Human Behavior

My job is to study human behavior as it relates to product development and marketing. You’d think I would know a whole lot about why people do what they do, but I don’t. Most of what I’m certain about are contradictions:


• We typically don’t mean what we say
• We typically always ask for more information, even though we will never read it
• We spend money we don’t have

Bottom line: we are not very rational. Which makes us hard to understand.

The lyrics from Bjork’s song Human Behavior sum up my argument better than I can:

If you ever get close to a human
And human behavior
Be ready to get confused
There's definitely no logic
To human behavior
But yet so irresistible
There's no map
To human behavior
They're terribly moody
Then all of a sudden turn happy
But, oh, to get involved in the exchange
Of human emotions is ever so satisfying
There's no map
And a compass
Wouldn't help at all
Human behavior

If human behavior were easy to understand our jobs would be boring. Thank God it isn’t. And, don’t get caught thinking it is – that’s too rational.

Go here to hear the song.