Want to Solve a Problem? Don’t Just Use Your Brain, but Your Body Too

When we’ve got a problem to solve, we don’t just use our brains but the rest of our bodies, too. The connection, as neurologists know, is not uni-directional. Now there’s evidence from cognitive psychology of the same fact. “Being able to use your body in problem solving alters the way you solve the problems,” says University of Wisconsin psychology professor Martha Alibali. “Body movements are one of the resources we bring to cognitive processes.”

These conclusions, of a new study by Alibali and colleagues—Robert C. Spencer, also at the University of Wisconsin, and Lucy Knox and Sotaro Kita of the University of Birmingham—are augmented by another, counter-intuitive one – even when we are solving problems that have to do with motion and space, the inabilityto use the body may force us to come up with other strategies, and these may be more efficient.

The findings will be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

The study involved two experiments. The first recruited 86 American undergraduates, half of whom were prevented from moving their hands using Velcro gloves that attached to a board. The others were prevented from moving their feet, using Velcro straps attached to another board. The latter thus experienced the strangeness of being restricted, but also had their hands free.  From the other side of an opaque screen, the experimenter asked questions about gears in relation to each other—e.g., “If five gears are arranged in a line, and you move the first gear clockwise, what will the final gear do?” The participants solved the problems aloud and were videotaped.

The videotapes were then analyzed for the number of hand gestures the participants used (hand rotations or “ticking” movements, indicating counting); verbal explanations indicating the subject was visualizing those physical movements; or the use of more abstract mathematical rules, without reference to perceptual-motor processes.

The results: The people who were allowed to gesture usually did so—and they also commonly used perceptual-motor strategies in solving the puzzles. The people whose hands were restrained, as well as those who chose not to gesture (even when allowed), used abstract, mathematical strategies much more often.

In a second experiment, 111 British adults did the same thing silently and were videotaped, and described their strategies afterwards. The results were the same.

The findings evince deeper questions about the relationship of mind and body and their relationship to space, says Alibali. “As human thinkers, we use visual-spatial metaphors all the time to solve problems and conceptualize things—even in domains that don’t seem physical on their face. Adding is ‘up,’ subtracting is ‘down.’ A good mood is ‘high,’ a bad one is ‘low.’ This is the metaphoric structuring of our conceptual landscape.”

Alibali, who is also an educational psychologist, asks: “How we can harness the power of action and perception in learning?” Or, conversely: What about the cognitive strategies of people who cannot use their bodies? “They may focus on different aspects of problems,” she says. And, it turns out, they may be onto something the rest of us could learn from.

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Want to Solve a Problem? Don’t Just Use Your Brain, but Your Body Too

Cultivating Happiness

George Lawton - Cultivating Happiness from Gary Wolf on Vimeo.o

Cultivating Happiness

The Awsome Marketeer

HOW TO BE THE AWESOMEST MARKETER EVER!

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The Awsome Marketeer

Is there a Social Media Bubble?

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Is there a Social Media Bubble?

Efficient Communication

"In deep sorrow, I certify that my
beloved wife has died at the birth of a
magnificent male children, for which I also
looking for a good nanny, which is guaranteed
Good pay and employment until I found
a new wife, who shall be living happy
and may not be over 30 years old and
hold 10 000 dollars, a sum which I
intend to invest in my reputed
shop for household items located at
79: th street, which right now has an 
ongoing sale of porcelain goods to 
record low prices. "

Advertisement in the New York Sun around 1920o

Efficient Communication

Facebook Roast

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Facebook Roast

On The Subject of Future

PSFK CONFERENCE NYC 2011: What's Next? A Panel On The Future from Piers Fawkes on Vimeo.o

On The Subject of Future

Awesome Marketing Stats

Hub Spot 100+Awesome+Marketing+Charts[1]

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Awesome Marketing Stats

Engaging the New Consumer by MIT Age Lab

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Engaging the New Consumer by MIT Age Lab

Q1 Digital Trends

Digital Trends: First Quarter 2011

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Q1 Digital Trends

Thoughts That Win

Back in high school, on the soccer field, poised to take a crucial penalty kick, “I always had a lot of thoughts going on in my head; I think most people do” says sports psychologist Antonis Hatzigeorgiadis. “I was setting the ball and planning my shot; I was the captain and never missed those types of shots; then I had that thought striking me that it was not going to be good. I knew I was going to miss,” he recalls, “and I did miss.” Even then, he could see that his mind had a big effect on his body.

