😵💫 Behavioural Psychology
😵💫 Behavioural Psychology
"What if their wife is in labour and they are rushing to a hospital?"
Hello friends!
I am truly fascinated by behavioural psychology. Understanding why people behave a certain way is a good helper in being more empathetic and chill.
For example, when I am driving and somebody is changing lanes a lot and cutting others off, I ask myself this question: "What if their wife is in labour and they are rushing to a hospital?", or "What if their child who stayed at home alone called them and said that they accidentally cut themselves and have serious bleeding?". It's very difficult to keep yourself together and stay calm when somebody you care a lot is in danger. Emotions often take over. This is human nature.
(Of course, reckless driving is dangerous and I am not advocating for this. Many innocent people suffer just because they happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. But getting angry in such situations can only escalate the problem and amplify the damage. #RoadRage in Canada 🦫)
What really drives people (pun not intended =) seems to be a mystery, at first. In reality, every behaviour has a cause, and it often connects to our psychology.
Recently, I had an interesting conversation with one of my colleagues. We talked about the traditional advertising industry and how this whole field is built on the foundation of understanding the human brain and manipulating our emotions to sell us their idea. Some companies convince you that you have a flaw (or two... hundred 😆) and that if you buy their product, you'll become complete. Some companies literally sell addiction, and it's legal. The best advertisers speak to you on an emotional level. It helps overcome all logical objections. It's a dirty game.
It reminded me of the movie "Inception". A mind-bending story, highly recommend it.
Would you work for a company selling addiction?
🔖 My content
Last week, I recorded another episode of my podcast, settled on the graphics, and midway through the editing of the previous episode. Gosh, it does take time and feels like a chore. Make sure you subscribe, you'll find lots of cool advice for growing your UX career.
My top priority for this upcoming week is to finish editing and publishing this episode, and also finish writing my observation from our trip to Switzerland and the 3rd part of my "Vancouver vs Luxembourg" series (Part 1, Part 2). Bear with me.
❤️ My favourite things
🎙️ Movie: "The Menu". At first, I dismissed it after watching the trailer. It seemed like a typical horror movie with blood and stuff like that. On the weekend, I decided to give it a try, just out of respect for the main actor whom I like – Ralph Fiennes. It turned out to be a great movie with unexpected turns and a good level of intensity. Recommend.
🔗 Cool finds
Use ChatGPT to update the companies list (post - linkedin.com) – This is outrageous. When I was working on My SoulTeam, we spent a ton of time compiling the list of companies and their details. Are you saying it can be done automatically in a few minutes??
First 30 days onboarding plan at a new job (post - twitter.com) – Well structured approach to "project managing" your new job. Can also be used in your 1-1s with the new manager to show you are strategic about this.
Responsive design in Figma, supafast (post - linkedin.com) – Love this guy and his style, and the content is useful.
The "Mouse Heaven" experiment (video - youtube.com) – An interesting scientific experiment about utopia. "They never learned to be aggressive."
The Expert (video - youtube.com) – An oldie, but hilarious, as always, but too painful 😆 A pretty good illustration of how some of the meetings I attended went.
Ciao! 🤙