Learning the research alphabet

There are clear lessons for market research (and marketing which I will explore in separate posts) from the importance of affect, behaviour and context in understanding ourselves and our customers.  I am writing this listening to Bill Evans and Tony Bennett, so it seems appropriate to argue that research needs to become more VOCAL. Read more »

Over the past two weeks we have learnt 12 key insights into what makes us who we are, based on the latest understanding from neuroscience, behavioural economics, psychology, biology and the social sciences.  They can be summarised in three (or perhaps four) key themes, but first let’s review the 12 lessons of human behaviour. Read more »

To perceive is to act

Perception is all about action. What we perceive is not just based on input from our senses, but also based on our expectations in a specific context or situation.  Our senses work very well, but our brain integrates, interpolates and interferes with the information coming from the senses to fit the data to pre-existing models of what it thinks should happen (based on a vast databank of previous experiences).  For example, our brain expects that two towers going up into the sky away from us should converge following the laws of perspective, and when they don’t (as above) this can cause unintended effects in how we perceive the world. Read more »

In the last post, we saw that humans are susceptible to social bias (or herd mentality).  Our mind does not work by itself alone, but through interactions with other minds in the immediate environment or more remotely through culture and shared values.  Much of what we do is under the influence of others, often without realising, with important implications for marketing and research. Read more »

Home Economicus or Homo Sapiens?

We have seen that the majority of human behaviour is controlled outside consciousness.  This is in contrast to the classical models of economics which assume a model of man as Homo Economicus who is entirely rational, always knows what (s)he wants and is capable of calculating the precise consequences of any action.  We all know that this is nonsense, and recent economic events have once again highlighted the inadequacy of such models both for economics and further afield. 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 »

“All action is of the mind and the mirror of the mind is the face, its index the eyes.” – Cicero

“The knowledge of good and evil is nothing else by the emotions of pleasure or pain, in so far as we are conscious thereof.” – Baruch Spinoza

The importance of face

In Lie to Me, the central protagonist Cal Lightman (played by Tim Roth) uses facial expressions and body language to uncover the truth behind what other people are saying.  The character is informed by the psychologist Paul Ekman, who has spent decades researching the universality of human emotions and developed the Facial Action Coding System which is the basis of Lightman’s investigations using facial ‘microexpressions’ (as well as body language and voice) to unmask the reality behind each situation. Read more »

“The easiest thing of all is to deceive one’s self, for what a man wishes he generally believes to be true.” – Demosthenes
“Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves.” – Jean Jacques Rousseau

‘I would never have missed something like that!’
How many times have we all missed something important (hopefully with no serious consequences)? Too often I hear, ‘Did you see what just happened?’ when I am unaware that anything interesting happened at all!  The Invisible Gorilla explains my inattentional blindness as we have written about before, and also explains five other ways in which we all deceive ourselves, with illusions of attention, memory, knowledge, cause and potential. Read more »

“Statistics are like bikinis.  What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital.”  - Aaron Levenstein Read more »