From these unhappy experiences evolved Hatzigeorgiadis’ interest in the psychology of sport – the link between one’s thoughts and performance, and specifically in “self-talk”— the mental strategy that aims to improve performance through the use of self-addressed cues (words or small phrases), which trigger appropriate responses and action, mostly by focusing attention and psyching-up.

“We know this strategy works, and it works in sports,” says Hatzigeorgiadis. But what makes it work better, and in what situations? To find out, Hatzigeorgiadis and his colleagues at the Department of Physical Education and Sport Sciences at the University of Thessaly, Nikos Zourbanos, Evangelos Galanis, and Yiannis Theodorakis conducted a meta-analysis of 32 sport psychological studies on the subject with a total of 62 measured effects. Their findings will be published in an upcoming issue of Perspectives on Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

As expected, the analysis revealed that self-talk improves sport performance.

But the researchers teased out more – different self-talk cues work differently in different situations. For tasks requiring fine skills or for improving technique “instructional self-talk”, such as a technical instruction (“elbow-up” which Hatzigeorgiadis coaches beginner freestyle swimmers to say) is more effective than ‘motivational self-talk’ (e.g., “give it all”), which seems to be more effective in tasks requiring strength or endurance, boosting confidence and psyching-up for competition. Thus, we should carefully design the self-talk athletes use according to needs.

Some other findings are that self-talk has a greater effect on tasks involving fine skills (such as sinking a golf ball) rather than gross skills (e.g., cycling); probably because self-talk is a technique which mostly improves concentration. Self-talk is more effective for novel tasks rather than well-learned tasks; because it is easier to improve at the early steps of learning. Nevertheless, both beginners and experienced athletes can benefit, especially when they practice the self-talk technique.

Most important, says Hatzigeorgiadis, is that athletes train to self-talk—they prepare their scripts and use them consistently in training under varying conditions to better prepare themselves for competition.

The main goals behind self-talk—like other techniques such as visualization to “rehearse” a performance or meditation to improve focus and relaxation—are twofold, says Hatzigeorgiadis: “to enhance your potential; and to perform during competition in terms of your ability and not less.”

The meta-analysis can help sports psychologists and athletes refine their training. But the strategy has implications beyond the playing field. “The mind guides action. If we succeed in regulating our thoughts, then this will help our behavior,” says Hatzigeorgiadis.

“The goal of being prepared is to do the best you can do.”

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Thoughts That Win

The Paradox of Choice and Dangers of Over-Branding

Graham Button has written a great post on the subject of over-branding. In his own words: 


"The average U.S. supermarket, one right down the road from you, sells as many as 50,000 products. There are 16 varieties of Tropicana Pure Premium juices alone, for example, and PepsiCo will probably up it to 30 before long. That’s over-service. We don’t need it."


"Recently, when Procter and Gamble cut its Head and Shoulders product line from 25 to 16, profits rose 10%. Similarly, when General Motors shrunk its brands from eight to four last year, dealers reported a 16% increase in sales."

Read the rest of the article by clicking here.

Here is another gold nugget on the subject. This one has been around for a few years but also explains the difficulties brands induce on their customers when forcing them to choose among to many items. Freedom of choice is not always freedom at all:

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The Paradox of Choice and Dangers of Over-Branding

Social Media is Not Free!

Digital Buzz has put together a great infographic explaining the costs and benefits of Social Media. Watch it by clicking here.o

Social Media is Not Free!

Effective Marketing in the Digital Age

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Effective Marketing in the Digital Age

Scent Marketing

Scent Marketing Tactics - Awesome video clips here

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Scent Marketing

Neuromarketing

Neuromarketing: The New Science - The funniest videos are a click away

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Neuromarketing

Social Media China

Digital, Mobile, and Social Media in China (April 2011)

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Social Media China

How You Think About Death May Affect How You Act

How you think about death affects how you behave in life.

