Neuromarketing

October 30, 2013

Your Status Depends Partly on Your Upward or Downward Momentum

An individual who was said to have risen in status to become the fourth-ranked member of a 10-person team was viewed by research participants as having greater prestige (6.60 versus 5.24 on a 1-to-9 scale) than if he was said to have declined to become fourth-ranked, according to a team led by Nathan C. Pettit of New York University. In judging status, people appear to consider not only current position but also whether an individual has upward or downward “momentum,” the researchers say.

SOURCE: Rising Stars and Sinking Ships: Consequences of Status Momentum

October 29, 2013

Don’t Tidy Up Before You Do Your Creative Thinking

This is just great news for me!!!

Research participants in a room where papers were scattered on a table and the floor came up with 5 times more highly creative ideas for new uses of ping-pong balls than those in a room where papers and markers were neatly arranged, says a team led by Kathleen D. Vohs of the University of Minnesota. A disorderly environment seems to aid creativity by helping people break from tradition, order, and convention, the researchers say.

SOURCE: Physical Order Produces Healthy Choices, Generosity, and Conventionality, Whereas Disorder Produces Creativity

October 28, 2013

What Do You Fail to Notice When You’re Hard at Work?

83% of two dozen radiologists who were searching for a lung nodule didn’t see the white outline of a standing gorilla that researchers had inserted into a computed tomography scan, even though it was 48 times the size of the average nodule, says a team led by Trafton Drew of Harvard Medical School. All of the participants reported seeing the gorilla when, after the experiment, they were shown the CT scan and asked if they noticed anything unusual about it. Past studies have demonstrated that people who are engaged in a task often fail to notice unrelated images and occurrences; the current finding suggests that this “inattentional blindness” affects even experts.

SOURCE: The Invisible Gorilla Strikes Again: Sustained Inattentional Blindness in Expert Observers

October 27, 2013

Simple Food Rituals Increase Enjoyment

See how the principle of scarcity is well and alive and tat it should be part of your marketing strategies.

People who were induced to follow ritualized behaviors such as stirring and pouring liquid and rapping their knuckles on a desk reported greater enjoyment of subsequent food-consumption experiences, says a team led by Kathleen D. Vohs of the University of Minnesota. For example, those who unwrapped and ate first one half, then the other half, of a chocolate bar rated its flavor as 5.58, on average, on a 1-to-7 scale, versus 5.22 among those who hadn’t followed the simple ritual, and their willingness to pay for the chocolate was 73% higher.

SOURCE: Rituals Enhance Consumption

October 25, 2013

Media Coverage of Terrorist Attacks Creates Its Own Adverse Effects

Watching 1 to 3 hours of TV coverage per day in the week after the 9/11 terrorist attacks predicted a 20% increase in reports of physician-diagnosed physical ailments such as asthma and hypertension 2 to 3 years later, says a team led by Roxane Cohen Silver of the University of California, Irvine. This and other findings from their survey data on more than 1,700 people strongly suggest that widespread media coverage of terrorism can have negative mental- and physical-health consequences over time, even for people not directly exposed to attacks.

SOURCE: Mental- and Physical-Health Effects of Acute Exposure to Media Images of the September 11, 2001, Attacks and the Iraq War

October 22, 2013

Music Based on Neuroscience

I was so happy to find this site.
It offers music based on Neuroscience.
According to the site, the music will help you relax and focus better.
The site is called: Focus @ Will

Here is what they have to say about it:
Listening to music with soothing aspects, that plays at 60 beats per minute, can decrease neural activity, and lead to a relaxed, but awake state called alpha state[11] that is defined by an increase in alpha brain waves and a decrease in higher activity beta waves. Increases in alpha waves have been tied to a psychological state of decreased self-awareness, timelessness, and motivation known as “flow”. Songwriters, musicians, writers, athletes, and meditators are all people who separately describe the same experience when flow state is reached.

Once flow state is reached how is it maintained, and for how long? We know that it takes approximately 20 minutes to get into a state of concentration, flow or not, in which you are able to habituate to irrelevant external stimuli[9]. Most people are able to maintain their concentration from a minimum of 20 to a maximum of about 40 minutes before having to take a break. Psychologists call this waning of attention the ‘vigilance decrement’, and suggest that it is due to either a reduction in cognitive resources or mindlessness and goal habituation. Some research suggests that a brief break can reduce this goal habituation and enable people to maintain vigilance for longer periods of time.

The entire process of maintaining focus for an extended period of time is not easy. It requires work on the part of your brain and is stressful[27]. An area of research devoted designing technologies that work with your brain to make work less effortful is called neuroergonomics.[28, 29, 30] Through neuroergonomics, technologies can produce experiences that enable your brain to feel less stress, and you to get more work done. That said you still need to be personally motivated to get to work and find your flow.

October 21, 2013

Sales Alert: Making Eye Contact May Not Be Such a Good Idea

After gazing at the eyes of speakers who were trying to persuade them, research participants showed an average attitude shift of just 0.14 on a seven-point scale, compared with 0.6 if they had stared at the speakers’ mouths, says a team led by Frances S. Chen of the University of British Columbia in Canada. This and another experiment show that contrary to popular belief, eye contact decreases the success of attempts at persuasion, at least in the cultural context of the European university where the study was conducted. Because direct gaze has evolved in many species to signal dominance, eye contact may provoke resistance to persuasion, the researchers suggest.

SOURCE: In the Eye of the Beholder: Eye Contact Increases Resistance to Persuasion

October 19, 2013

The Act of Choosing a Treatment May Boost Its Effect on You

For people who have a need to feel in control, making a choice about health treatments strengthens their chosen treatment’s psychological component, says a team led by Andrew L. Geers of the University of Toledo in Ohio. For example, people who put a hand in ice water for 75 seconds reported less pain (20 versus 24 on a scale up to 44) if they were given a bogus pain-prevention cream; but for high scorers on a “desire for control” test, the effect was more pronounced if they were able to select between two (equally bogus) creams. The findings are part of a growing body of research showing that patient involvement enhances treatment effectiveness.

SOURCE: Why Does Choice Enhance Treatment Effectiveness? Using Placebo Treatments to Demonstrate the Role of Personal Control

October 17, 2013

Do Depraved Thoughts Make You More Creative?

In an experiment, Protestants produced better, more creative work when they were induced to feel unacceptable desires and primed with words evoking depravity and damnation, says a team led by Emily Kim of the University of Illinois. For example, those who were exposed to words such as “dirty,” “punish,” and “forbid” and then asked to make a clay sculpture and write a poem were judged to have created better art (2.63 versus 2.30 on a 5-point scale) than those who had seen words such as “clean,” “reward,” and “virtue.” The effect was not seen among Catholics or Jews, the researchers say.

SOURCE: Sublimation, Culture, and Creativity

October 15, 2013

Men’s Self-Esteem Drops When Their Female Partners Succeed

Men who were told their romantic partners had scored in the bottom 12% on a test felt better about themselves, unconsciously, than those whose partners were said to have scored in the top 12% (0.47 versus 0.25 on a zero-to-0.7 “implicit self-esteem” scale), according to Kate A. Ratliff of the University of Florida and Shigehiro Oishi of the University of Virginia. The female participants in the researchers’ series of experiments showed no such decline in implicit self-esteem when their partners failed. Because men are generally more competitive than women, they may be more likely to interpret a partner’ success as indicating that they are somehow deficient, the researchers suggest.

SOURCE: Men Feel Worse About Themselves When Female Partners Succeed, Says New Research