Behavioural Science with the students of Beta Gamma Sigma at the University of Sydney

Dr. Neil Doyle recently was invited to speak to some of the University of Sydney’s brightest and best students from the Beta Gamma Sigma International Business Honor Society.  

The select few students in this organisation are at the top of their class with “membership to this honor society being the highest recognition that a business student can receive anywhere in the world in a business program accredited by AACSB International.”  In order to be a part of this organisation, students must be at least in the top 10% of their class.  Beta Gamma Sigma aims to encourage and honour academic achievement in the field of business and to cultivate personal and professional excellence.

Neil delivered an interactive talk on the application of the principles of Behavioural Science BGS students.  During his lecture, he stressed that the fundamental aim of marketing is changing customer behaviour.  Neil walked students through some of the work of the world’s leading behavioural scientists including Dan Ariely and Daniel Kahneman to emphasise the fact that contrary to conventional economic theory, human beings act irrationally when making decisions.  

There is an entire suite of cognitive biases (or for the sake of simplicity, ‘shortcuts’) that the human brain takes advantage of in order to make decisions in a faster and easier way.  These include things such as Choice Architecture (how options are presented), Default (what is the automatic choice), and the Hawthorne Effect (the idea that people behave differently when they feel that they are being observed) to name a few. Understanding how these biases impact human decision-making is essential to changing behaviour.  

During the event, students were given the opportunity to try their hand at applying the principles of behavioural science.  At times behavioural science can seem a bit abstract but through hands-on experience, students gained insight into how it can be used in real life and how they can apply it to challenges that they will face in their future careers! 

Dr. Neil Doyle with the students of the Beta Gamma Sigma Honor Society at Sydney University