That’s the conclusion of a new study which will be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Researchers had people either think about death in the abstract or in a specific, personal way and found that people who thought specifically about their own death were more likely to demonstrate concern for society by donating blood.

Laura E.R. Blackie, a Ph.D. student at the University of Essex, and her advisor, Philip J. Cozzolino, recruited 90 people in a British town center. Some were asked to respond to general questions about death – such as their thoughts and feelings about death and what they think happens to them if they die. Others were asked to imagine dying in an apartment fire and then asked four questions about how they thought they would deal with the experience and how they thought their family would react. A control group thought about dental pain.

Next, the participants were given an article, supposedly from the BBC, about blood donations. Some people read an article saying that blood donations were “at record highs” and the need was low; others read another article reporting the opposite – that donations were “at record lows” and the need was high. They were then offered a pamphlet guaranteeing fast registration at a blood center that day and told they should only take a pamphlet if they intended to donate.

People who thought about death in the abstract were motivated by the story about the blood shortage. They were more likely to take a pamphlet if they read that article. But people who thought about their own death were likely to take a pamphlet regardless of which article they read; their willingness to donate blood didn’t seem to depend on how badly it was needed.

“Death is a very powerful motivation,” Blackie says. “People seem aware that their life is limited. That can be one of the best gifts that we have in life, motivating us to embrace life and embrace goals that are important to us.” When people think about death abstractly, they may be more likely to fear it, while thinking specifically about your own death “enables people to integrate the idea of death into their lives more fully,” she says. Thinking about their mortality in a more personal and authentic manner may make them think more about what they value in life.

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How You Think About Death May Affect How You Act

Failing

PSFK CONFERENCE NYC 2011: Laurie Rosenwald from Piers Fawkes on Vimeo.o

Failing

Want Lasting Love? It’s Not More Commitment, but Equal Commitment That Matters

It stands to reason that a well-loved child can become a loving adult. But what prepares us to make a strong commitment and work out differences with an intimate partner? And what happens when one person is more committed than the other?

Six researchers—M. Minda Oriña of St. Olaf College; W. Andrew Collins, Jeffry A. Simpson, Jessica E. Salvatore, and John S. Kim of the University of Minnesota and Katherine C. Haydon of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign—used the rich mine of data in the Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Risk and Adaptation (MLSRA), coupled with a lab procedure, to look for the answers.

Their findings, which will be published in the June issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggest that supportive, involved mothering in toddlerhood and an ability to work through conflict in adolescence are good predictors of becoming the “strong link”—the person with the bigger stake—in adult relationships. If the opposite happened in earlier life, chances are the person will be the “weak link”—the one with one foot out the door.

Equally important, though, is what these predictors don’t account for: It’s good to be prepared for love. But it takes two to tango.

Interestingly, it’s not the partners’ individual commitments that make the most difference in the grace and longevity of the dance. It’s how well their levels of commitment match up. Two strong links will be benevolent and tolerant when the going gets rough. Two weak links may be lax about working things out, but their expectations are equally low—so there’s less friction.

But when a weak link and a strong link pair up, the one with less investment has more influence—and stability is the loser.

The researchers recruited 78 MLSRA participants, 20 or 21 years old, and their heterosexual romantic partners. A questionnaire assessing each participant’s level of commitment was analyzed alongside data from two earlier points in the longitudinal study. First, two-year-olds were observed doing a difficult task while their mothers looked on. Did their mother laugh, help, or ignore the child? Second, at 16, the subjects recounted dealing with a conflict with a best friend, and were assessed for relational attitudes and skills.

This time, each couple discussed—and tried to resolve—the problem that caused them the most conflict. Then they talked about the things they agreed on most. Their videotaped interactions were rated for the amount of hostility—coldness, rejection, and remorseless injury—and hopelessness about the relationship that each partner displayed, and how each tried to quell those in the other.

As expected, the couples with disparate commitments were the most hostile.

The study contributes to our understanding of how we learn to love well. When you’re a baby or a teenager, “you are learning to manage your own needs and those of the people you care about,” Oriña says. “You learn: Can I come forward with a problem? What can I expect of the other person? And how can I do this in a way that everyone wins?”

