This is where traditional self-reporting starts to crack. Ask someone why they chose something, and you’ll often get a tidy explanation that bears only a passing resemblance to what actually drove the decision. Or, to put it more bluntly: If insight teams could bottle Valentine’s Day behaviour, we’d never need another reminder that people are unreliable narrators.
Valentine’s Day is a strong argument for going beyond what people tell us. Survey data captures intention, attitude and aspiration, all valuable in their own right, but without behavioural, transactional or passive data alongside it, the picture is incomplete. These signals reveal how decisions are really made, not just how people wish they were made. Blending these data sources doesn’t just validate findings, it explains them.
Valentine’s Day works as a case study because it strips away the illusion of purely rational choice. It reminds us that context, emotion and social expectation heavily shape behaviour; and that people aren’t lying when they tell us what they want, they’re just answering in a different moment, under different conditions.
For insight professionals, the lesson is simple but important: good research doesn’t choose between what people say and what they do, it connects the two.
And if that connection happens to be wrapped in red ribbon once a year, all the better.
