Dr. Kirstin Appelt explains why behavioural insights skills are in demand across sectors and how AI is reshaping the future of decision-making.
Dr. Kirstin Appelt is the Research Director of the UBC Decision Insights for Business & Society (DIBS) group and the Academic Director of UBC's Advanced Professional Certificate in Behavioural Insights. Her research explores why people struggle with important decisions about the future and how to use choice architecture to help them make the best decisions for themselves and for society. In this Q&A, she discusses the increasing industry demand for behavioural insights (BI) and how AI could influence the evolution of behavioural insights.
What are behavioural insights (BI) and why do they matter?
KA: Behavioural science studies how and why we make decisions, from small decisions like choosing between a salad or a burger to big decisions like choosing a mortgage. It develops and tests theories of behaviour to understand why, for example, it's harder to commit to saving five per cent of today's paycheck than five per cent of next month's paycheck. Or why we're more likely to bail on the gym if we're going alone than if we have a gym date with a friend.
Behavioural insights use this understanding of human behaviour to design and test solutions that help people make better choices, choices that lead to happier, healthier, wealthier, or other more positive outcomes. To paraphrase Nobel laureate Richard Thaler, it lets us use the science of human behaviour to "nudge for good". Among hundreds of other examples, we've seen behavioural insights help folks save for retirement, access better healthcare, and reduce their carbon footprint.
Why are behavioural insights skills increasingly in demand across sectors like government/public policy, healthcare, non-profits and private industry?
KA: I think there are two main drivers:
- First, there's recognition that we're all overwhelmed with the number and complexity of decisions we need to make every day.
- Second, there's increasing recognition that human behaviour matters!
Behavioural insights can help with both of those problems because it helps us design our products and policies with humans, and their busy lives, in mind. It could be updating that multi-page form that people have to complete from scratch and submit via fax (in 2025!) to a form that is pre-populated with your previous information and can be submitted with a click. Or it could be simply adding well-timed reminders that help people apply for benefits or pay bills on time.
Knowing how to design for humans (and the pitfalls to avoid) makes you incredibly valuable as governments, non-profits, and industry increasingly leverage behavioural insights to make it easier for people to take advantage of their services and products.
How is AI re-shaping the way Behavioural Insights is applied or how might it evolve in the next decade?
KA: This is a really fascinating question because behavioural insights has a lot to say about AI and, at the same time, AI can change how we do or study behavioural insights/science.
To my first point, AI isn't useful by itself (at least for now!). It's only valuable if humans use it, which means we should design AI with human behaviour in mind to make it easy, appealing, and accessible. At the same time, depending on how we use AI, it can lead to incredible positives like early cancer detection or terrible negatives like election interference. This means we should think carefully about how AI might be used, and consider ways to promote positive use and discourage negative use. So, if we want to nudge for good, behavioural insights should inform the AI user interfaces as well as the data libraries being fed into AI and the algorithms that drive AI output.
To my second point, AI is an incredible tool for doing the work of behavioural insights BI. We're already seeing AI help with literature reviews, research design, and data collection and analysis. When used well, AI can help researchers and practitioners do more behavioural insights BI more efficiently. And if behavioural insights is all about nudging for good, more of it means more positive changes for people, organizations, communities, and the planet!
Interested in exploring how you can add Behavioural Insights to your professional skillset?
Learn more about UBC Sauder Professional Growth’s Behavioural Insights offerings here