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Want Lasting Love? It’s Not More Commitment, but Equal Commitment That Matters

Future of Design

PSFK Presents: Future Of Design - 13 Inspirational Designers and Their Design Philosophies

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Future of Design

Five Inspiring Steps To Innovation With Jeremy Gutsche

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Five Inspiring Steps To Innovation With Jeremy Gutsche

UNDERSTANDING CONSUMER CONVERSATIONS AROUND ADS IN A WEB 2.0 WORLD

User-generated online content poses a problem when it takes the form of advertising. Consumer-generated advertising challenges researchers and practitioners to understand consumers’ articulated responses to ads and to the re- sponses of other consumers, as well as the implications these may have for the brand. 

Read the research paper by clicking here.

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UNDERSTANDING CONSUMER CONVERSATIONS AROUND ADS IN A WEB 2.0 WORLD

Rocking business models

10 Business Models That Rocked 2010

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Rocking business models

Persuasive speech: The way we, um, talk sways our listeners

Want to convince someone to do something? A new University of Michigan study has some intriguing insights drawn from how we speak.
The study, presented May 14 at the annual meeting of the American Association for Public Opinion Research, examines how various speech characteristics influence people's decisions to participate in telephone surveys. But its findings have implications for many other situations, from closing sales to swaying voters and getting stubborn spouses to see things your way.
"Interviewers who spoke moderately fast, at a rate of about 3.5 words per second, were much more successful at getting people to agree than either interviewers who talked very fast or very slowly," said Jose Benki, a research investigator at the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR).
For the study, Benki and colleagues used recordings of 1,380 introductory calls made by 100 male and female telephone interviewers at the U-M ISR. They analyzed the interviewers' speech rates, fluency, and pitch, and correlated those variables with their success in convincing people to participate in the survey.
Since people who talk really fast are seen as, well, fast-talkers out to pull the wool over our eyes, and people who talk really slow are seen as not too bright or overly pedantic, the finding about speech rates makes sense. But another finding from the study, which was funded by the National Science Foundation, was counterintuitive.
"We assumed that interviewers who sounded animated and lively, with a lot of variation in the pitch of their voices, would be more successful," said Benki, a speech scientist with a special interest in psycholinguistics, the psychology of language.
"But in fact we found only a marginal effect of variation in pitch by interviewers on success rates. It could be that variation in pitch could be helpful for some interviewers but for others, too much pitch variation sounds artificial, like people are trying too hard. So it backfires and puts people off."
Pitch, the highness or lowness of a voice, is a highly gendered quality of speech, influenced largely by body size and the corresponding size of the larynx, or voice box, Benki says. Typically, males have low-pitched voices and females high-pitched voices. Stereotypically, think James Earl Jones and Julia Child.
Benki and colleagues Jessica Broome, Frederick Conrad, Robert Groves and Frauke Kreuter also examined whether pitch influenced survey participation decisions differently for male compared to female interviewers.
They found that males with higher-pitched voices had worse success than their deep-voiced colleagues. But they did not find any clear-cut evidence that pitch mattered for female interviewers.
The last speech characteristic the researchers examined for the study was the use of pauses. Here they found that interviewers who engaged in frequent short pauses were more successful than those who were perfectly fluent.
"When people are speaking, they naturally pause about 4 or 5 times a minute," Benki said. "These pauses might be silent, or filled, but that rate seems to sound the most natural in this context. If interviewers made no pauses at all, they had the lowest success rates getting people to agree to do the survey. We think that's because they sound too scripted.
"People who pause too much are seen as disfluent. But it was interesting that even the most disfluent interviewers had higher success rates than those who were perfectly fluent."
Benki and colleagues plan to continue their analyses, comparing the speech of the most and least successful interviewers to see how the content of conversations, as well as measures of speech quality, is related to their success rates.o

Persuasive speech: The way we, um, talk sways our listeners

Facebook, IRL

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Facebook, IRL

Retail Imperatives For This Year And The Next

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Retail Imperatives For This Year And The Next

Consumer Behavior in a Digital World

UnitedInsight Marketing Conference: Consumer Behavior in a Digital World from david champion on Vimeo.o

Consumer Behavior in a Digital World

Trend expert and designer Kristina Dryza helps companies make the imagined future real by translating emerging trends into new products, spaces and experiences.


