From Theory to Frameworks: Putting Behavioral Science to Work
In the very first class of my Masters in Behavioral Science, our professor wrote in capital letters on the whiteboard: “CONTEXT MATTERS.” I still have my notes from the class where I doodled around these two words, not really understanding their gravity or the reasoning behind why this was being emphasized.
Cut to now. A few weeks ago, the entire world of behavioral science was shaken when a blog made startling revelations about the validity of some high-profile research in behavioral science.1 But that’s not even the first time the field has been called out. The replication crisis has bogged us down for years.2 Yet, somehow, when I read these articles, my main response is not alarm, but rather the conviction that my doodle drawing of “Context Matters” from so many years ago really was correct.
The reason I say that is because being an applied behavioral scientist basically means all the research we do starts from scratch, irrespective of replicability or conclusive laboratory results. Each analysis is in a completely new context, and possibly with a completely different audience.
How then do we make use of all this academic literature? What’s the point of academic literature if it fails in a different context? How do we make sense of what works and what doesn’t?
References
- Simonsohn, U., Nelson, L., & Simmons, J. (2021, August 25). [98] Evidence of fraud in an influential Field experiment about dishonesty. Data Colada. https://datacolada.org/98
- Yong, E. (2018, December 7). Psychology’s replication crisis is running out of excuses. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/11/psychologys-replication-crisis-real/576223/
About the Author
Preeti Kotamarthi
Preeti Kotamarthi is the Behavioral Science Lead at Grab, the leading ride-hailing and mobile payments app in South East Asia. She has set up the behavioral practice at the company, helping product and design teams understand customer behavior and build better products. She completed her Masters in Behavioral Science from the London School of Economics and her MBA in Marketing from FMS Delhi. With more than 6 years of experience in the consumer products space, she has worked in a range of functions, from strategy and marketing to consulting for startups, including co-founding a startup in the rural space in India. Her main interest lies in popularizing behavioral design and making it a part of the product conceptualization process.
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