neuromarketing

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 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

October 9, 2013December 23, 2016

Emotional Connection in Advertising

Again, good storytelling, a good advertising creates an emotional connection with no need to talk about features and benefits of the product.
By GoPro

October 5, 2013December 23, 2016

Charismatic Character

Charismatic characters are great when used wisely in small business marketing. It creates an emotional connection and the character can even say things that wouldn’t be appropriate to team members.

In our company we have Apple the schnauzer. She writes in our printed magazine Engage and every now and then appears in one of our direct marketing campaigns.

Look how Virgin uses a charismatic character in its advertising.

October 4, 2013

Women Lose Out to Men on Competitive Exam After Doing Better on Noncompetitive Test

Women perform more poorly than men on the highly competitive entrance exam for French business school HEC Paris, even though the same women had performed significantly better, on average, than the same men on France’s pass/fail, less-competitive national baccalauréat exam two years before, says a team led by Evren Ors, a professor at the school. As a consequence, the pool of admitted candidates contains more men than women. Once women are admitted to HEC, they tend to outperform their male classmates. Tournament-like competitive contests may lead to gender differences in performance, the authors say.

October 2, 2013

Consumers Go Out of Their Way to Pay in Round Numbers

Consumer behavior: 56% of purchases at a self-service gasoline pump in upstate New York ended in .00, well above what would be expected by chance, and an additional 7% ended in .01, likely reflecting failed attempts to stop the pump at whole-dollar amounts, says a team led by Michael Lynn of Cornell. The findings, along with data on tipping and a pay-what-you-want online scheme, show a pronounced consumer preference for round-number payment amounts, the researchers say.

October 1, 2013

High Deductibles Make U.S. Men Less Willing to Be Treated for Health Emergencies

As American employers shift health-care costs onto workers, more have been offering health plans with high deductibles. But those deductibles discourage male patients from seeking treatment, even for serious problems like kidney stones and irregular heartbeats. In the year following a transition to a high-deductible plan, men reduced their emergency-department visits for “high-severity” ailments by 34.4% in comparison with a control group, says a team led by Katy Kozhimannil of the University of Minnesota. Women, by contrast, continued to go to the ED for high-severity ailments, although they reduced low-severity visits.

SOURCE: When Health Deductibles Rise, Men Delay Emergency Care

October 1, 2013December 23, 2016

Women Use Luxury Accessories to Deter Romantic Rivals

Consumer behavior: By flaunting expensive shoes and handbags, women effectively deter potential romantic rivals, according to a series of experiments by doctoral student Yajin Wang and Vladas Griskevicius of the University of Minnesota. For example, after each research participant was prompted to imagine another woman flirting with her partner, those who were instructed to envision being alone with their rivals spent 77% more of a small honorarium on a chance to win a gift card for a luxury-spending spree, suggesting that women whose relationships are threatened seek conspicuous goods only when the products can be seen by a potential rival. Other experiments show that the deterrent is effective, probably because women perceive a man as more devoted to his partner when she sports pricey products, the researchers say.

September 30, 2013

Your Brain Works Better When You Are Tired

If you’re trying to do creative work, you’ll actually have more luck when you’re more tired and your brain isn’t functioning as efficiently.
If you’re tired, your brain is not as good at filtering out distractions and focusing on a particular task. It’s also a lot less efficient at remembering connections between ideas or concepts. These are both good things when it comes to creative work, since this kind of work requires us to make new connections, be open to new ideas and think in new ways. So a tired, fuzzy brain is much more use to us when working on creative projects.

This Scientific American article explains how distractions can actually be a good thing for creative thinking:

Insight problems involve thinking outside the box. This is where susceptibility to “distraction” can be of benefit. At off-peak times we are less focused, and may consider a broader range of information. This wider scope gives us access to more alternatives and diverse interpretations, thus fostering innovation and insight.