The Rules That Make Us: How Culture Shapes the Way We Act, Think, Believe, and Buy

A business anthropologist reveals how cultural intelligence is the essential tool for understanding human behavior.

"Filled with illuminating case studies, this is a stimulating examination of the hidden influences that guide people's actions." ―Publishers Weekly

Why do people do what we do? To answer this question, many of us turn to psychology. But it's not enough to understand how we think. We also have to recognize the influence of where and how we live. From the ways we bring up children and welcome guests, to the products we buy and how we spend our free time, our culture creates who we are.

Trailblazing anthropologist Oliver Sweet has spent decades using 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 or helping a pet food company break into a new market in Brazil. Now, in The Rules That Make Us, Sweet shows us how to strengthen our own cultural intelligence. Drawing on research conducted in thirty-five countries, he maps culture's hidden rules: how it governs our behavior and creates our assumptions, how it's shaped by technology, and even how it can help us predict the future. 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.

Author: Oliver Sweet
Publisher: Basic Venture
Published: 04/14/2026
Pages: 320
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.10lbs
Size: 9.30h x 6.00w x 1.30d
ISBN: 9781541705777


Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 02/16/2026

About the Author

Oliver Sweet is head of ethnography at Ipsos, one of the largest research agencies in the world, where he consults with businesses and governments looking to use cultural insight to improve their offerings. He lives in London.