Neuromarketing and Persuasion

I loved psychology when I was in college, and I still read on the topic any chance I get… I find the perspectives a very valuable in marketing as well as business. I was fortunate to attend a presentation this week called “Your Brain on Websites – Maximizing Web Sales with Neuroscience” by Roger Dooley, author of the really fascinating blog “NeuroMarketing, Where Brain Science and Marketing Meet.”

Roger’s presentation covered a few topics and research points I was familiar with, and a few new ones, I’ll lay out a few that I took notes on:

• Priming – A subtle but repeated suggestion is a powerful influencer of behavior. Example: test subjects were shown several phrases that had a very subtle thread of advanced age, the words “Florida, Grey and Wrinkled” were in unconnected phrases. Post reading these sentences, subjects walked slower to a test destination. I found a link to this PhD dissertation research here, it’s a long read at 155 pages, but I look forward to reading.



• Evolutionary Psychology – Roger made several points on research relating to evolutionary psychology, some of them not really surprising: from “men making poorer decisions when attractive women are around” to “conversion rates on direct response cards being higher when attractive people are on the cards”… of course women were less likely to be influenced by these little tricks.
• Complex visuals, copy-heaving interfaces – Visual designers and usability specialists typically agree that an interface that’s too complex, even fonts or too much copy is bad for business… now they have support by neuroscience. Roger showed data regarding the amount of stress felt by users of complex interfaces, the more complex, the more stress and the less attractive/pleasant the experience was. This of course has implications for ecommerce conversion, but also in any user experience… the more complex, the more stress and a poorer experience.
• Complex looking fonts – Roger also showed an example of complex fonts, a serif italic example was shown next to a simple Arial/Helvetica I believe. Researchers showed subjects the same content (directions to accomplish a task) and the subjects were asked to estimate time of completion of these tasks. The complex font example was estimated at 15 minutes for completion, the simple font was estimated at 8 minutes. So complex fonts gave the impression of a longer time investment, nearly double… a powerful example.

Several of the other points and concepts he discussed, including “decoy marketing” and “reward and reciprocity” are well covered in a few books I’m reading/skimming, and wholly recommend:

• Influence, the Psychology of Persuasion; by Robert Cialdini
• Predictably Irrational, Revised and Expanded Edition: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions by Dan Ariely
• Yes! – 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persasuive by Robert Cialdini
• Of course I’d have to mention Paco Underhill’s books, the Why We Buy series too.

You can also view Dan’s blog Irrationally yours, Dan Ariely, a very good read too. Robert Cialdini has several sites, some are very promotional, but also have some good content. Influence At Work.com and Inside Influence.com. Here also is Paco Underhill’s site and booklist.

What are your favorite neuromarketing studies and topics? Do you find yourself changing your communications and marketing based on some of these insights?