Sentient Insight: the business blog for consumer psychology and consumer marketing

Let’s play a game: There are ten coins on the table. The rules of the game are simple. I propose a way we should split the coins; you can either accept or reject my proposal. If you accept my terms, we get the coins according to my proposed split. If you reject them, we both get nothing. That’s it, and no second chances for positive reciprocity. Sound easy? Well, it’s more complicated than you might think.  Let’s play anyway:

Do you remember the pop science trivia factoids about Einstien’s brain that used to travel freely through social parlance? “His brain was so much bigger than the average human’s!” “It’s science, man, he used sixty percent more of his brain than the rest of us.” The real science, actually, has shown repeatedly that brain size has nothing to do with intelligence and that there are no “dead zones” in the brain that we just don’t use. Evolution probably wouldn’t build us with heaps of junk built into our most adaptive and most active human resource– that would be quite the luxury indeed. (Although on a side-note, there has been research showing how Einstein was smarter than the rest of us, if that’s really any surprise.)

I’ve been waiting a while to write this post. Not about Lebron per se, but about this phrase “the real reason” used in describing the motivation behind a decision. It just so happens that Lebron’s “Decision” serves as a perfect illustration of an important human truth of decision-making: the real “reason” behind any preference based decision is not in fact reason-based at all, the real reason is emotion. This is as true for Lebron’s Decision as it is for the decisions you and I make everyday. Let me explain…

Many research studies are designed to have single touches with consumers. Ex: in focus group situations, the moderator typically meets the research participants for the first – and last time – when they enter the focus group room. Think about this concept: we meet them at minute 1, and by minute 15 are asking them to open up and share with us their fears, desires, and perhaps faulty perceptions about ideas we are researching…a risky proposition for them. And at minute 120, we say goodbye forever. In IDIs, cut that time in half, but expect to get to the same level of rapport we do in a two hour session. Our expectation that research participants look at us as trusted confidantes in single-touch qualitative research is irrational at best.

What do you do when you get sad and find yourself in a bad mood? I for one try and reflect on what has happened in that day, that week, that month, and find the root of the issue in the hopes of eradicating it forcibly and without mercy. Naturally, such efforts usually end in failure. Even if I can identify what might be making me feel so down, that knowledge rarely helps me get back on track emotionally. In fact, having that target just gives me a discernible target to which I can direct my brooding until some accidental incident comes along and I find myself feeling better all of a sudden.