Japan: Trendsetter of the Future? by Kristina Dryza from Qi GLOBAL on Vimeo.o

Sneaky Retail Tricks

Click here to watch the video.o

Sneaky Retail Tricks

10 Emerging Technologies of 2011 by MIT

Click here to watch the video from Technology Review.o

10 Emerging Technologies of 2011 by MIT

Psychologists Discover We’ve Been Underestimating the Unconscious Mind

What does consciousness do? Theories vary, but most neurologists and cognitive psychologists agree that we need awareness for integration. That is, unconscious processing can take in one object or word at a time. But when it comes to pulling together disparate stimuli into a coherent, complex scene, consciousness gets to work.

Now, new research by four Israeli psychologists—Liad Mudrik and Dominique Lamy of Tel Aviv University, and Assaf Breska and Leon Y. Deouell of Hebrew University of Jerusalem—suggests that scientists have been underestimating the abilities of the unconscious mind. “Integration can happen even when we’re unaware of the stimulus,” says Mudrik. “Unconscious processes are much more sophisticated and deeper than was previously believed.”

The findings will be published in the June issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

To test this idea, the researchers put their subjects—18 men and women with normal vision—before a stereoscope, which allows stimuli to be introduced to each eye separately. In one eye, “Mondrians”—changing patterns of color blocks—continuously flashed, suppressing perception of other objects. In the other eye the subjects saw images of people interacting with objects. Some scenes were “congruent”: a woman putting food in an oven; a player handling a basketball. Others were “incongruent”: the woman putting a chessboard in the oven; the player holding a watermelon.  The pictures were present during the entire viewing, but increased in contrast over several seconds, as the Mondrians grew fuzzier in the background.

The participants were instructed to press one of two buttons as soon as they detected the hemi field, or side of the one eye’s vision, in which the picture appeared. The experimenters compared the time participants took to respond to congruent versus incongruent scenes.

The incongruent scenes broke through the visual noise and came into awareness significantly faster than the congruent ones.

Why? “During unconscious processing, subjects are able to integrate object and background without the need for awareness,” Mudrik explains. “When the integration of the incongruent scene happens, though, it doesn’t make sense.” That’s not a cookie sheet. It’s a chessboard! “Then consciousness is recruited to make sense of an integration that does not come out properly.”

The research, says Mudrik, is rich with potential. In terms of theory, it “opens the gate” to a new understanding of the complex functioning of awareness.

But it also has implications for daily life. “These findings give us information about the resources we allocate to everyday actions. Say you are driving and talking on a cell phone. What we’ve shown is that you are doing some unconscious processing; we can perform many quite sophisticated actions at one time.

“But we have to bear in mind that this only works as long as things go according to plan.  When things go wrong—say, a child runs into the road—our unconscious system cannot deal with it.” In other words, it’s wise to keep some perceptual resources in reserve for those novel situations, whether they are life threatening or simply weird.

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Psychologists Discover We’ve Been Underestimating the Unconscious Mind

Motive mapping

Motive mapping

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Motive mapping

Motive mapping

Motive mapping

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Motive mapping

Motive mapping

Motive mapping

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Motive mapping

Motive mapping

Motive mapping

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Motive mapping

Dinner with the In-Laws: Why Does Knowing How Long a Bad Experience Will Last Make It Worse?

Knowing how long a good experience will last makes it better, but being aware of the duration of an unpleasant event makes it worse, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research. But people usually predict the opposite effect.

“Which is more enjoyable, knowing the exact duration of a dinner with a charming friend or not knowing it? What if the dinner is with disliked in-laws?” ask authors Min Zhao and Claire I. Tsai (University of Toronto). People often assume that knowing the duration of a pleasant event will “kill the fun,” whereas knowing the duration of an unpleasant event makes it tolerable. But the authors’ new study contradicts this lay understanding.

“Rather than weakening affective episodes over time, duration knowledge actually intensifies them, rendering a positive experience more pleasurable and a negative experience more aversive,” the authors explain.

The authors conducted a field study in a Taiwanese “cram school,” an after- school program designed to help middle school students meet academic goals. They told half the students that the session would last 60 minutes and told the other half that the session would be similar to after-hours sessions they had attended in the past (which vary from 30-90 minutes). “The results show that whereas students predicted that duration knowledge would improve their negative experience, in fact it rendered the experience worse.”

