Persuasion and why we fail to predict it

The role of science is to understand and predict the world around us. In this 2011 talk, listed under TED Talks, Maurits Kaptein, a researcher focused on statistical methods for personalisation, examines why we do the things we do.

We don’t buy things only for their utility, weighing price against quality. We act for other reasons too: because other people do it, because an expert recommends it, or because it is our last chance. Many of our behaviours are driven by external reasons like these.

These persuasion principles map directly to patterns in the UI-Patterns.com library, including Social Proof, Authority and Scarcity.