3 reasons why clients and colleagues don’t take actions following debriefs - part 2

With an estimated £9bn now being spent annually on market research in the UK, it’s more important than ever that research is acted upon, and used to drive positive business outcomes.

This is a topic I’m passionate about, and in a previous article I suggested three common barriers to action are that research delivered is not sufficiently new; too plentiful; or too different.

This article presents three further reasons why your clients or colleagues don’t take actions following debriefs. As in the previous article, all three reasons are grounded in insights from behavioural economics.

In summary, this new article suggests insight communicators should be aware that audiences may be:

1. Overly influenced by their existing knowledge 

2. Overly influenced by previous actions they’ve taken

3. Overly confident in their own judgments

Let’s look at each of these in turn…

1. Audiences may be overly influenced by their existing knowledge

The first reason why your clients or colleagues don’t take actions following debriefs is down to a powerful cognitive bias known as confirmation bias.

What’s confirmation bias?

Confirmation bias exists when people seek out or evaluate information in a way that fits with their existing thinking and preconceptions.

To illustrate, let’s first imagine a consumer choice scenario.

Here, conventional wisdom suggests that when asked to make a choice, the consumer will weigh up all their options and make their choice in an unbiased way.

This can – and does sometimes happen.

However, confirmation bias suggests that consumers’ minds often work the other way around…

…in other words, instead they first make a choice based on their existing knowledge…and then they seek out or evaluate new information in way that simply helps confirm to them they’ve made the correct choice.

Ok, but how does this apply to research debriefs?

In exactly the same way, audiences may well attend a debrief having preconceptions.

Due to confirmation bias, audiences may unwittingly over-emphasise the significance of new information presented which fits with their preconceptions…at the expense of new, potentially crucial information which does not get fully processed.

In summary, we must therefore first beware of audiences being overly influenced by existing knowledge. This reliance is especially likely when new information we present to them is complex, or if they find it difficult to take in.

2. Audiences may be overly influenced by previous actions they’ve taken

A second reason why your clients or colleagues don’t take actions following debriefs is down to sunk cost bias.

What’s sunk cost bias?

Sunk cost bias describes how the more we invest in something (typically time or money), the harder it is to then abandon.

To illustrate sunk cost bias, let’s first take another consumer scenario.

Recently, many Oasis fans forked out eye-watering sums of money – and often much more than they had originally envisaged – for 2025 concert tickets.

Why did so many fans end up paying more than they’d envisaged?

Essentially because of huge amounts of time they had already invested by queuing. Despite “dynamic” (ultimately much higher) ticket prices than expected, sunk cost bias ensured many did not abandon the process.

Further, sunk cost bias can also stop people taking actions.

In a recent experiment I found 96% of an audience of over 200 people said they had decided not to leave a cinema viewing before the end of the movie…despite not enjoying it.

Again, this was due to the sunk cost bias – and in this case both time and money already invested.

Ok, but how does this apply to research debriefs?

In short, insight communicators need to be aware that even if audiences want to take actions following debriefs, sunk cost bias can act as a significant barrier.

No matter how persuaded they are by exciting actions they could potentially take, these actions could be inhibited if the person – or organisation – has already invested large amounts of time or money in other activities.     

3. Audiences may be overly confident in their own judgments  

The final reason why your clients or colleagues don’t take actions following debriefs is down to the prevalent over-confidence effect.

What’s the over-confidence effect?

The over-confidence effect is observed when people’s confidence in their own ability is greater than their performance. 

For example, a whopping 73% of Americans believe themselves to be better than average drivers…which implies a great many overestimate their ability!

What’s more, evidence suggests males are more prone to over-confidence than females; this has been shown to be a key contributor to males’ greater likelihood to be employed in the highest paying jobs.

So how does this apply to research debriefs?

The over-confidence effect applies to insight communication in two ways.

First, and most simply, if audiences are over-confident in their own judgments they could simply ignore any recommended actions suggested with which they disagree.

Second, and more subtly, over-confidence can also lead audiences to underestimate the length of time it will take to complete a recommended activity. This is known as the planning fallacy and can lead to severe delays – or even to actions not happening at all.   

Conclusion

This article has presented three reasons why clients and colleagues don’t take actions following debriefs. In summary your audiences may be:

1. Overly influenced by their existing knowledge 

2. Overly influenced by previous actions they’ve taken

3. Overly confident in their own judgments

Importantly, none of the above is to say audiences are deliberately behaving in this way! Unfortunately, they are simply human – and like all of us, prone to the almost 200 cognitive biases uncovered to date.

Thanks for reading - and for an alternative but complementary approach to understanding the challenges of behaviour change more generally, download our free guide here: Four frameworks and models to help drive behaviour change.