The authors also conducted a lab experiment where participants listened to 30- second song clips sung either by a pop star or one of the researchers “who sings abominably.” They found that people who knew the duration of the experience had more intense reactions in both directions.

In subsequent experiments the authors found that counting down during a positive experience weakens the enjoyment of participants but helps improve negative experiences. “Counting down an activity directs attention away from the activity to its end,” the authors write.

“Duration knowledge prompts people to consider the state in which the ongoing experience terminates: an undesirable future state for pleasurable experiences and a desirable one for unpleasant experiences,” the authors conclude.

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Dinner with the In-Laws: Why Does Knowing How Long a Bad Experience Will Last Make It Worse?

How do we choose what we put in our shopping basket?

Researchers at Oxford University are to study ‘neuromarketing’, a relatively new field of consumer and market research, which uses brain imaging and measurement technology to study the neural processes underlying an individual’s choice.

Neuromarketing claims to reveal how consumers assess, deliberate and choose in a variety of contexts.

According to neuromarketers this growing industry has the potential to significantly increase the effectiveness of advertising and marketing campaigns. They claim that neuromarketing will provide detailed knowledge about customer preferences and what marketing activities will stimulate buying behaviour, and make promotional campaigns more effective. It will be valuable in providing cues for the best place and prices in advertisements, and should cut the risk of marketing products that are doomed to fail. In the experts’ view, instead of relying on focus groups, neuromarketing offers the promise of ‘objective neurological evidence’ to inform organisations’ marketing campaigns.

But if neuromarketing is set to revolutionise marketing, what are the implications of this development? The study will cast light on the ‘neuro-turn’ in marketing by conducting fieldwork, interviews and documentary analysis. In addition a critical, historical assessment will consider and compare how different market research techniques can affect consumers and consumer behaviour.

The project is led by Professor Steve Woolgar, of the Saïd Business School, and is located within a larger collaborative study of the “Neuro-turn in European Social Sciences and the Humanities: Impacts of neurosciences on economics, marketing and philosophy” (acronym: NESSHI) with researchers from other parts of Europe.Professor Woolgar said: ‘This three-year project will be the first large-scale study of how emerging neurological knowledge about human decision-making is transforming the techniques of marketers and others who seek to influence the behaviour of consumers. It has far reaching implications for what we know about how humans make their choices, the role of the brain and the factors at play in everyday decisions we all take.’

Dr Tanja Schneider, researcher on the project, said: ‘For a number of years, research has been focussed on brain imaging centres. This is now moving out of the laboratory and into practice. The research we are doing will cast light on what is already happening in this area, and will explore what is likely to develop in the near future. We know this will impact society in a major way, so it is critical to understand these developments better’.

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How do we choose what we put in our shopping basket?

Top Shop Virtual Fitting Room

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Top Shop Virtual Fitting Room

Model for Social Media Marketing

A Model for 24/7 Marketing on Social Media

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Model for Social Media Marketing

Faking It: Can Ads Create False Memories about Products?

People who read vivid print advertisements for fictitious products actually come to believe they’ve tried those products, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research.

“Exposing consumers to imagery-evoking advertising increases the likelihood that a consumer mistakenly believes he/she has experienced the advertised product, and subsequently produces attitudes that are as strong as attitudes based on genuine product experience,” write authors Priyali Rajagopal (Southern Methodist University) and Nicole Montgomery (College of William and Mary).

In one study, the researchers showed participants different types of ads for a fictitious product: Orville Redenbacher’s Gourmet Fresh microwave popcorn. Other participants ate what they believed to be Orville Redenbacher’s Gourmet Fresh microwave popcorn, even though it was another Redenbacher product. One week after the study, all the participants were asked to report their attitudes toward the product and how confident they were in their attitudes.

“Students who saw the low imagery ad that described the attributes of the popcorn were unlikely to report having tried the popcorn, and they exhibited less favorable and less confident attitudes toward the popcorn than the other students,” the authors write. People who had seen the high imagery ads were just as likely as participants who actually ate the popcorn to report that they had tried the product. They were also as confident in their memories of trying the product as participants who actually sampled it. “This suggests that viewing the vivid advertisement created a false memory of eating the popcorn, despite the fact that trying the fictitious product would have been impossible,” the authors write.

