Social Psychology: Employee and Customer Behaviour

Delve into behavioural science and human behaviour

Why do we act in the ways that we do, and how can we apply our understanding of human behaviour to the world of business?

This four-week course will help you explore the discipline of behavioural science and how we can apply this understanding to human behaviour and the world of business.

You’ll learn how to utilise effective messengers, understand the influence of socio-cultural norms, and recognise the role of the ego to better serve the needs of your employees and your customers.

Understand nudging and the rational model

You’ll explore behavioural economics and what we know about how people make decisions.

This will help you identify the shortcomings of the rational model of human behaviour and give you an understanding of heuristics and biases.

Through a number of case studies, you’ll also learn about nudging and the rationale for using it.

Explore the importance of messengers

You’ll learn how vital it is to choose the right messenger and the influence of those who communicate information.

Exploring the main characteristics and differences between hard and soft messengers, you’ll learn how to choose the right one to communicate an effective message.

Learn how to harness norms and ego

You’ll understand the definition of norms, and how and why people follow them. With this knowledge, you’ll learn how to apply and harness positive norms to specific audiences.

You’ll also identify the ways you can harness ego to create desired behaviours.

By the end of this course, you’ll be able to demonstrate how to leverage effective behaviour change using different social psychological factors.

This course is designed for professionals who are managing, building, or developing a team.

You could be a line manager or team leader, or simply looking to better understand customer needs and motivations.

This course is designed for professionals who are managing, building, or developing a team.

You could be a line manager or team leader, or simply looking to better understand customer needs and motivations.

• Identify the main shortcomings of the rational model.
• Describe the rationale for nudging, exploring a number of case studies where nudging has (and hasn’t) worked.
• Develop a basic knowledge of the MINDSPACE framework and why we use it.
• Describe the importance of messengers and utilise important factors to identify good messengers.
• Recognise the prevalence of norms, as well as how and why people follow them.
• Critically assess how a norm is likely to influence behaviour.
• Design interventions in such a way that they avoid backfiring or otherwise undesirable consequences.
• Investigate narratives, motivated reasoning, and how these can be used to understand and predict behaviour.
• Demonstrate how beliefs can self-reinforce and how comparison with others can be leveraged to effect behaviour change.