Neuromarketing

Can video games make you a better air traffic controller? How about a better surgeon? And, for the huge demographic bubble of baby boomers, can video games keep you cognitively sharp into old age?

Continuing our focus on brain fitness this week (see also Nap for Success), here’s another surprising research finding: video games make you smarter! And not just any video games like the sedate Tetris… it’s the action-packed shoot-em-ups like Unreal Tournament and Counter Strike that work best. Specifically, visual search skills were dramatically better in hard-core gamers compared to non-gamers: (more…)

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Not long ago we learned that daydreaming is the key to creativity, and now I’ve got even better news: napping makes you smarter! Or, according to Richard Restak’s new book, Think Smart: A Neuroscientist’s Prescription for Improving Your Brain’s Performance, at least it helps you learn much more quickly: (more…)

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Did you ever get a meal at a restaurant that you didn’t like, but have them wrap up the leftovers anyway? Even though the food’s flavor is unlikely to improve with age, there may be an explanation for the seemingly irrational behavior. (For non-US Neuromarketing readers, restaurant leftovers are often packaged in a “doggie bag” even though the consumers will be human rather than canine.) According to B. Venkatesh, a self-proclaimed investment psychologist and writer for the Hindu Business Line, (more…)

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Years ago, I recall a devout Christian describing her experience in the Holy Land, where she touched the stone on which the body of Jesus reputedly had been placed. She described getting dizzy and weak in the knees from the contact. I don’t doubt that she was indeed deeply affected by touching the relic, although I suppose that the physical sensation she experienced was due to her beliefs about the significance of the stone rather than some kind of miraculous or paranormal happening.

We all tend to do the same thing, to varying degrees, when we come in contact with places or objects of great personal or historic significance. If I handed you an old brick, you might be rather non-plussed. If the director of Mount Vernon opened a velvet-lined walnut box and handed you a brick, telling you that it had sat on George Washington’s desk as a paperweight for 20 years, you might be more affected. Holding an object so intimately associated with the founder of our country would, for many people, be a moving experience. Once again, though, our experience is shaped by our belief about the object rather than some intrinsic power of that object.

When we choose a place for our business or to live, a sense of place and history is often neglected despite the considerable impact they can have on us emotionally. Whether it is as simple as a historic home or as elaborate as Chicago’s Tribune Tower, being in a location with a sense of history can profoundly affect our mood and that of the people with whom we interact. (The Tribune Tower is a great example of a place of business that embodies history - itself the product of an architectural competition in 1922 intended to produce “the most beautiful office building in the world,” the building gained immediate historical substance by studding the base of the building with “over 120 stones from famed sites and structures in all 50 states and dozens of foreign countries. They range from the Parthenon (Greece) and Taj Mahal (India) to Bunker Hill (Massachusetts) and Mark Twain’s ‘Injun Joe Cave’ (Missouri).”

Does your place of business have a story to tell? What about an object in it? Do you think you’d be more creative if you sat down behind Albert Einstein’s desk every day? Or wrote your daily plan of action using Andrew Carnegie’s fountain pen? (Sorry, I don’t think you’ll find either of those on eBay.) And what about your customers - do they perceive your business as a manufactured environment, or one that comes with historic substance?

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The game of golf is more mental than most sports. Incredible size, strength, and speed aren’t required, although obviously considerable athletic skill is needed to succeed. What’s also necessary is the ability to control fine, precise movements when putting. Some golfers seem unaffected by pressure, and calmly sink putts even when a tournament title is on the line. Others, though, can be susceptible to the “yips” - involuntary reflexes that make accurate putting next to impossible. Why do some golfers crumble under pressure? Brain scans to the rescue: (more…)

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In Audio Branding, I wrote about subtle uses of music to influence our behavior. Most of the uses of music for branding or sales enhancement are so subtle that listeners may not be consciously aware the music is even playing - it’s simply part of the environment. Indeed, it seems that subtlety is the goal of Muzak and others trying to create an auditory environment.

But what about the other end of the spectrum, music that is so powerful and engaging that it gives you chills? Researchers at McGill University have produced some interesting research: (more…)

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Robert Burton of Salon wrote an interesting piece that discusses both the field of prescription drug marketing and how fMRI brain scans have been used to show that pain is “real.”

Fibromyalgia is a condition in which patients seem to experience more pain than non-sufferers. Fibromylgia is thought to be stimulated by mental states like anxiety and depression, but no specific measures like blood tests, X-rays, autopsies, etc., demonstrate any evidence of the condition. The only thing that physicians have to work with is the subjective descriptions of the patients as to their pain level. Now, fMRI brain scans which show more pain-related brain activation in fibromyalgia sufferers may open the floodgates for pharmaceutical companies to offer products like Lyrica to treat the condition. Of course, what the fMRI is showing is that the patient is experiencing a higher level of pain than normal, not that there is a specific organic reason for the pain.

This whole discussion gets into the fascinating area of expectations and individual experience: (more…)

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Is it better to know your stuff, or act like you do? If you are in the business of convincing other people, whether as a consultant, salesperson, team member, or almost any other position that requires others to believe you, it pays to be confident. Don Moore from Carnegie Mellon’s Center for Behavioral Decision Research has published new research showing that confidence even trumps past accuracy in earning the trust of others. (more…)

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Vision is vision, right? Maybe not. New research at the University of Toronto shows that what we see is actually affected by our mood: (more…)

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From both physicians and fitness gurus, the mantra for effective weight loss is the same: diet and exercise. And we’ve all had friends who gushed about starting a modest walking program, for example, and saw themselves drop unwanted pounds.

All this flies in the face of the math of exercise. If you’ve ever watched the calorie counter on your treadmill or Stairmaster, you know how painfully slowly the “calories burned” number climbs. A vigorous session may burn only a few hundred calories - an amount that could be consumed in a minute with a rich dessert. Not to worry, we’ve been told - even after you stop your workout, your body’s metabolism remains in high gear for many hours.

Now, researcher Edward Melanson, an exercise physiologist and associate professor of medicine at the University of Colorado in Denver, has shown that the supposed long-term metabolism boost doesn’t really happen. But, before your cancel your gym membership, there may be a way that exercise does help you lose weight, even if it’s not the mechanism promoted by fitness experts for years. First, the bad news: (more…)

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