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‘Cultural irrationality’ and its implications for market research
Marie-Claude Gervais (Further and Versiti)
There is a clear drive to acknowledge human irrationality in recent theories of human behaviour. However, most recent approaches take either the individual (e.g. System 1 thinking, blink, behavioural economics) or the social group (e.g. nudge, herd behaviour, etc), as their unit of analysis. They explain irrationality either as a function of cognitive heuristics or of social pressures in human interactions. This presentation discusses the shortcomings of these approaches and argues that “irrationality” also needs to be understood at a properly cultural level. Irrationality is patterned, and the patterns are cultural as much as cognitive and social. Using three examples of ‘cultural irrationality’ from our research across diverse cultural groups in the UK to look at why, despite huge budgets spent on public health:
- Chinese people rarely complete their course of antibiotics;
- Obesity is rife among many Somali parents and children; and
- Pakistani and Bangladeshi men continue to have extremely high smoking rates.
Our evidence shows these ‘irrational’ behaviours are best explained at a cultural level. Finally, the presentation discusses the methodological implications of adopting a cultural approach to understanding human behaviour. It highlights the need for the market research industry to triangulate (purposefully) a range of methods in order to tap into properly social and cultural phenomena, in order to really understand human behaviour.
