A method to better understand complex behaviour

The Covid-19 pandemic showed how difficult it can be to change people's behaviour. Indeed, there is an increasing awareness stemming from psychology that our behaviour is determined by a complex interplay of different factors. There is not one button we can press to change human behaviour. At the University of Amsterdam, psychologists are developing a method to visualise this complex interplay and better understand behaviour. Psychologists try to understand human thinking and even predict our behaviour. For a long time, they relied on simplified models to show how factor A leads to behaviour B. 'These models have certainly helped us understand behaviour,' says Monique Chambon, a social psychology researcher at the University of Amsterdam. 'But, in reality, human thinking and behaviour is much more complex.