Behavioural predictions are centred on the study of how human beings go about their day-to-day lives. Integral to this is understanding why humans do what they do – the social factors at play, as well as individual thoughts and feelings.
Humans are ever-evolving and learn from their mistakes and misfortunes. From the very early days, humans had to go off of instinct, but slowly learnt new skills over time. Take for instance the decades-old lesson of the very hot stove. When we were younger, we would observe the adults in our family and notice that they actively avoided touching stove plates while cooking. As children we are also taught that touching a hot stove will burn us. Some small humans proceed to touch it anyway and learn through experience, while others internalise that lesson from external teaching. This process of avoidance then becomes so ingrained in our daily knowledge, ultimately becoming instinctive behaviour.
Repeating history
It is possible to learn through the experiences of others, analysing past behaviours to predict future results. Even if you yourself have never experienced getting burned by a stove, you can logically deduce from someone else’s experience that the same thing is likely to happen to you. This, in simple terms, is how social learning works. Humans have the ability to form a collective conscience that requires a tragedy to happen to only one, for many to learn.
This repetitive sequence of action, observation and learning is what informs every human’s natural ability to predict possible future events, thereby reproducing the past through repeated action. This makes a certain aspect of human behavior predictable. Preference for the comfort of routine and fear of change as a common human tendency. Novel concepts such as learning new languages, trying new foods, and even driving a car that they’ve never before driven can be daunting.
The habitual activities make predicting future behavior fairly easy – barring you have the right data and you know how to use it. By decoding the predictable aspects of human nature, companies can make strides in their pursuit to understand their customers.
