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The Rules That Make Us: How Culture Shapes the Way We Act, Think, Believe, and Buy
Oliver Sweet is one of the world's leading business anthropologists. He works with brands like Coke, Ikea, Google and Dyson, as well as local councils and national governments, to reveal the secrets behind our decision making.
Why do people do what we do? We might think it's our unique personalities and personal preferences that guide our choices, but it is in fact culture that shapes the majority of our actions. From the ways we bring up children and welcome guests, to the products we buy and how we spend our free time, how we live creates who we are.
In The Rules That Make Us, Sweet teaches the reader to think like an anthropologist, revealing the secrets to successful people-watching and how we can better understand consumers, voters and our relationships. His decades-long trailblazing work uses cultural insights to help businesses, governments, and NGOs achieve their goals - whether he's working with the Gates Foundation to encourage South African men to get HIV tests, helping a pet food company break into a new market in Brazil, or showing health services how to encourage patients to drink less, have safer sex and eat healthier.
Drawing on research conducted in thirty-five countries, Sweet maps culture's hidden how it governs our behaviour and creates our assumptions, how it's shaped by technology, and even how it can help us predict the future. The Rules that Make Us will leave readers with a model for thinking about culture that can be applied to everyday life. This book is an indispensable guide to an essential new way of understanding our families and colleagues, our customers and constituents, ourselves and our world.
Why do people do what we do? We might think it's our unique personalities and personal preferences that guide our choices, but it is in fact culture that shapes the majority of our actions. From the ways we bring up children and welcome guests, to the products we buy and how we spend our free time, how we live creates who we are.
In The Rules That Make Us, Sweet teaches the reader to think like an anthropologist, revealing the secrets to successful people-watching and how we can better understand consumers, voters and our relationships. His decades-long trailblazing work uses cultural insights to help businesses, governments, and NGOs achieve their goals - whether he's working with the Gates Foundation to encourage South African men to get HIV tests, helping a pet food company break into a new market in Brazil, or showing health services how to encourage patients to drink less, have safer sex and eat healthier.
Drawing on research conducted in thirty-five countries, Sweet maps culture's hidden how it governs our behaviour and creates our assumptions, how it's shaped by technology, and even how it can help us predict the future. The Rules that Make Us will leave readers with a model for thinking about culture that can be applied to everyday life. This book is an indispensable guide to an essential new way of understanding our families and colleagues, our customers and constituents, ourselves and our world.
- GenresAnthropology
320 pages, Hardcover
Published April 14, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
May 19, 2026
Hmm I think the fundamental ideas of this book are good. I loved learning about culture (how it works, how it can change, how it helps us, how it holds us back, etc) I like the idea tof promoting more open and honest conversations. However, to be honest, I think there are places where this book goes too far.
If someone came up to me and asked me “Do you watch porn? What porn do you watch?” (Which is suggested to be a normalized conversation topic in this book) And this wasn’t during a drinking game, I would hope the culture shuns this. To fight against sexual violence I think instead more practical solutions would be better: having more open and honest conversations on consent and what that looks like, more open and honest conversations about what people want in a partner, mental health, etc.
Asking people to talk more open and honestly about politics (with people who they disagree with) in my experience makes people emotional and defensive. Let’s start with lower stakes conversations, please.
I also don’t think conservatives want a lower rate of change and liberals want a faster rate of change… which was stated in the book… I think extremist want faster rates of change. There are extremists on both sides (definitely).
Also, one day a week without screens?? That’s actually kind of crazy to me. Definitely not in a US city would that ever be practical. I do think we need to rely on it less every day, though. Like no screens when eating with other ppl 👍👍👍 much more practical.
If someone came up to me and asked me “Do you watch porn? What porn do you watch?” (Which is suggested to be a normalized conversation topic in this book) And this wasn’t during a drinking game, I would hope the culture shuns this. To fight against sexual violence I think instead more practical solutions would be better: having more open and honest conversations on consent and what that looks like, more open and honest conversations about what people want in a partner, mental health, etc.
Asking people to talk more open and honestly about politics (with people who they disagree with) in my experience makes people emotional and defensive. Let’s start with lower stakes conversations, please.
