Do we really understand what makes us tick as humans? We like to consider ourselves to be very rational and measured individuals but are often swayed by our emotions and instinctive gut feelings. These gut feelings are sourced from our evolutionary ‘primal instincts’ and play a key role in many dysfunctional behaviours on display today at home and in business. Amazingly, there has been no significant change in our mental architecture for thousands of years and it has been suggested that whilst we have taken ourselves out of the Stone Age, we haven’t taken the Stone Age out of ourselves.

 

Recent findings in evolutionary psychology, neuroscience and behavioural economics are providing new insights into our hardwired human behaviour. We now know more about why irrational people can do some very irrational and unpredictable things. To resolve the conflict between our emotional and rational mind, we default to taking mental shortcuts in searching for quick and simple explanations. Often we are not even aware that out thoughts are being biased and influenced at an unconscious level.

 

Being more aware of ways we can be influenced and primed at our conscious and unconscious levels will help to minimise the many biases filtering our thinking and decision making. Equipped with a better understanding of how our brain responds to environmental stimulus will enable us to communicate more effectively, improve our decision making and develop a greater awareness of our emotions. The ability to influence and engage people coupled with an awareness of how easily we can trigger threatening signals towards people will become essential leadership attributes to understand in the future.