A Balanced Place: IKEA’s Life at Home Report 2021
Global research released by IKEA Retail (Ingka Group) reveals the vital role that home has played in meeting people’s mental wellbeing needs during the pandemic.
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Category Socio-cultural change
Misinformation is a pandemic that doesn’t have a vaccine
Conspiracy theories and misinformation about QAnon, COVID-19 and 2020 election fraud took a deadly turn in 2021. As bad as things were last year, experts worry it'll get worse in 2022.
An ethnographic study of Eindhoven’s Smart City project
This article explore the promises of security that are embedded in the smart city technologies and algorithms and their potential implications for creating social inequality and discrimination, through an ethnographic study of the Living Lab Stratumseind, a popular nightlife street in Eindhoven.
An anthropologist on Facebook’s new “Ray-Ban Stories” glasses
With this product, writes anthropologist Sally Applin in MIT's Technology Review, "Facebook is claiming the face as real estate for its own technology."
People Going Full Circle – Free Experientia report
Download free Experientia report on the role of consumer behavior in making food purchasing and product packaging more sustainable.
Le persone che chiudono il cerchio – Rapporto gratuito di Experientia
Rapporto gratuito di Experientia sul ruolo del comportamento dei consumatori nel rendere più sostenibile l’acquisto degli alimenti e il packaging dei prodotti.
Public deliberation on policies has many advantages
Research shows public deliberation can change participants’ opinions when it comes to public policy. Citizens who participate in mini-publics often listen to the arguments of others and form different views. They also often produce robust decisions, which are then - unfortunately - ignored by policy makers.
[Book] A City Is Not a Computer
A bold reassessment of "smart cities" that reveals what is lost when we conceive of our urban spaces as computers.
COVID-19’s psychological burden is associated with antisystemic attitudes and political violence
Research in US, Denmark, Hungary and Italy suggests that the ongoing pandemic places many countries at an increased risk of political unrest. The violence that marked some of the 2020 demonstrations was likely a manifestation of the psychological toll the pandemic has had on citizens.
Fake news and conspiracy theories as an evolutionary strategy
Danish social scientist Michael Bang Petersen illuminates the evolutionary foundations and social processes involved in the spread of outright falsehoods.
The drive for privacy and the difficulty of achieving it in the digital age
People care and act to manage their privacy, but face steep psychological and economic hurdles that make not just desired, but also desirable privacy nearly unattainable. Approaches to privacy management that rely purely on market forces and consumer responsibilization have failed.
Human behaviour: what scientists have learned about it from the pandemic
Several Covid-19 policies have shown "just how deeply some governments distrust their citizens. As if the virus was not enough, the public was portrayed as an additional part of the problem". But, asks Prof. Stephen Reicher of the University of St Andrews, "is this an accurate view of human behaviour"?
The potential of behavioural interventions for optimising energy use at home
Individuals and households can adopt a variety of measures to optimise their energy consumption, writes Elisabatta Cornago of the International Energy Agency. This article focuses on the potential for enhancing energy efficiency with policies and programmes designed to educate consumers and encourage them to alter their daily habits – without resorting to large-scale structural improvements.
[Report] Behavioural insights for demand-side energy policy and programmes
During its first year of activity, the Behavioural Insights Platform of the UsersTCP, with the IEA (International Energy Agency), has developed an environment scan report assessing how behavioural insights have been applied to demand-side energy policy and programmes.
Top 10 books of everyday social anthropology
Gillian Tett, anthropologist and chair of the US editorial board of the Financial Times, has published - in the Guardian - her list of 10 books offering insights into how we structure our lives.
Heidi Larson, vaccine anthropologist
Heidi Larson studies vaccine rumors—how they start, and why some flourish and others wither. Tackling misperceptions individually is like eliminating a single microbial strain: when one germ is gone, another will bloom. Instead, the entire ecosystem must be rehabilitated.
The human error of Artificial Intelligence
Rather than trying to fix the biases of AI systems and their human error, we need to find ways to coexist with it. Anthropology can help us a lot here.
[Book] Living in Data
In this provocative book, Jer Thorp brings his work as a data artist to bear on an exploration of our current and future relationship with data, transcending facts and figures to find new, more visceral ways to engage with data.
What’s mine is ours: how consumption is changing
When customers form an emotional attachment or self-identify with a product, that sense of “mine” enhances its luster and keeps them coming back for more. As shoppers shift away from owning material things, how can marketers preserve these benefits?
Swiss Re Institute on how COVID-19 is transforming consumer behaviour
The COVID-19 pandemic is changing how we work, travel, communicate, shop and more, but which new habits are likely to stick permanently? The authors explore five key behavioural changes and their implications for risk and protection.