Scientists have discovered a deliciously simple way to improve the prediction of human behavior, the holy grail of social and consumer research: just ask users why they make certain decisions. Researchers from the University of Vermont found that the crowd offered better insight at predicting their own household energy consumption and Body Mass Index than the traditional way of using hard-to-gather data such as demographics, sleeping patterns, or house architecture. In other words, if you want to predict people's behavior, just ask them. The ironic simplicity of this approach cannot be overstated. Billion-dollar websites and major government initiatives battle legal hurdles to collect, buy, and sell the best user data, while this new research suggests there may be a much easier solution.

...(Read more)