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

Please click for Dr. Aaron Reid’s  “True Drivers of Consumer Behavior” at CEO Club Boston 2011 event.

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.

Society revolves around an endless parade of enviable goods—Rolex watches, Prada handbags, cars flaunting the Ferrari logo, and artwork by Rembrandt, Monet, or Warhol. After depositing a paycheck, we race to the shopping mall to snatch up the latest and greatest items, never pausing to consider the true reasons behind our “need” for these products. So why do we buy? Geoffrey Miller, an evolutionary psychologist from the University of New Mexico, dives headfirst into this question in his new book Spent: Sex, Evolution, and Consumer Behavior. He provides a comprehensive account of how our purchases function primarily as signals that advertise our underlying personality traits, and only secondarily as objects with material value.

Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein wrote Nudge with optimism and dedication as primary tools while arguing for ways which we could improve our world. And there’s no government policy shift necessary – we only need to pay closer consideration to how we present decisions to individuals.

Dan Ariely, the James B. Duke Professor of Behavioral Economics at Duke University and author of Predictably Irrational, recently published an insightful article in the Harvard Business Review titled “The End of Rational Economics.” Following the global economic crisis, it has become painfully apparent that individuals do not always make rational decisions and the invisible hand is in fact fallible.

Coming Home to Eat is a personal story. A man’s personal experience trying to grow crops in Arizona, a man’s personal relationship with indigenous groups trying to reclaim their ancestral dietary traditions, even a man’s (graphically) personal intimacy with his girlfriend blindfolded under a peach tree. It is a hyper-idealized narrative about Gary Paul Nabhan’s endeavor to experience his daily nutritional intake on a more fundamental and traditional plain.

A dairy farmer. A stockman. An organic farmer. There, that’s it, that’s Deeply Rooted. If you choose to pick up this visual, emotional, well-written book by Lisa Hamilton, that’s what you’ll find. Perhaps her background as a photographer coupled with her writing experience produced a book that is more a series of three portraits than a structured narrative. There is no over-arching argument.

The current environmental crisis is the biggest generational challenge that the world has ever faced. You’ve undoubtedly read that before. The gravity and ubiquity of the statement have unfortunately made it cliché. If you’re liberal, you might be fed up with stonewall conservatives that don’t want to interfere with the economy to ensure the planet’s health as we move into an uncertain future. 

The Mind of the Market is deeply concerned with the expansive topic of evolution. The evolution of man, markets, social structures, and the intersection of all three. If Michael Shermer’s book were to be inserted into the same theme, it would be at the evolutionary stage of “primordial ooze.” This isn’t necessarily a bad thing; primordial ooze is full of nutrients, activity, and all those good things necessary for life, but it is also chaotic and disorienting, pushing and pulling you in different directions. But where this work falls in terms of utility for a general audience – and specifically one of marketers – is questionable.

A colleague once remarked to me that certain academically-oriented books are so accessible, so fun to read, and so compelling that they are like “scientific candy.” Jonah Lehrer’s How We Decide certainly has the pith and the readability of such candy, but it also has a surprising depth of insight and careful structuring that set it apart. He brings the science to the reader via understandable analogies and examples ranging from Tom Brady’s strengths as a quarterback to the Gulf War. Unlike other types of candy, Lehrer’s blend never is too simplistic, too one-dimensional, or too focused to be unable to step back and look at the big picture.