
3. Biological Influences
Biological factors including gender, age, genetics, etc. also have an influence on people’s behavior and feelings. For example, people tend to inherit characteristics from their peers like talkative or reserved nature.
4. Societal Influences
People do change their beliefs and attitudes to be able to be a part of a group or culture. Similarly, they change their decisions and behavior to make themselves ideal for a particular role in society.
Since behavioral science is a wide field, there are different disciplines that influence human actions. However, no matter what discipline it is that influences a person’s behavior, it creates a connection between the human mind and behavior. That study is called behavioral science.
Disciplines in Behavioral Science
In behavioral science, there are several disciplines, let’s talk about each of them briefly.
1. Psychology
Psychology is the science of our minds and attitude. It helps us with personality development, physical and emotional health, cognition abilities, and social behavior. There are four goals in psychology:
- Determining people’s behaviors between normal and abnormal and understanding their thought processes as well as actions.
- Understanding why people act and think in certain ways and understanding what influences their behavior.
- Predicting how a person’s behavior will appear in the future by studying their past and present.
- Positively motivate people to improve their life and mood.
2. Sociology
Sociology teaches how people function, create a society, and organize their behaviors. Sociology is the study of the exchange between two people or among a group of people. Sociology studies multiple elements of society to understand the connection between humans and society. Here are those components:
- Populations
- Age groups
- Gender groups
- Institutions
- Communities
- Social status
- Social problems
- Social movements
3. Political Science
Political Science explores how the rules of the government influence the behavior of the general public. It includes these factors:
- Societal factors
- Psychological factors
- Cultural factors
These factors also influence the decisions taken by your government.
4. Criminology
Criminology is the study of crime that helps professionals determine where, how, and why a crime occurs. Besides determining the causes of the crime, it also studies its impact on society, criminals, and the victims. Here are some of the elements that criminology focuses on:
- Location of crimes
- How many times the crime has occurred
- How the government, society, or the individual react to the crime
- Types of crimes
5. Social and Cultural Anthropology
Social and Cultural Anthropology explores the different elements of cultures such as:
- Languages
- Belief system
- Rules or manners
- Customs
- Social structures
Social and cultural anthropology studies how these elements work with principles to manage people’s behavior in a specific culture. It is also a study about how to break the cultural beliefs the people have by challenging them to pursue new principles.
Most Apparent Behavioral Science Examples
Experts study various types of health-related issues across multiple populations. They perform research and gather data and analyze that information. Here are some of the most common problems that behavioral science experts often find in people:
- Anxiety disorders
- Stress
- Personality disorders
- Substance abuse
- Trauma
- Violence
- Health risks
- Depression
The Dissimilarity between Behavioral Science and Social Science
Both behavioral science and social science are studies of human behavior. But the terms are utilized correspondingly. For example, social science mainly concentrates on society but behavioral science tries to understand people individually. In behavioral science, experts try to correlate human behavior with society. In social science, they explore the behavior of the whole society or a particular group or organization. Moreover, behavioral scientists collect empirical data using various investigation methods such as testing, configurations, etc.
If you are thinking about getting a degree in behavioral science, then you can land different potential career options. Most of those jobs involve observing people’s behaviors to resolve a particular problem.
Career Options with a Behavioral Science Degree
You will have to observe people’s behavior so that you can solve certain problems regarding their mental health. However, not every field in behavioral science talks about people’s mental health directly even though that’s the main element. That’s why you should study the various job options if you are interested in working in behavioral science. Here are a few common ones to get you started:
- Research assistant: Research assistants support the real researchers to conduct studies and gather data and help them with paperwork and publishing.
- Human resources specialist: A human resource specialist also known as HR has the duty of managing a specific department of a company.
- Market researcher: Market researchers research their customers and analyze those data to help marketers create effective campaigns.
- Mental health counselor: Mental health counselors work with their clients to help them overcome personal and professional issues. This often involves working with mental health challenges.
- Crime analysts: A crime analyst gathers various info regarding the crime scenes and evaluates the data to find the suspect.
- Social worker: Social workers help the general public overcome challenging situations such as natural disasters, accidents, etc. They send resources and assistance to families, individuals, and communities.
- Addiction counselor: Addiction counselors help their clients overcome substance abuse. They observe the behaviors and additional patterns of their clients and prescribe treatments.
All of these fields in behavioral science offer bachelor’s degrees at the minimum. But some organizations expect their potential employees to have master’s degrees. Therefore, you need to ensure your criteria before applying for these job roles.
Conclusion
Behavioral science is a wide and diversified subject. It helps scientists understand why humans make choices in the present that might not serve them in the long run. It examines how various factors such as beliefs, attitudes, judgments, etc. influence our decisions. Behavioral science also examines the different factors that motivate specific people to make certain decisions. It also examines how different people judge others based on their voice, features, and attributes. Overall, behavioral science helps scientists recognize the behavior patterns of people and provide customized services to them accordingly.
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Simran works as a technical writer. The graduate in MS Computer Science from the well known CS hub, aka Silicon Valley, is also an editor of the website. She enjoys writing about any tech topic, including programming, algorithms, cloud, data science, and AI. Traveling, sketching, and gardening are the hobbies that interest her.
