The Rules That Make Us - by Oliver Sweet (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

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

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.

Review Quotes

"The Rules That Make Us is anthropology in technicolor: accessible, sharp, and unsettling in all the right ways. It reminds us that culture doesn't just describe who we are; it scripts what we believe is possible." --Dr. Lollie Mancey, program director, UCD Innovation Academy

"I've known Sweet for many years, both as a fellow culture geek and as an ethnographer whose insights have helped shape global brand strategy at Coca-Cola. I've seen his thinking in action--how his anthropological approach reveals what truly drives people and communities. The Rules That Make Us is more than a guide to culture; it's a framework for seeing the systems that shape belief, behavior, and belonging. What makes it powerful is that it's not just theory--it's lived anthropology, translated into a way of thinking that anyone can use. This book doesn't just describe the world; it helps you understand how to work with it." --Murray Stanford, head of anthropology, Coca-Cola

"Sweet's book is not only a highly informative read and riotously entertaining, but it's an important book at the moment. Stories of origin, culture, and belonging are being twisted by lots of people--people with bad intentions, silly intentions, or ill-informed intentions. People who don't know what they're talking about are getting elevated as truth-tellers and soothsayers. The Rules that Make Us takes a sledgehammer to this and gives us a brilliant and truthful account of how culture shapes us, but more importantly how it unites us rather than divides us. Read it and enjoy it and then give it to a teenager in your life who is consuming a lot of nonsense about culture and stories of origin--absolutely brilliant." --Chloe Combi, author of Generation Z

"This book is the perfect complement--or maybe antidote?--to psychology-based ways of imagining human behavior, as a matter of individual choices. People don't just behave, Sweet shows, they act. And action is not an individual activity, but a social one. To understand people is to understand what they do with and through the collective structures and dynamics that underpin their lives--the patterns and assumptions we call 'culture.' Policymakers, think tankers, businesses, consultants, listen up: forget 'nudge' and 'behavior change'--culture is where it's at!" --Martin Holbraad, director, UCL Ethnographic Insights Lab

"We live in an age where AI can give us an answer in seconds. But Sweet reminds us that answers are not the same as understanding. The Rules That Make Us is a challenge to the lazy comfort of assumptions. Real insights demand the types of approaches and thinking he describes here: presence, patience, and the humility to ask 'why' without importing our own baggage. If you think you already know, this book will make you think again." --Ben Page, visiting professor, Kings College London, and former CEO, Ipsos

"The Rules That Make Us is a clear, compassionate, and much-needed book for our time. In an age obsessed with data and individual psychology, it reminds us that human behavior is never just about the person--it's about the patterns, rituals, and unspoken rules of culture that make us who we are. With the eye of an anthropologist and the clarity of a storyteller, Sweet helps us see the water we all swim in--the invisible systems that shape our choices, our communities, and even our sense of self. This book doesn't just explain culture; it restores our ability to see it--to notice what we have stopped noticing. It's an elegant argument for why understanding people requires understanding the world they inhabit. I read it with gratitude and a sense of recognition: this is how deep seeing begins." --Christian Madsbjerg, author of Sensemaking: The Power of the Humanities in the Age of the Algorithm

"From national culture to organizational culture, our lives are shaped by hidden rules that govern how we behave and what we believe. In this engaging new book, Sweet uncovers these rules and helps us understand how to recognize their influence. This is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand how the world really works." --Erin Meyer, author of The Culture Map

"Sweet does something rare: he captures cultural complexity without flattening it into easy answers. The evidence is rigorous, the thinking is nuanced, and the whole thing feels genuinely contemporary. People will still be referencing this in a decade ... and more!" --Rob Scotland, head of brand marketing, Veo

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.