Explore the psychological factors that influence behaviour

This three-week course will help you explore the role of the subconscious and emotions in decision-making and strategies for capturing the attention of your customers.

With this knowledge, you’ll be empowered to not only attract the customers you want, but understand, anticipate, and meet their needs completely.

Understand priming as an influencing tactic

Exploring priming in psychology, you’ll learn to identify a prime and distinguish it from an influence that people are consciously aware of.

You’ll discuss examples from everyday life as well as examining a number of studies showing priming effects. With this knowledge, you’ll start to think about how you could design your own prime.

Explore the SALIENT checklist and anchoring

With an understanding of primes, you’ll then explore how to use a wide range of them using the SALIENT checklist.

You’ll discuss the role of salience in decision-making and the components of salient messages before examining the role of anchoring and peak-end evaluation.

This knowledge will help you explore how to apply concepts to your organisation.

Understand what affects behaviour change

Exploring the role emotions play in decision-making, you’ll debate the relationship between rational behaviour and emotions.

By the end of this course, you’ll have examined the ways you can change behaviour and also critically evaluate whether it’s right to do so.

Syllabus

Week 1
Priming
- Welcome
  Welcome to Cognitive Psychology: Employee and Customer Behaviour. In this first week on priming, Paul will take you through the unconscious influences on our behaviour and whether they can be harnessed to create behaviour change.
- The least conscious element of MINDSPACE
  Priming is a very contested area of psychology. This week, Paul will give you a thorough oversight of research and real-life examples, including why a successful study may not work a second time.
- Evidence for priming
  In this activity, we will discuss a number of studies that have shown priming effects and you will start to think about how you could design your own prime.
- Controversy over prime studies
  In this activity, we will look at the controversy over prime studies. You will be able to engage critically with priming studies and will develop a basic knowledge of the issue of replication.
- The SALIENT checklist
  In this activity, you will learn about the SALIENT checklist, and you will start to think about how to apply primes to change behaviour.
- Wrap up
  In this activity, we will briefly summarise what you have learned about priming this week and look forward to salience, the topic covered next week.
Week 2
Salience
- Introduction to Salience
  In this activity, you will be able to discuss the role of salience and framing in our decisions.
- Making things salient
  In this activity, you will be able to examine components of salient messages and how to use messages salient to the general public. This activity is focused on applying salience to change behaviour.
- Salience and heuristics
  You will examine heuristics and biases that influence how they focus their attention. Additionally, you'll learn how events and elements of our experience influence our attention, making sense of probabilities.
- Attention
  In this activity, you will be able to discuss the importance of attention. Our attention is a scarce resource and our brains use shortcuts to direct our attention. These work well most of the time, but not always...
- Wrap up
  In this short activity, we will wrap up what you have learned about salience and attention. We will then briefly introduce Affect or emotions, the topic to be covered next week.
Week 3
Affect
- Introduction to affect and emotion
  In this activity, we will introduce affect and emotion. You will identify the most used understandings of emotions and highlight the role emotions play in making decisions.
- Are emotions rational?
  In this activity, we will debate the relationship between rational behaviour and emotions, including the meaning of the former.
- The neuroscience of affect
  In this activity, you will engage with some of the basic contours of neuroscientific findings with regard to affect.
- Affect in practice
  In this activity, you'll examine how to use affect to change behaviour, but also whether you always should.
- Wrap up
  In this short activity, we will summarise what you have learned about Affect and look forward to next week, on incentives.

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Learning on this course

On every step of the course you can meet other learners, share your ideas and join in with active discussions in the comments.

What will you achieve?

By the end of the course, you‘ll be able to...

Describe what a prime is and distinguish it from an influence.
Discuss a number of studies which have shown priming effects.
Discuss a wide range of primes using the SALIENT checklist.
Apply primes to change behaviour.
Explore components of salient messages.
Investigate the role of anchoring and peak-end evaluation, and ways to apply them in your organisation.
Debate the relationship between rational behaviour and emotions.
Explore the neuroscience of affect.

Who is the course for?

This course is designed for anyone wanting to better understand customer needs and motivations.

It will be particularly useful if you are a team manager.

Who will you learn with?

Paul Dolan

Paul is a Professor of Behavioural Science. His main research interests are human behaviour and happiness. Author of bestselling Happiness by Design and Happy Ever After, host of Duck-Rabbit podcast.

Who developed the course?

FutureLearn

FutureLearn is a leading social learning platform and has been providing high quality online courses for learners around the world over the last ten years.

About this ExpertTrack

Discover the skills to unlock positive behavioural change in your customers and employees with behavioural scientist Paul Dolan.

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