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:

In act II of Romeo and Juliet, Juliet first learns that Romeo (her new love) is a Montague, a longstanding familial rival. Overwhelmed by the dismay of her predicament, she famously longs for her lover in harmonious soliloquy: “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose / By any other name would smell as sweet,” as if saying, ‘I don’t care what his name is, names are arbitrary; like a rose, I love him for who he is, not his name.’

My mother has always told me that age is a state of mind, and if you wanted to be younger, you can simply “think younger”. Though I’m sure many aging folk would disagree with such maternal wisdom, behavioral researchers John A. Bargh, Mark Chen, and Laura Burrows have evidence that supports my Mom’s thesis! In their 1996 experiment, Automaticity of Social Behavior: Direct Effects of Trait Construct and Stereotype Activation on Action, these three NYU researches tested whether or not subconscious priming can directly affect behavior.

I’m sure we’ve all noticed that “the weather” is the classic go-to conversation starter if you’re in need of small-talk, especially if you’re with a stranger and have nothing to say. It’s always a wonderful candidate for speaking-about-nothing because it’s ubiquitous (there’s weather everywhere), it affects everyone, and it’s a fairly objective, neutral topic. For those same reasons, it’s also an interesting topic for behavioral science.

The Garden Variety How do we know what others are feeling? How do we gauge our audience in social interactions? Paul Ekman, a prominent psychological researcher, suggests that it’s all in our facial expressions. Even if you’re the type of person who keeps your emotions to yourself, Ekman’s research shows that humans are psychologically disposed to show our emotions on our faces.  Analyzing facial expressions in others, thus, is one way in which we empathize with other’s emotions. And it’s not always something you’re conscious of. Consequently, we don’t wear our hearts on our sleeves; we display them right on our faces!

People like to be given a choice. The desire to exercise one’s own free will and proclivity to act in one’s own interests might just be the last part of our consciousness that’s keeping us away from The Matrix, 1984, Brave New World, or whatever your favorite dystopian story is. But is there such a thing as “too many choices?” Sheena Iyengar, behavioral psychologist and choice expert, studies how people make decisions precisely to answer this question. And her research has revealed some startling implications! A recent New York Times article highlighted Iyengar’s fascinating research in a review of her new book The Art of Choosing. Iyengar, a Stanford grad, has been in the field of social psychology and decision theory for almost 15 years. Her most famous project: a jelly tasting.