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Human defaults and desires: How behaviour shapes product choice?

Paromita Saha, PhD

Project Manager, Health Equity Action Lab (HeaL),

The George Institute of Global Health (India)

GDG Noida

6^th December, DevFest Noida 2025

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Jane Goodall

(1934 – 2025)

You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you. What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make

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A walk in a park?

Product Features

Ingredients | Colour | Texture | Taste

To do or not to do?... Which one to do? … How much to do? …

When to do?...

Intrinsic factors

Perceived benefits:

Effectiveness

Relative advantage

Perceived burdens:

Cognitive

Financial

Emotional

Extrinsic factors

Interpersonal influence:

Partner/ family/ peer attitude

Social influence:

Perception

Norms

Cultural practices

Order toothpaste from a quick delivery app

Adapted from Theoretical Framework of Acceptability (TFA) (Sekhon, et al., 2017) and Conceptual model for product acceptability (Mensch et al 2012)

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Opening the black box

Actor

Action

Context

Recipient

Reaction

Evolving

Behaviour does not happen in isolation, it happens in an ecosystem

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How do we interact?

Actor

Recipient

Opportunist

Resource

Weapon

Positive

Negative

Cooperation

Altruism

Selfishness

Spite

Adapted from Survival Strategies, Gadagkar 2001

Consequence for recipient

Consequence for actor

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Prof Raghavendra Gadagkar

Honorary Professor, Centre for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore

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Birth of an unbeatable strategy – Tit for Tat


	Cooperate	Defect
Cooperate	R = 3 Reward for mutual cooperation (3,3)	S = 0 Sucker’s pay off (0,5)
Defect	T = 5 Temptation to defect (5,0)	P = 1 Punishment for mutual defection (1,1)

Player B

Player A

Prisoner’s Dilemma – one-off interaction

Prisoner’s Dilemma – repeated interaction

Majority of interactions result in mutual defect
Selfish move for higher reward
Protection against assumed selfishness of opponent

Players started getting familiar with opponent’s strategy
Potential for resolving the dilemma over time
A mechanical strategy stood out where each player started with cooperation but then from 2^nd interaction onwards, kept on mirroring opponents move in the previous round

Tit for Tat

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Why Tit for Tat worked so well?

3 essential properties made ‘Tit for Tat’ an unbeatable strategy in round robin tournaments:

Being nice:

It always cooperates in the first move

Being forgiving:

It immediately responds to even one act of cooperation by reciprocating, even if there are multiple defection previous to that

Being retaliatory:

It respond by immediate defection as soon as the opponent defects even once after any number of previous cooperation

Dynamic & responsive

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Prof Robert Axelrod

Mary Ann and Charles R. Walgreen, Jr. Professor; for the Study of Human Understanding,

University of Michigan, USA

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Deconstructing the ecosystem – COM-B model for behaviour change

Michie et al 2011

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Prof Susan Michie

Director of the Centre for Behaviour Change,

University College London, UK

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Diverse Populations

Differing Life Journeys

Changing Priorities

Evolving Social Contexts

Next generation smart products

Representative of varying preferences & distinct choices

Relevant to evolving trends

Identify and understand all potential end-users

Engage to generate holistic perspectives on needs, gaps and aspirations

Intervene for sustained engagement and linkage to service

Responsive to community needs

One size does not fit all!