Most companies still believe they can understand customers by asking them questions. They trust interviews, surveys, and focus groups. People describe their habits with confidence. They make bold claims about what they will do in the future. Kristen Berman, a behavioral scientist featured at TEDxBerlin, shows why those answers cannot be trusted. Human behavior regularly contradicts human speech.
Her research highlights a hard truth. People do not choose based on deep analysis. They choose the easiest available path. Retirement savings demonstrate the point. Auto enrollment leads to participation above 90 percent. Opt-in programs rarely reach half that number. Employees explain their decision with idealistic reasoning. The real driver is simpler. The default choice did the work for them.
Similar gaps appear in health and lifestyle. People claim they wash their hands often. Real observation proves they exaggerate. Patients insist they will take life-saving medication. Many abandon it within months. Workers say they would grab the apple in the cafeteria. They reach for the fries. Individuals picture a perfect future version of themselves. The present version does not cooperate.
Berman promotes behavioral design as the fix. Teams map every step required to complete a behavior. They identify the psychological forces that disrupt progress. Then they run real experiments in the real environment. Her work on student financial aid proves the impact. Students blamed lack of information. The actual barrier was cognitive overload. A small change to the enrollment process tripled applications among those who previously never applied.
Companies that keep trusting what customers say will continue building products people ignore. Results improve when leaders study what customers do and redesign the environment around real behavior. That is how organizations create outcomes that actually stick.
