“We see what we do, but we do not see why we do what we do. Thus, we assess and appraise each other through what we see that we do.”
Carl Jung
Our behavior is strongly influenced by factors that lie outside our conscious awareness, although we tend to underestimate the power of this “automatic” side of our behavior. As a result, governments make ineffective policies, businesses create bad products, and individuals make unrealistic plans. In contrast, the behavior insights approach applies evidence about actual human behavior, rather than assumptions about it, to practical problems.
The term “normal behavior” as used in statistics, sociology, education, law, medicine, psychology, Freudian psychoanalysis, philosophy, theology, anthropology, and biology are presented by individual experts in all these fields, as an individual that is successfully able in his lifetime to assimilate the historically hard-won wisdom of society and to experience the fruits thereof. To the extent that he fails in this accomplishment, he is abnormal. This concept of normality, not being culture-bound, takes cognizance of the culture-assimilation process and the struggle in which individuals in every society must participate to reach their relative level of adjustment.
- Normal Behavior is relatively predictable.
- Normal Behavior is part of a pattern.
- Normal Behavior is changeable.
- Normal Behavior can be observed.
- Normal Behavior is understandable.
- Normal Behavior is unique.
- Normal Behavior is excusable.