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The Rules That Make Us

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The Rules That Make Us

How Culture Shapes the Way We Act, Think, Believe, and Buy

Basic Venture,

15 Minuten Lesezeit
10 Take-aways
Audio & Text

Was ist drin?

Culture shapes far more of human behavior than most people realize.

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Editorial Rating

8

getAbstract Rating

  • Eye Opening
  • Overview
  • Concrete Examples

Recommendation

To understand human behavior, it’s necessary to examine how culture — the environment in which people live — shapes their thoughts, beliefs, and actions, including how they spend their time and money. In this engaging read, business anthropologist Oliver Sweet explores how often-subtle cultural rules govern everyday life and why brands often fail to woo consumers when they ignore those norms. Citing examples from around the world, including tea rituals and the forces behind Brexit, Sweet offers a clear, wide-ranging, and deeply relevant perspective on human behavior and belonging.

Summary

Anthropological approaches can reveal insights about behavior that psychology misses.

Over the past 25 years, psychology has yielded exciting discoveries about the brain’s functioning and the ways in which cognition hinges on instinctive, subconscious processes. Business has embraced psychology as a tool for understanding these processes and modifying customer and employee behavior. Anthropology comes at the question of why people do what they do from a different perspective: looking outward to culture and its effects. Anthropologists study the often-unnoticed environmental factors: the contexts and systemic forces that shape people’s behavior, including culture, social structures, and upbringing. Both psychology and anthropology have their place, and both are essential to understand how humans navigate their lives.

According to the “Cultural Trinity” framework, culture has three interrelated components: identity, meaning the way people take on and play out roles; community, including social and workplace networks and relationships; and belief systems, both secular and religious, encompassing values, traditions, moral codes, and ideologies. People simultaneously obey...

About the Author

Oliver Sweet is a business anthropologist currently serving as head of ethnography at the research agency Ipsos.

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