Within the framework of the interacting boson approximation, simple analytical formulae are presented for analysing the mass dependence of particle transfer, inelastic scattering and electromagnetic decay from experimental data in nuclear physics. It is shown that the identical boson model provides a useful tool to correlate the results of these experiments and that the extension to equivalent proton and neutron bosons leads to some new and interesting results in the Pt-Hg mass region, namely the possibility of phase transitions and symmetry breaking.