I also don’t think conservatives want a lower rate of change and liberals want a faster rate of change… which was stated in the book… I think extremist want faster rates of change. There are extremists on both sides (definitely).
Also, one day a week without screens?? That’s actually kind of crazy to me. Definitely not in a US city would that ever be practical. I do think we need to rely on it less every day, though. Like no screens when eating with other ppl 👍👍👍 much more practical.
April 30, 2026
Interesting Insights From An Atypical Perspective. How often have you ever heard the term "business anthropology"? Hell, how often have you ever heard the term "anthropology" and not pictured some remote tribe somewhere in some jungle or maybe desert? My guess is that your answer to both of those questions is somewhere in the range of "Rarely" to "Never" for nearly anyone reading this review. Even as widely read as *I* am, my answer would have been right there with you.
Yet here Sweet, a Xennial Londoner with a clearly leftist political bent - as in, he frequently villainizes pretty well anything white and/ or male - actually uses his experiences with both psychology and anthropology to show how the two interact to form culture in ways that you likely never even actively thought of... even if some of his observations make a fair amount of intuitive sense.
Depending on your own politics, you may well be praising Sweet's more political commentary or you may be looking for the highest window available to you for defenestration purposes - but stick with this. Yes, it may be a touch annoying at times if you are more conservative than AOC or Bernie Sanders - sorry, Brits, I don't know (or care about, frankly) your politics enough to give you an example from Sweet's own backyard) - but Sweet really does have a lot of insight to offer here that you really should read, so work through your annoyances if possible and feel free to blast him on them in your review *after* you read the book, if you feel you must.
The star deduction isn't for the political bent though, as I do try to be objective-ish with those. No, the star deduction is because of the lack of bibliography, clocking in at just 5% in the Advance Review Copy of the book that I had had for several weeks before publication and yet due to life happening just before and after the publication of this book was only able to read it a couple of weeks after publication in mid April 2026. The Sagan Standard - extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence - absolutely applies to quite a bit discussed in this text, so I would expect at least 20-30% documentation, and the given 5% falls well short of even the bare minimum 15% documentation I would expect to see from a more standard book with more standard points raised.
Still, read this book anyway. Even with the political bent (which, again, you may well appreciate depending on your own politics) and even with the lack of bibliography (which is inexcusable no matter your politics), there really is quite a bit here that is both interesting and perhaps even useful,. and if nothing else it can help show the kids in your life that there is yet another profession available to them that perhaps they may be interested in pursing and may not have been aware of. Given that so much of this book is based on Sweet's own professional experience, it really does give almost as big an insight into what a "business anthropologist" does as it reveals about any more general cultural/ psychological insights into how we can all live together with at least somewhat more understanding of each other and how we interact with the "other".
Very much recommended.
Yet here Sweet, a Xennial Londoner with a clearly leftist political bent - as in, he frequently villainizes pretty well anything white and/ or male - actually uses his experiences with both psychology and anthropology to show how the two interact to form culture in ways that you likely never even actively thought of... even if some of his observations make a fair amount of intuitive sense.
Depending on your own politics, you may well be praising Sweet's more political commentary or you may be looking for the highest window available to you for defenestration purposes - but stick with this. Yes, it may be a touch annoying at times if you are more conservative than AOC or Bernie Sanders - sorry, Brits, I don't know (or care about, frankly) your politics enough to give you an example from Sweet's own backyard) - but Sweet really does have a lot of insight to offer here that you really should read, so work through your annoyances if possible and feel free to blast him on them in your review *after* you read the book, if you feel you must.
The star deduction isn't for the political bent though, as I do try to be objective-ish with those. No, the star deduction is because of the lack of bibliography, clocking in at just 5% in the Advance Review Copy of the book that I had had for several weeks before publication and yet due to life happening just before and after the publication of this book was only able to read it a couple of weeks after publication in mid April 2026. The Sagan Standard - extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence - absolutely applies to quite a bit discussed in this text, so I would expect at least 20-30% documentation, and the given 5% falls well short of even the bare minimum 15% documentation I would expect to see from a more standard book with more standard points raised.
