Living a Behavioural Analysis
Phew.
Does anyone else feel like they aged by 10 years in the past month? If the indicators are anything to go by, it seems like we are in this for the long run. A little more aging is in store for us. As a behavioral science practitioner, I am having a fascinating out-of-body experience of watching myself exhibit all the behaviors I have always talked about in my workshops and meetings.
One of my favorite frameworks to teach and share is the BASIC toolkit [2]. Developed by the OECD to help apply behavioral science insights to public policy analysis, it draws on a taxonomy of ABCD — Attention, Belief, Choice and Determination — to help understand behavior through small-scale experimentation. As one of the most prevalent and useful behavioral frameworks for beginners and experts alike, BASIC is a mainstay of my teaching curriculum — and yet, though my meetings are for the time cancelled, I have never felt more connected to the material than I do now.
It seems a common belief these days is that we will all come out of this crisis changed. For me, perhaps the biggest change has been taking material I typically teach to others and applying it to a new subject altogether: myself.
So, let me present to you my real life, experience-based ABCD analysis of my behavior.
References
- Ariely, D. (2008). Predictably irrational. New York, NY: Harper Audio.
- Hansen, P. G. (2018). BASIC: Behavioural Insights Toolkit and Ethical Guidelines for Policy Makers.
- Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1977). Intuitive prediction: Biases and corrective procedures. Decisions and Designs Inc Mclean Va.
- O’Donoghue, T., & Rabin, M. (1999). Doing it now or later. American Economic Review, 89(1), 103-124.
- Peters, E., Lipkus, I. & Diefenbach, M. A. The Functions of Affect in Health Communications and in the Construction of Health Preferences. J. Commun. 56, S140–S162 (2006).
- Sweller, J. (1994). Cognitive load theory, learning difficulty, and instructional design. Learning and instruction, 4(4), 295-312.
- Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1989). Rational choice and the framing of decisions. In Multiple criteria decision making and risk analysis using microcomputers (pp. 81-126). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.
- Van Bavel, J. J., Boggio, P., Capraro, V., Cichocka, A., Cikara, M., Crockett, M., … & Ellemers, N. (2020). Using social and behavioral science to support COVID-19 pandemic response.
- Wason, Peter C. (1960), “On the failure to eliminate hypotheses in a conceptual task”, Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 12 (3): 129–40, ISSN 1747-0226
About the Author
Preeti Kotamarthi
Preeti Kotamarthi has built and led Behavioral Science teams at two of the largest tech companies in Southeast Asia and India. She established the Behavioral Science practice at Grab, helping product and design teams understand customer behavior to create better user experiences. Currently, she heads Behavioral Science and User Research at Swiggy, where she continues to blend data, design, and human insights—drawing inspiration from spending a lot of time with Indian consumers. With a Masters in Behavioral Science from the London School of Economics and an MBA in Marketing from FMS Delhi, Preeti brings over 12 years of experience in consumer products, from co-founding a rural startup in India to shaping behavioral design in tech. Her passion lies in making behavioral science a core part of the product development process. When she’s not uncovering human insights at work, she’s likely busy applying behavioral lessons on her two-year-old.
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