The authors found that decreasing brand familiarity and shortening the time between viewing the ad and reporting evaluations reduced the false memories in participants. For example, when the fictitious brand was Pop Joy’s Gourmet Fresh instead of the more familiar Orville Redenbacher’s, participants were less likely to report false memories of trying it.

“Consumers need to be vigilant while processing high-imagery advertisements because vivid ads can create false memories of product experience,” the authors conclude.

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Faking It: Can Ads Create False Memories about Products?

How Do Creative Ads Shake Up the Way We Think?

Innovative ads can help creative consumers break away from their existing thought patterns, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research. These creative stimuli can affect the way consumers process information about different products.

―Creative marketing stimuli are pervasive in the marketplace as marketers and advertisers scramble to break through the clutter to attract consumers’ attention and win their approval,‖ write authors Xiaojing Yang (University of Wisconsin– Milwaukee), Torsten Ringberg (Copenhagen Business School), Huifang Mao (University of Central Florida), and Laura A. Peracchio (University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee).

The authors found that exposure to creative messages, designs, or brand logos induced consumers to think more creatively, which in turn affected the way they processed unrelated ads. They looked at the way consumers with a creative mindset are persuaded by advertising claims that operate at different levels— abstract vs. concrete. For example, abstract ads for a tablet computer could focus on its convenience and elegance, whereas concrete ads could elaborate on features such as the touch capability or the GPS. Generally, people who tend to think at an abstract level respond better to abstract claims, and vice versa.

In their experiments, the authors found that creative stimuli reversed the usual pattern of persuasion. ―Respondents who viewed three creative ads first were more persuaded by ad claims portrayed in a way that was incompatible with their own thinking,‖ the authors write. In other words, abstract thinkers found concrete ad claims more appealing, and vice versa.

―The findings of this research accentuate the need to reconsider some of our existing marketing practices,‖ the authors write. ―Though it still makes sense to target consumers segments with ad campaigns that tap into their way of thinking, marketers should be aware that this practice is most effective for consumers with a less creative mindset. To target those consumers with a creative mindset, marketers might actually augment their advertising effectiveness if their ad messages involve some kind of creative departure from the segment’s common way of thinking.‖

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How Do Creative Ads Shake Up the Way We Think?

Constrained Consumers: When Do People Consider What They Have to Give Up in Order to Buy Something?

Every time consumers spend money on a purchase, they are giving up other consumption down the road. A new study in the Journal of Consumer Research looks at the factors that lead consumers to consider these “opportunity costs.”

“Rather than viewing a decision as „Do I buy or do I not buy?‟ consumers feeling constrained view the decision as „Do I buy or do I use my money on something else instead?‟” writes author Stephen Spiller (UCLA). Feeling constrained is one major factor that leads consumers to consider how purchasing something now will affect what they can purchase in the future (“opportunity costs”), according to Spiller.

To examine consumers‟ feelings of constraint, Spiller assigned study participants to a monthly budget group or a weekly budget group and gave them the opportunity to make 20 purchases. Those in the monthly group were given a sum of money at the beginning that they could spend throughout, whereas those in the weekly group were given a smaller amount four times throughout the study. “Compared to those in the monthly budget group, those in the weekly budget group looked at future purchase possibilities more before deciding whether or not to buy the current purchase,” writes Spiller.

The author also found that people with a high propensity to plan were more likely to think about how they were going to use their money in the future. “As a result, even when they do not face constraints, they still think about how else they might spend that money,” writes Spiller.

Consumers should aim for a balanced consideration of opportunity costs, suggests Spiller. “Focusing on the foregone can enhance regret and make all options look worse in comparison. If consumers neglect their opportunity costs, breaking budgets down into smaller periods or purchase categories will increase consideration,” Spiller writes. “If consumers fixate on opportunity costs too much, combining budgets into longer periods and broader categories may reduce consideration, perhaps enabling more satisfactory consumption—at least in the short run.”

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Constrained Consumers: When Do People Consider What They Have to Give Up in Order to Buy Something?