Still, read this book anyway. Even with the political bent (which, again, you may well appreciate depending on your own politics) and even with the lack of bibliography (which is inexcusable no matter your politics), there really is quite a bit here that is both interesting and perhaps even useful,. and if nothing else it can help show the kids in your life that there is yet another profession available to them that perhaps they may be interested in pursing and may not have been aware of. Given that so much of this book is based on Sweet's own professional experience, it really does give almost as big an insight into what a "business anthropologist" does as it reveals about any more general cultural/ psychological insights into how we can all live together with at least somewhat more understanding of each other and how we interact with the "other".
Very much recommended.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
This book is written by a business anthropologist who advises governments and companies on how to market, sell, and increase participation in programs through anthropological—that is, qualitative and contextualized—research. Trained initially as a behavioral scientist, the author became disillusioned with the limits of that field’s analytical reach. Social science, and psychology in particular, often offers clean, simple explanations of individual behavior driven by data and statistical analysis. But in aggregating and averaging results, it frequently misunderstands individual behavior, and the conclusions and solutions it proposes can miss the mark.
The author does not reject this field outright. Instead, he argues that we must remain attuned to its limitations and seek a more well-rounded understanding of human behavior—one grounded in lived experience and viewed through the lens of culture. Culture, he suggests, anchors individuals in unconscious perspectives that guide instinctual and intuitive decision-making. If we want to understand perplexing or seemingly irrational attitudes and choices, we need to grapple with these complexities. More often than not, such behaviors are far more rational than we assume—if we are looking at the right context.
As a social scientist by training, I loved this book. During graduate school, I became deeply aware of both the potential and the limits of the field—often in the ways social science struggles to live up to its natural science models. At its most honest, however, the discipline is constantly wrestling with the need to incorporate more complex variables, including the cultural and contextual environments in which people operate. This is where qualitative, anthropological insight becomes essential.
Sweet does a magnificent job of articulating why, how, and when these insights matter. He draws on real-life examples from business and government programming to illustrate his points and presents his arguments in a highly accessible way. You don’t have to be an academic—or even a policymaker or businessperson—to appreciate his approach or to come away with a richer understanding of human behavior. In a globalized world, we could all benefit from greater empathy for and appreciation of cultural difference. That said, if you do fall into those professional groups, this is a must-read.
Highly recommend. Thank you, NetGalley, for the ARC—this was a thoughtful and engaging way to start the new year.
The author does not reject this field outright. Instead, he argues that we must remain attuned to its limitations and seek a more well-rounded understanding of human behavior—one grounded in lived experience and viewed through the lens of culture. Culture, he suggests, anchors individuals in unconscious perspectives that guide instinctual and intuitive decision-making. If we want to understand perplexing or seemingly irrational attitudes and choices, we need to grapple with these complexities. More often than not, such behaviors are far more rational than we assume—if we are looking at the right context.
As a social scientist by training, I loved this book. During graduate school, I became deeply aware of both the potential and the limits of the field—often in the ways social science struggles to live up to its natural science models. At its most honest, however, the discipline is constantly wrestling with the need to incorporate more complex variables, including the cultural and contextual environments in which people operate. This is where qualitative, anthropological insight becomes essential.
Sweet does a magnificent job of articulating why, how, and when these insights matter. He draws on real-life examples from business and government programming to illustrate his points and presents his arguments in a highly accessible way. You don’t have to be an academic—or even a policymaker or businessperson—to appreciate his approach or to come away with a richer understanding of human behavior. In a globalized world, we could all benefit from greater empathy for and appreciation of cultural difference. That said, if you do fall into those professional groups, this is a must-read.
Highly recommend. Thank you, NetGalley, for the ARC—this was a thoughtful and engaging way to start the new year.
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May 23, 2026Technically a DNF but I got so close to the end that I'm counting it. Surface-level interesting, falls apart when author moves beyond his lane of expertise.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
This was such an enjoyable read. As a sociology graduate, it took me right back to university. Oliver Sweet does a phenomenal job at explaining complex ideas about culture in a way that feels clear and practical, rather than abstract.
Loved the ‘so what?’ sections and so worth reading!
Loved the ‘so what?’ sections and so worth reading!
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews