What is Praxeology? 

Praxeology is the theory of human actions based on human behavior. 

Alex turned our attention to how we really make decisions and the different kinds of thinking patterns that come with making decisions. 

Human beings are so sensitive that our feelings impact the decisions we go for, and I think an important message Alex shared was that generally speaking humans tend to react similarly to things. We copy others and things around us more than we would like to admit. Therefore we need to work with the grain of human behavior in order to receive a big outcome. 

Unfortunately humans are lazy and so we need to make what we are trying to tell them about is formatted as simply as possible. 

So in order to get a message across we need to follow human behavior. 

Alex gave us an example of how a parking payment machine doubled the number of transactions by just making it more obvious where to pay with a card by simply painting a yellow line around the card reader. 

This was an example of making your brand visible and easy to digest for us idle human beings. Another reason for this is that most decisions are quick and intuitive. Us humans don’t like to spend time weighing up options so want to be told what to do. 

Alex’s class has made me be more mindful whilst walking around as now I try to see ways in which things have been created for easy human decision making. However, I am finding this in itself a challenge as it’s not always obvious. This then highlights the fact that I too must be a part of the herd mentality of just wanting the obvious decision or for the decision to just be made for me. 

From this i have learnt even more about the power of advertising in things i did not even realise had a sway on me. 

Since Alex’s masterclass I have been wanting to learn more about the psychology behind advertising and how manipulative a slight change of words can be. 

Some of the things Alex recommended to try and understand further the psychology behind advertising were Peter Doyle’s “Model of Growth”.Peter Doyle is a professor of marketing strategy and has written many articles that can be accessed online that explores the psychology of marketing. 

One of my favourite things Alex gave us to go look at was “The Marketoonist ” which is the thought bubble of Tom Fishburne. He draws and illustrates marketing cartoons with an amusing and funny tone. 

@hbuscall