The New York Times has a great article on how our actions and decisions can be subconsciously ‘primed’ by the world around us. Priming is a well-established effect in psychology. It describes the effect whereby encountering one thing activates related mental concepts in the mind.
Because they’ve been activated, they influence other mental processes that happen to be occurring at the same time, influencing decision making and desire, even if we’re not aware of it.
New studies have found that people tidy up more thoroughly when there’s a faint tang of cleaning liquid in the air; they become more competitive if there’s a briefcase in sight, or more cooperative if they glimpse words like “dependable” and “support” — all without being aware of the change, or what prompted it.
Psychologists say that “priming” people in this way is not some form of hypnotism, or even subliminal seduction; rather, it’s a demonstration of how everyday sights, smells and sounds can selectively activate goals or motives that people already have.
More fundamentally, the new studies reveal a subconscious brain that is far more active, purposeful and independent than previously known. Goals, whether to eat, mate or devour an iced latte, are like neural software programs that can only be run one at a time, and the unconscious is perfectly capable of running the program it chooses.
It’s great to see this article is largely based on published experiments.
Often, experiments tell their own stories and very little is needed to make them ‘accessible’ to the public. Just a bit of light and attention.
This makes perfect “common” sense. Our environment suggests many things at any given moment. It would stand to reason though that the environmental cues most closely related to our predisposed goals or immediate interests would function more highly in our thought processes.
As it relates to mones, one could “push” someone over the edge if they were in a time and place where their predisposition tilted in the way of romance.
Interesting article, would be interesting to hear from DST on this one.
In sales what works really well is the “take away” (some people call it something different)
It basically goes "I don’t know if our product is right for you… " You are basically “taking away” the product or service offered and peoples response is that they want it more.
Many products themselves have natural take aways. I sold life insurance and you have to tell people the truth -that they might be rejected (due to their medical tests). It’s how you tell them that matters.
ScienceDaily (Jan. 12, 2008) — Exposure to something that whets the appetite, such as a picture of a mouthwatering dessert, can make a person more impulsive with unrelated purchases, finds a study from the February 2008 issue of the Journal of Consumer Research. For example, the researchers reveal in one experiment that the aroma of chocolate chip cookies can prompt women on a tight budget to splurge on a new item of clothing.
“We found that an appetitive stimulus not only affects behavior in a specific behavior domain, but also induces a shared state that propels a consumer to choose smaller–sooner options in unrelated domains,” explains researcher Xiuping Li (National University of Singapore). “Similarly, the presence of an attractive woman in the trading room might propel an investor to choose the investment option providing smaller but sooner rewards.”
In the first experiment, Li asked participants to act as “photo editors of a magazine” and choose among either appetite stimulating pictures of food or non-appetite stimulating pictures of nature. A control group was shown no pictures at all. All were then asked to participate in a lottery that would either pay them less money sooner or more money later.
Those who had been exposed to the photos of food were almost twenty percentage points more likely to choose the lottery with the chance of a smaller, more immediate payoff than those who were exposed to the photos of nature (61 percent vs. 41.5 percent) and eleven percentage points more likely to choose the short-term gain than those who had not been exposed to any stimulus (61 percent vs. 50 percent).
Similarly, another experiment used a cookie-scented candle to further gauge whether appetitive stimulus affects consumer behavior. Female study participants in a room with a hidden chocolate-chip cookie scented candle were much more likely to make an unplanned purchase of a new sweater – even when told they were on a tight budget – than those randomly assigned to a room with a hidden unscented candle (67 percent vs. 17 percent).
“The scent of the appetitive stimulus led to reduced happiness with remote gains, which implied that participants in a present-oriented state were less sensitive to future values,” Li explains. “In addition, [this] experiment showed that participants were more likely to satisfy their current and spontaneous desire if they were exposed to the unrelated appetitive stimulus before they made the decision.”
Li concludes: “If retailers want to push their customers to shop more rather than stay longer, they should not only maintain a pleasant environment but also an environment full of temptations and excitement.”
Xiuping Li, “The Effects of Appetitive Stimuli on Out-of-Domain Consumption Impatience.” Journal of Consumer Research: February 2008. Adapted from materials provided by University of Chicago Press Journals.
Visionary, Glad you brought this thread up. Chocolate for women. Cinnamon for men. I found out a long time ago that a Glade Apple and Cinnamon scented oil fan in my sporting goods store worked like magic for impulse items. It was written up in a trade mag and when I tried it the difference was obvious. I had always used vanilla or citrus before because I thought the air freshener should be innocuous. Nope, make your customer HUNGRY.
