Getting to the Reality of Behavior

 In Research:  (On Wisdom of Crowds and Theory of Group Behavior)

Why research needs to go beyond the individual’s perspective to get closer to the reality of behaviour. By Rob Egerton and Jeanette Kaye.

Gestalt rooms, image sorts, debates, projection and elicitation: as market researchers, we’ve become brilliant at exploring the depth of human perceptions and behaviour. We pride ourselves on challenging respondents and finding new ways to understand the workings of their minds and how they make decisions.

However, two important theories – which many of you may have heard of – shed new light on how we can better access the reality of how people behave and challenge some of our orthodox approaches. These theories give us direction on how we can get better estimates of future intentions but also suggest that we should move away from just exploring why the individual respondent did what they did, but rather explore more widely how the dynamics of others around them influence what they do. ... "