On autopilot

Imagine a busy housewife, with impatient kids in tow, walking through the supermarket to find fishcakes and chips (or perhaps noodles and vegetables) for the evening meal.  Her mind is focused on the task in hand and finding the right items, along with trying to listen to descriptions of the school day just gone.  All of us do many things (arguably most things) in our day via an internal autopilot. Whether it’s brushing our teeth, driving to work, or buying our evening meal, much of our behaviour is learnt and unconscious. Read more »

We are all ‘live wires’

How does the brain make connections?  Brain scans show areas of our brain ‘lighting up’ when we make decisions (although beware that more activity doesn’t make the decision more important).  But what is really going on?  There is a huge amount of activity (electrical and chemical) going on within our brains.   Read more »

The growing brain

As we have learnt, the brain didn’t spring into being but emerged over time.  The most obvious evidence for the evolution of the brain is its structure. Firstly, our brain is quite large, but not as large as some other animals.  However, relative to our body mass, the brain outweighs all our fellow creatures! Interestingly, one of the common threads between those animals with relatively larger brain sizes is that they are all very social animals. Read more »

A new mindset for research

Advances in neuroscience, psychology and related fields such as behavioral economics have changed our understanding of our minds over the last 10-20 years.  Over the next 12 articles, I would like to build a complete picture of what makes us what we are, and what this means for marketing and market research, incorporating the latest understanding from these fields.  The material is taken from a two-day training workshop, and if you want to learn more about these ideas, then please join us here. Read more »

Apple must have been relieved to have Steve Jobs back (if briefly) for their latest new product introduction (iPad 2).  Although he looked a little frail, he still commanded the stage, using presentation skills that all researchers can also use, including many tricks from Hollywood.  In The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs, Carmine Gallo summarises these skills in three acts (like all the best plays and presentations). Read more »

I can’t think why

After facilitating two fun-packed days on consumer psychology last week, I picked up the latest edition of Newsweek which had a lead article on the very same topic written by Sharon Begley (link below).  Sharon Begley focuses on the impact of the ‘Twitterization’ of culture, arguing that our brains are sometimes so overloaded with information that they simply freeze.  The story is backed up by neuro-imaging studies of brian activity during decision making, which show that when overwhelmed with information our conscious brains sometimes literally ‘switch off’.  More importantly, with too much information, our decisions can make less and less sense. Read more »