People and psychology - Decision making and Emotions Review.

Hello world! Hope you’re all doing great? Hope your week was awesome? last week I have an introduction to the concept of psychology and people.I know I promised to delve into neuromarketing(well I found out it was deeper than I thought,so we’ll be taking its concepts gradually. The CXL institute’s psychology and persuation mini degree program has broadened my view on the world of psychology and it’s deep relationship with the business world. For the past few weeks, have been on an adventure through the human brain and it’s decision making processes.

As a digital psychology student, I have come to realize that man is not as rational as he thinks. Man often thinks it it controls all of its decisions and choices but it’s sophisticated reasoning ability. One of the quotes I find interesting is from Dan Ariely;

"Even the most analytical thinkers are predictably irrational; the really smart ones acknowledge and address their irrationality".

In reality,the factors that controls the humans are broadly grouped into two; the internal and External.

EXTERNAL
These are the objectives influencers of the brain. In business, they stem from the forces,organization,or persons trying to catch the attention of customers. Some of the tools that constitute the external influencers are;
A. INTENSITY: The degree of something ( Loud music/sound, bright light, Color,etc.)
B. MOVEMENT: Any form of slide banners, animation, videos, text art,etc that captures attention and influences choices.
C. CONTEXT: Contrasting color combination have proven to be an attention grabber. last week, I mentioned how the brain craves and understand "contrast". It is a viable external tool of influence to businesses.
E. NOVELTY: The brain is always fascinated by new and innovative ideas, designs, product, equipment etc.
F. REPITITION: Repeated exposure to a brand has been discovered to make a brand stay at the top of the mind.

INTERNAL
THes are the subjective influencers of the brain. Many of them form to become a biase in the mind of individuals. Internal influencers can be;
A. Personal taste
B. Habits and Attitudes.
C. Motives/Organic states
D.Emotions
E.Past experiences .

4 CHIEF PROCESSES THAT INFLUENCES DECISION MAKING
Antonio Damasio made a strong evidence of the illogical nature of man by his popular research on mentally sick people. In his conclusion, he made the following remark;
"We are more slaves to our biology than we think. Businesses who understand biological programming and can leverage it, possesses an enormous advantage." He noticed that the human brain tends to justify our eventual decisions by being rational. The 4 chief processes are;
Cognitive biase, memory, reason and Emotion.

1. Cognitive biases: this is a systematic error in thinking that affedts the decisions and judgement people make. Atimes, these biases are related to memory.

2. Memory: psychologists have noticed that past experiences can impact our present and future actions. Man has the ability to learn from eventa and adjust in actions subsequently.

3. Reason: Abductive reasoning is based on creating and testing hypothesis using the best information available.

4. Emotion: It is a hackneyed phrase in psychology to say "Decisons are emotional". We make decisions with our emotional mind and justify them logically later.

APPLYING NEUROSCIENCE
Taking the idea from Kartsen Lund in one of his workshop, He tried to explain the mastery of human decisions using applied neuroscience methods for measuring attention, emotion,and memory.
It might appear shocking to know that the humans make about 3000 Decisons in a day. For every decision to be made,there must be attention, emotion and memory. He properly expatiated on 2 of the 4 broad processes that influences decisions.
Attention; The act or state of applying the mind to something. According to him,when we look at something, don't see them all cleael6and in color. We see only our main focus in color and sharply while our brain fills out the rest(the out of focus objects). Often time,we do not see important elements or details neca6of the way they where presented. We form mpressions in 35-50 milliseconds. First impressions are really difficult to change. Therefore, we must make sure our adverts and presentations do not appear hidden by our poor way of marshalling them.
Emotions: Emotions can be measured in neuroscience by using EEG/FMR scanners,and eye tracking scanner. With these tools, we can measure electric currents within the skull. Emotions are unconscious while feelings are conscious. It starts with emotions before the main feeling. The current passing through the brain,the pupil dillation and eye movement shows initial emotions before it eventually would translate to feelings that propel actions. The machines measure a low level positive or negative response to something.
As the world advances and businesses follow the train, a sample from the market would be tested with the machines to know the best ways to serve them better. Resul6from the tests can be generalized to be the market emotional impact level.
Memory: we know that memory plays an important role in decision making. Past experiences can make humans come up with favourable or unfavourable responses to similar events. Applying neuroscience to memory, it was noticed from adverts that brand consistency plays a vital role in market acceptance. No matter the level of engagement any advertising tends to evoke,if it is not consistent and related to the brand,it would not be subscribed to becau6the market would be confused.
High emotional impact events should be included to grab attention and spur recall( especially at the start and end of the advert). If it must be throughout, it should resonate with the brand and it's promise.

MEMORY AND LEARNING
Psychology of learning: below shows the unique learning processes that can impact decisions;

A. Classic conditioning: this is a process where an association is formed between a previously neutral stimulus and a stimulus that naturally evokes a response. The neural stimulus would be associated eventually with the already conditioned stimulus.
Using the popular Pavlov classic conditioning experiment, a bell (neural stimulus) forms and association with a bowl of food(already conditioned stimulus). Whenever he rings the bell,the dog would have been conditioned to know that food always follows this making the food and bell associative.

B. Observational learning: this learning occurs through observation and imitation. According to Dr. Albert Bandura, even without direct reinforcement, people will imitate the behavior of others . He described learning as a summation of attention, retention, reproduction,and motivation.

psychology of memory : The mental processes are used to aquire (encode),store,retain,and retrieve information. How does it apply to businesses?
Userzoom,sticky.ai,hotjar,etc can help you ask post questions to follow up. People need to recognize and retain your propositions at all times no matter the form they take.

Thanks for the read.next time, we'll delve fully into neuromarketing.