Abstract
This chapter focuses on how the discipline of behavioural science developed from ideas emerging from social and health psychology, how these ideas challenged classical economic theory, and how they have been transferred, and successfully used by policy makers. Rubinstein explores the main principles of nudge theory and suggests that there is more to behavioural science than ‘nudging’. She concludes that businesses would benefit from applying the scientific method of behavioural science in the commercial sector, if they can overcome five major challenges to its implementation.
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Notes
- 1.
Bounded rationality of individuals is limited by the information they have, the cognitive limitations of their minds, and the finite amount of time they have to make a decision.
- 2.
Satisficing is used to explain why individuals do not seek to maximise their benefit from a particular course of action (since they cannot assimilate and digest all the information that would be needed to do such a thing) and even if they could their minds would be unable to process it properly.
- 3.
Psychologists can be rather loose in their terminology and often use the words theory and model interchangeably. For our purposes, we use theory to mean a concept that explains when and why a behaviour occurs and model to mean a representation of how different factors interact and relate to each other to cause a behaviour. This is discussed in more detail in Chap. 3.
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Rubinstein, H. (2018). An Overview of Behavioural Science. In: Applying Behavioural Science to the Private Sector. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01698-2_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01698-2_1
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